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blackfreethinkers · 4 years ago

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A racial realist IS a white supremacist!!!

By Greg Miller

In unguarded moments with senior aides, President Trump has maintained that Black Americans have mainly themselves to blame in their struggle for equality, hindered more by lack of initiative than societal impediments, according to current and former U.S. officials.

After phone calls with Jewish lawmakers, Trump has muttered that Jews “are only in it for themselves” and “stick together” in an ethnic allegiance that exceeds other loyalties, officials said.

Trump’s private musings about Hispanics match the vitriol he has displayed in public, and his antipathy to Africa is so ingrained that when first lady Melania Trump planned a 2018 trip to that continent he railed that he “could never understand why she would want to go there.”

When challenged on these views by subordinates, Trump has invariably responded with indignation. “He would say, ‘No one loves Black people more than me,’ ” a former senior White House official said. The protests rang hollow because if the president were truly guided by such sentiments he “wouldn’t need to say it,” the official said. “You let your actions speak.”

In Trump’s case, there is now a substantial record of his actions as president that have compounded the perceptions of racism created by his words.

Over 3½ years in office, he has presided over a sweeping U.S. government retreat from the front lines of civil rights, endangering decades of progress against voter suppression, housing discrimination and police misconduct.

His immigration policies hark back to quota systems of the 1920s that were influenced by the junk science of eugenics, and have involved enforcement practices — including the separation of small children from their families — that seemed designed to maximize trauma on Hispanic migrants.

With the election looming, the signaling behind even second-tier policy initiatives has been unambiguous.

After rolling back regulations designed to encourage affordable housing for minorities, Trump declared himself the champion of the “Suburban Lifestyle Dream.” He ordered aides to revamp racial sensitivity training at federal agencies so that it no longer refers to “White privilege.” In a speech at the National Archives on Thursday, Trump vowed to overhaul what children are taught in the nation’s schools — something only states have the power to do — while falsely claiming that students are being “fed lies about America being a wicked nation plagued by racism.”

The America envisioned by these policies and pronouncements is one dedicated to preserving a racial hierarchy that can be seen in Trump’s own Cabinet and White House, both overwhelmingly white and among the least diverse in recent U.S. history.

Trump’s push to amplify racism unnerves Republicans who have long enabled him

Scholars describe Trump’s record on race in historically harsh terms. Carol Anderson, a professor of African American Studies at Emory University, compared Trump to Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Abraham Lincoln as president and helped Southern Whites reestablish much of the racial hegemony they had seemingly lost in the Civil War.

“Johnson made it clear that he was really the president of a few people, not the American people,” Anderson said. “And Trump has done the same.”

A second White House official who worked closely with Trump quibbled with the comparison, but only because later Oval Office occupants also had intolerant views.

“Woodrow Wilson was outwardly a white supremacist,” the former official said. “I don’t think Trump is as bad as Wilson. But he might be.”

White House officials vigorously dispute such characterizations.

“Donald Trump’s record as a private citizen and as president has been one of fighting for inclusion and advocating for the equal treatment of all,” said Sarah Matthews, a White House spokeswoman. “Anyone who suggests otherwise is only seeking to sow division.”

No senior U.S. official interviewed could recall Trump uttering a racial or ethnic slur while in office. Nor did any consider him an adherent of white supremacy or white nationalism, extreme ideologies that generally sanction violence to protect White interests or establish a racially pure ethno-state.

White House officials also pointed to achievements that have benefited minorities, including job growth and prison-sentence reform.

But even those points fade under scrutiny. Black unemployment has surged disproportionately during the coronavirus pandemic, and officials said Trump regretted reducing prison sentences when it didn’t produce a spike in Black voter support.

And there are indications that even Trump’s allies are worried about his record on race. The Republican Party devoted much of its convention in August to persuading voters that Trump is not a racist, with far more Black speakers at the four-day event than have held top White House positions over the past four years.

This story is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former officials, including some who have had daily interactions with the president, as well as experts on race and members of white supremacist groups. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing a desire to provide candid accounts of events and conversations they witnessed without fear of retribution.

Coded racial terms

Most attributed Trump’s views on race and conduct to a combination of the prevailing attitudes of his privileged upbringing in the 1950s in what was then a predominantly White borough of New York, as well as a cynical awareness that coded racial terms and gestures can animate substantial portions of his political base.

The perspectives of those closest to the president are shaped by their own biases and self-interests. They have reason to resist the idea that they served a racist president. And they are, with few exceptions, themselves White males.

Others have offered less charitable assessments.

Omarosa Manigault Newman, one of the few Black women to have worked at the White House, said in her 2018 memoir that she was enlisted by White House aides to track down a rumored recording from “The Apprentice” — the reality show on which she was a contestant — in which Trump allegedly used the n-word. A former official said that others involved in the effort included Trump adviser Hope Hicks and former White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders.

The tape, if it exists, was never recovered. But Manigault Newman, who was forced out after clashing with other White House staff, portrayed the effort to secure the tape as evidence that aides saw Trump capable of such conduct. In the book, she described Trump as “a racist, misogynist and bigot.”

Mary L. Trump, the president’s niece, has said that casual racism was prevalent in the Trump family. In interviews to promote her recently published book, she has said that she witnessed her uncle using both anti-Semitic slurs as well as the n-word, though she offered few details and no evidence.

Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer, has made similar allegations and calls Trump “a racist, a predator, a con man” in a newly published book. Cohen accuses Trump of routinely disparaging people of color, including former president Barack Obama. “Tell me one country run by a Black person that isn’t a s---hole,” Trump said, according to Cohen.

These authors did not provide direct evidence of Trump’s racist outbursts, but the animus they describe aligns with the prejudice Trump so frequently displays in public.

In recent months, Trump has condemned Black Lives Matter as a “symbol of hate” while defending armed White militants who entered the Michigan Capitol, right-wing activists who waved weapons from pickup trucks in Portland and a White teen who shot and killed two protesters in Wisconsin.

Trump has vowed to safeguard the legacies of Confederate generals while skipping the funeral of the late congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.), a civil rights icon, and retweeted — then deleted — video of a supporter shouting “White power” while questioning the electoral eligibility of Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), the nation’s first Black and Asian American candidate for vice president from a major party. In so doing, Trump reanimated a version of the false “birther” claim he had used to suggest that Obama may not have been born in the United States.

These add to an already voluminous record of incendiary statements, including his tweet that minority congresswomen should “go back” to their “crime infested” countries despite being U.S.-born or U.S. citizens, and his claim that there were “very fine people on both sides” after torch-carrying white nationalists staged a violent protest in Charlottesville.

In a measure of Trump’s standing with such organizations, the Stormfront website — the oldest and largest neo-Nazi platform on the Internet — recently issued a call to its followers to mobilize.

“If Trump doesn’t win this election, the police will be abolished and Blacks will come to your house and kill you and your family,” the site warned. “This isn’t about politics anymore, it is about basic survival.”

As the election approaches, Trump has also employed apocalyptic language. He recently claimed that if Democratic nominee Joe Biden is elected, police departments will be dismantled, the American way of life will be “abolished” and “no one will be SAFE.”

Given the country’s anguished history, it is hard to isolate Trump’s impact on the racial climate in the United States. But his first term has coincided with the most intense period of racial upheaval in a generation. And the country is now in the final stretch of a presidential campaign that is more explicitly focused on race — including whether the sitting president is a racist — than any election in modern American history.

Biden has seized on the issue from the outset. In a video declaring his candidacy, he used images from the clashes in Charlottesville, and said he felt compelled to run because of Trump’s response. He has called Trump the nation’s first racist president and pledged to use his presidency to heal divisions that are a legacy of the country’s “original sin” of slavery.

Exploiting societal divisions

Trump has confronted allegations of racism in nearly every decade of his adult life. In the 1970s, the Trump family real estate empire was forced to settle a Justice Department lawsuit alleging systemic discrimination against Black apartment applicants. In the 1980s, he took out full-page ads calling for the death penalty against Black teens wrongly accused of a rape in Central Park. In the 2000s, Trump parlayed his baseless “birther” claim about Obama into a fervent far-right following.

As president, he has cast his record on race in grandiose terms. “I’ve done more for Black Americans than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln,” Trump said July 22, a refrain he has repeated at least five times in recent months.

None of the administration officials interviewed for this story agreed with Trump’s self-appraisals. But several sought to rationalize his behavior.

Some argued that Trump only exploits societal divisions when he believes it is to his political advantage. They pointed to his denunciations of kneeling NFL players and paeans to the Confederate flag, claiming these symbols matter little to him beyond their ability to rouse supporters.

“I don’t think Donald Trump is in any way a white supremacist, a neo-Nazi or anything of the sort,” a third former senior administration official said. “But I think he has a general awareness that one component of his base includes factions that trend in that direction.”

Studies of the 2016 election have shown that racial resentment was a far bigger factor in propelling Trump to victory than economic grievance. Political scientists at Tufts University and the University of Massachusetts, for example, examined the election results and found that voters who scored highly on indexes of racism voted overwhelmingly for Trump, a dynamic particularly strong among non-college-educated Whites.

Several current and former administration officials, somewhat paradoxically, cited Trump’s nonracial biases and perceived limitations as exculpatory.

Several officials said that Trump is not a disciplined enough thinker to grasp the full dimensions of the white nationalist agenda, let alone embrace it. Others pointed out that they have observed him making far more offensive comments about women, insisting that his scorn is all-encompassing and therefore shouldn’t be construed as racist.

“This is a guy who abuses people in his cabinet, abuses four-star generals, abuses people who gave their life for this country, abuses civil servants,” the first former senior White House official said. “It’s not like he doesn’t abuse people that are White as well.”

Nearly all said that Trump places far greater value on others’ wealth, fame or loyalty to him than he does on race or ethnicity. In so doing, many raised a version of the “some of my best friends are Black” defense on behalf of the president.

When faced with allegations of racism in the 2016 campaign, Trump touted his friendship with boxing promoter Don King to argue otherwise. Administration officials similarly pointed to the president’s connection to Black people who have praised him, worked for him or benefited from his help.

They cited Trump’s admiration for Tiger Woods and other Black athletes, the political support he has received from Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and other Black lawmakers, the president’s fondness for Ja’Ron Smith, who as assistant to the president for domestic policy is the highest-ranking Black staffer at the White House, and his pardon of Black criminal-justice-reform advocate Alice Marie Johnson, expunging her 1996 conviction for cocaine trafficking.

In his speech at the Republican National Convention, Scott used his personal story of bootstrap success to emphasize the ways that Republican policies on taxes, school choice and other issues create opportunities for minorities.

Trump “has fought alongside me” on such issues, Scott said, urging voters “not to look simply at what the candidates say, but to look back at what they’ve done.”

For all the prominence that Scott and other Black Trump supporters were given at the convention, there has been no corresponding representation within the Trump administration.

The official photo stream of Trump’s presidency is a slide show of a commander in chief surrounded by White faces, whether meeting with Cabinet members or posing with the latest intern crop.

From the outset, his leadership team has been overwhelmingly White. A Washington Post tally identified 59 people who have held Cabinet positions or served in top White House jobs including chief of staff, press secretary and national security adviser since Trump took office.

Only seven have been people of color, including Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who are of Lebanese heritage. Only one — Ben Carson, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development — is Black.

Under Trump, the nation’s federal courts have also become increasingly White. Of the 248 judges confirmed or nominated since Trump took office, only eight were Black and eight were Hispanic, according to records compiled by NPR News.

Retreating from civil rights

Trump can point to policy initiatives that have benefited Black or other minority groups, including criminal justice reforms that reduced prison sentences for thousands of Black men convicted of nonviolent, drug-related crimes.

About 4,700 inmates have been released or had their sentences reduced under the First Step Act, an attempt to reverse the lopsided legacy of the drug wars of the 1980s and 1990s, which disproportionately targeted African Americans. But this policy was championed primarily by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and former officials said that Trump only agreed to support the measure when told it might boost his low poll numbers with Black voters.

Months later, when that failed to materialize, Trump “went s---house crazy,” one former official said, yelling at aides, “Why the hell did I do that?”

Manigault Newman was similarly excoriated when her efforts to boost funding for historically Black colleges failed to deliver better polling numbers for the president, officials said. “You’ve been at this for four months, Omarosa,” Trump said, according to one adviser, “but the numbers haven’t budged.” Manigault Newman did not respond to a request for comment.

White House officials cited other initiatives aimed at helping people of color, including loan programs targeting minority businesses and the creation of “opportunity zones” in economically distressed communities.

Trump has pointed most emphatically to historically low Black unemployment rates during his first term, arguing that data show they have fared better under his administration than under Obama or any other president.

But unemployment statistics are largely driven by broader economic trends, and the early gains of Black workers have been wiped out by the pandemic. Blacks have lost jobs at higher rates than other groups since the economy began to shut down. The jobless rate for Blacks in August was 13 percent, compared with 7.3 percent for Whites — the highest racial disparity in nearly six years.

Neither prison reform nor minority jobs programs were priorities of Trump’s first term. His administration has devoted far more energy and political capital to erecting barriers to non-White immigrants, dismantling the health-care policies of Obama and pulling federal agencies back from civil rights battlegrounds.

Under Trump, the Justice Department has cut funding in its Civil Rights Division, scaled back prosecutions of hate crimes, all but abandoned efforts to combat systemic discrimination by police departments and backed state measures that deprived minorities of the right to vote.

Weeks after Trump took office, the department announced it was abandoning its six-year involvement in a legal battle with Texas over a 2011 voter ID law that a federal court had ruled unfairly targeted minorities.

Later, the department went from opposing, under Obama, an Ohio law that allowed the state to purge tens of thousands of voters from its rolls to defending the measure before the Supreme Court.

The law was upheld by the court’s conservative majority. In a dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that voter rolls in African American neighborhoods shrank by 10 percent, compared with 4 percent in majority-White suburbs.

The Justice Department’s shift when faced with allegations of systemic racism by police departments has been even more stark.

After the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles in 1991, Congress gave the department new power to investigate law enforcement agencies suspected of engaging in a “pattern or practice” of systemic — including racist — misconduct. The probes frequently led to settlements that required sweeping reforms.

The authority was put to repeated use by three consecutive presidents: 25 times under Bill Clinton, 21 under George W. Bush and 25 under Obama. Under Trump, there has been only one.

The collapse has coincided with a surge in police killings captured on video, the largest civil rights protests in decades and polling data that suggests a profound turn in public opinion in support of the Black Lives Matter cause — though that support has waned in recent weeks as protests became violent in some cities.

A Justice Department spokesman pointed to nearly a dozen cases over the past three years in which the department has prosecuted hate crimes or launched racial discrimination lawsuits. In perhaps the most notable case, James Fields Jr., who was convicted of murder for driving his car into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, also pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges.

“The Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice is vigorously fighting race discrimination throughout the United States. Any assertion to the contrary is completely false,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband. “Since 2017, we have prosecuted criminal and civil race discrimination cases in all parts of the United States, and we will continue to do so.”

But the department has not launched a pattern or practice probe into any of the police departments involved in the killings that ignited this summer’s protests, including the May 25 death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, who asphyxiated after a White policeman kept him pinned to the ground for nearly eight minutes with a knee to his neck.

The department has opened a more narrow investigation of the officers directly involved in Floyd’s death. Attorney General William P. Barr called Floyd’s killing “shocking,” but in congressional testimony argued there was no reason to commit to a broader probe of Minneapolis or any other police force.

“I don’t believe there is systemic racism in police departments,” Barr said.

Deport, deny and discourage

Days after the 2016 election, David Duke, a longtime leader of the Ku Klux Klan, tweeted that Trump’s win was “great for our people.” Richard Spencer, another prominent white nationalist figure, was captured on video leading a “Hail Trump” salute at an alt-right conference in Washington.

People with far-right views or white nationalist sympathies gravitated to the administration.

Michael Anton, who published a 2016 essay comparing the country’s course under Obama to that of an aircraft controlled by Islamist terrorists and called for an end to “the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners,” became deputy national security adviser for strategic communication.

Ian Smith served as an immigration policy analyst at the Department of Homeland Security until email records showed connections with Spencer and other white supremacists. Darren Beattie worked as a White House speechwriter before leaving abruptly when CNN reported his involvement in a conference frequented by white nationalists.

Stephen K. Bannon, who for years used Breitbart News to advance an alt-right, anti-immigrant agenda, was named White House chief strategist, only to be banished eight months later after clashing with other administration officials.

Stephen Miller, by contrast, has survived a series of White House purges and used his position as senior adviser to the president to push hard-line policies that aim to deport, deny and discourage non-European immigrants.

While working for the Trump campaign in 2016, Miller sent a steady stream of story ideas to Breitbart drawn from white nationalist websites, according to email records obtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In one exchange, Miller urged a Breitbart reporter to read “Camp of the Saints,” a French novel that depicts the destruction of Western civilization by rampant immigration. The book has become a touchpoint for white supremacist groups.

Miller was the principal architect of, and driving force behind, the so-called Muslim Ban issued in the early days of Trump’s presidency and the separation of migrant children from their parents along the border with Mexico. He has also worked behind the scenes to turn public opinion against immigrants and outmaneuver bureaucratic adversaries, officials said.

To blunt allegations of racism and xenophobia in the administration’s policies, Miller has sought to portray them as advantageous to people of color. In several instances, Miller directed subordinates to “look for Latinos or Blacks who have been victims of a crime by an immigrant,” then pressured officials at the Department of Homeland Security to tout these cases to the press, one official said. Families of some victims appeared as prominent guests of the president at the State of the Union address.

In 2018, as Miller sought to slash the number of refugees admitted to the United States, Pentagon officials argued that the existing policy was crucial to their ability to relocate interpreters and other foreign nationals who risked their lives to work with U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“What do you want? Iraqi communities across the United States?” Miller erupted during one meeting of National Security Council deputies, according to witnesses. The refugee limit has plunged since Trump took office, from 85,000 in 2016 to 18,000 this year.

In response to a request for comment from Miller, Matthews, the White House spokeswoman, said that “this attempt to vilify Stephen Miller with egregious and unfounded allegations from anonymous sources is shameful and completely unethical.”

As a descendant of Jewish immigrants, Miller is regarded warily by white supremacist organizations even as they applaud some of his actions.

“Our side doesn’t consider him one of us — for obvious reasons,” said Don Black, the founder of the Stormfront website, in an interview. “He’s kind of an odd choice to be the white nationalist in the White House.”

Trump’s presidency has corresponded with a surge in activity by white nationalist groups, as well as concern about the growing danger they pose.

Recent assessments by the Department of Homeland Security describe white supremacists as the country’s gravest domestic threat, exceeding that of the Islamic State and other terror groups, according to documents obtained by the Lawfare national security website and reported by Politico.

The FBI has expanded resources to tracking hate groups and crimes. FBI Director Christopher A. Wray testified Thursday that “racially motivated violent extremism” accounts for the bulk of the bureau’s domestic terrorism cases, and that most of those are driven by white supremacist ideology.

Major rallies staged by white nationalist organizations, which were already on the upswing just before the 2016 election, increased in size and frequency after Trump took office, according to Brian Levin, an expert on hate groups at California State University at San Bernardino.

The largest, and most ominous, was the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.

On Aug. 11, 2017, hundreds of white supremacists, neo-fascists and Confederate sympathizers descended on the city. Purportedly there to protest the planned removal of a Robert E. Lee statue, they carried torches and chanted slogans including “blood and soil” and “you will not replace us” laden with Klan and Nazi symbolism.

The event erupted in violence the next day, Saturday, when Fields, a self-proclaimed white supremacist, drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, tossing bodies into the air. Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old Virginia native and peace activist, was killed.

Trump’s vacillating response in the ensuing days came to mark one of the defining sequences of his presidency.

Speaking from his golf resort in Bedminster, N.J., Trump at first stuck to a calibrated script: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence.” Then, improvising, he added: “on many sides, on many sides.”

In six words, Trump had drawn a moral equivalency between the racist ideology of those responsible for the Klan-like spectacle and the competing beliefs that compelled Heyer and others to confront hate.

Trump’s comments set off what some in the White House came to regard as a behind-the-scenes struggle for the moral character of his presidency.

John F. Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general who was just weeks into his job as White House chief of staff, confronted Trump in the corridors of the Bedminster club. “You have to fix this,” Kelly said, according to officials familiar with the exchange. “You were supporting white supremacists. You have to go back out and correct this.”

Gary Cohn, the White House economic adviser at the time, threatened to resign and argued that there were no “good people” among the ranks of those wearing swastikas and chanting “Jews will not replace us.” In a heated exchange, Cohn criticized Trump for his “many sides” comment, and was flummoxed when Trump denied that was what he had said.

“Not only did you say it, you continued to double down on it,” Cohn shot back, according to officials familiar with the exchange. “And if you want, I’ll get the transcripts.”

Trump relented that Monday and delivered the ringing condemnation of racism that Kelly, Cohn and others had urged. “Racism is evil,” he said, “and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups”

Aides were briefly elated. But Trump grew agitated by news coverage depicting his speech as an attempt to correct his initial blunder.

The next day, during an event at Trump Tower that was supposed to highlight infrastructure initiatives, Trump launched into a fiery monologue.

“You had a group on one side that was bad,” he said. “You had a group on the other side that was also very violent. Nobody wants to say that. I’ll say it right now.” By the end, the president appeared to be sanctioning racial divisions far beyond Charlottesville, saying “there are two sides to the country.”

For all their consternation, none of Trump’s top aides resigned over Charlottesville. Kelly remained in his job through 2018. Cohn stayed until March 2018 after being asked to lead the administration’s tax-reform initiative and reassured that he could share his own views about Charlottesville in public without retaliation from the president.

Kelly and Cohn declined to comment.

The most senior former administration official to comment publicly on Trump’s conduct on issues of race is former defense secretary Jim Mattis. After Trump responded to Black Lives Matter protests in Washington this summer with paramilitary force, Mattis responded with a blistering statement.

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try,” Mattis said. “Instead, he tries to divide us.”

In some ways, Charlottesville represented a high-water mark for white nationalism in Trump’s presidency. Civil rights groups were able to use footage of the mayhem in Virginia to identify members of hate groups and expose them to their employers, universities and families.

“Charlottesville backfired,” Levin said. Many of those who took part, especially the alt-right leadership, “were doxed, sued and beaten back,” he said, using a term for using documents available from public records to expose individuals.

“When the door to the big political tent closed on these overtly white nationalist groups, many collapsed, leaving a decentralized constituency of loose radicals now reorganizing under new banners,” Levin said.

Some white nationalist leaders have begun to express disenchantment with Trump because he has failed to deliver on campaign promises they hoped would bring immigration to a standstill or perhaps even ignite a race war.

“A lot of our people were expecting him to actually secure the borders, build the wall and make Mexico pay for it,” Black said.

“Some in my circles want to see him defeated,” Black said, because they believe a Biden presidency would call less attention to the white nationalist movement than Trump has, while fostering discontent among White people.

But Black sees those views as dangerously shortsighted, failing to appreciate the extraordinary advantages of having a president who so regularly aligns himself with aspects of the movement’s agenda.

“Symbolically, he’s still very important,” Black said of Trump. “I don’t think he considers himself a white supremacist or a white nationalist. But I think he may be a racial realist. He knows there are racial differences.”

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laurellynnleake · 6 years ago

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Fight To Protect Immigrants! - Resource & Organization Masterlist (updated: 6/22/18)

If you need help and/or want to help others trapped in the brutal US immigration system, let me get you started! Regardless of your time and abilities, you can help in countless ways big and small. Head to Informed Immigrant to find local/national/global orgs supporting undocumented immigrants - you can donate money/time/transportation, join protest actions, register voters, cook dinners, watch kids, and simply provide emotional support to people!

I’ve gathered together some useful links and resources here - please help me spread ‘em around, and add any of your own links and info too (and let me know if you donate/contact reps and I’ll draw you some art).

Calling Scripts:

Check out Celeste Pewter’s twitter for up-to-date call scripts and resources for contacting your reps and fighting for human rights (@ her or use #Icalledmyreps after you call to get a boost and/or share info). She eventually transcribes most scripts here, but can take several days, so while these links below go to images on twitter I’ve also included captions under the cut.

Tips for calling your electeds

Calling Senate/House for Feinstein/Nadler’s Keep Families Together Act post EO (6/22), and for Texans near the border (6/13)

Call scripts pushing for House/Senators to investigate DHS’s Zero Tolerance Policy (6/22), and for contacting the DOJ/DHS to protest the Zero Tolerence Policy post executive order (6/20)

Call scripts for governors to refuse to send the National Guard to the border (6/22) and calling for Sec Nielson’s resignation (6/18)

Calling Congress re: Kids already separated, and rumors of military lawyers (06/22)

Calling governors, federal reps, and state attorney’s about joining the multi-state lawsuit (6/22)

General Guides for Contacting Reps:

Find My Reps

Resistbot (emails and faxes reps for you)

5calls

Herd on the Hill a FB group of dedicated volunteers who will print out your letters, and deliver them.

How to Call Your Reps When You Have Social Anxiety

Legislative & Organizing Resources:

Join a local protest at FamiliesBelong.org. Donate here.

ACLU Know Your Rights pocket guides includes ICE Visits (ICE Visitas), If Questioned About Imm. Status (Que Hacer Si Le Preguntan Acerca de su Estatus Migratorio), and What To Do If Stopped By Police (Qué Debe Hacer Si la Policía/Agentes de Inmigración/FBI) in English and en Español, as well as guides for protests.

Know Your Rights Handouts: If ICE Raids a Home/Employer/Public Space (AILA) in Español, Chinese, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, & Punjabi

Indivisible’s Immigration News Resources

Indivisible’s Immigrant Ally Toolkit

Tisp for attending protests and rallies and advice for white allies

Look up ICE detention centers here

Internet security: FB centric, basic computer security, more elaborate

Organizations to Join/Support:

Use the Informed Immigrant to find groups near you, find legal aid, and join the fight!

Pueblos Sin Fronteras provides humanitarian aid to migrants and refugees. Donate here.

Al Otro Lado is a bi-national, direct legal services organization serving indigent deportees/migrants/refugees in Tijuana, Mexico. Donate here.

The Florence Project provides free legal services to adults and unaccompanied children in imm. custody in Arizona. Donate here.

Border Angels serves San Diego County’s immigrant population through various migrant outreach programs such as Day Laborer outreach, a free legal assistance program, and more. Donate here.

RAICES provides free and low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families, and refugees in Texas. Donate here.

The Immigrant Children’s Assistance Project is an American Bar Association project currently helping unaccompanied children in South Texas w/ knowing their rights. Donate here.

United We Dream is the largest immigrant-youth led group in the USA, and their site provides news, event info, as well as guides and toolkits for fighting the system, protecting LGBTQ immigrants, and taking care of your mental health. Donate here.

The Black Alliance for Just Immigration “educates and engages African American and black immigrant communities to organize and advocate for racial, social, and economic justice.” Donate here.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is one of the largest civil rights and advocacy organizations dedicated to fighting against discrimination against Muslims. Click here to donate to the national organization or a specific campaign, or click here to find your local CAIR chapter (which needs your support as much/even more).

CUNY CLEAR provides representation and rights training to Muslim communities targeted by law enforcement. Donate here.

Families for Freedom fights on behalf of families facing deportation. “We are immigrant prisoners (detainees), former immigrant prisoners, their loved ones, or individuals at risk of deportation.” Donate here.

The Immigrant Defense Project uses impact litigation, advocacy, and public education to fight to stop mass deportations and an unjust immigration system. Donate here.

The Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) is a national resource center that helps train immigration lawyers and advocates on the local, state and federal level. Donate here.

The International Rescue Committee works to provide aid to people affected by humanitarian crises. You can donate to specifically support U.S. refugee resettlement programs re: Trump’s Muslim Ban here, and see other ways to get involved (volunteering/calling reps) here.

The International Refugee Assistance Project works to organize lawyers and law students to fight for the human and legal rights of refugees through legal aid and policy advocacy. For legal help click here, and to donate click here.

Make the Road New York uses policy advocacy, organizing, education, and survival services (including workforce training and adult education) to improve the lives of immigrants—in particular Latino and working class communities—in NYC. Donate here, get involved here.

Mariposas Sin Fronteras works with LGBTQ people detained in immigration facilities and works to get vulnerable detainees out on bond. Donate here.

MPower Change does grassroots organizing, campaigning, and storytelling to empower Muslim communities in the USA. Donate here.

National Immigration Law Center works for the rights of low-income immigrants through impact legislation, policy analysis and advocacy, communications, and education programs. Donate here.

Northwest Immigrant Rights Project offers legal services directly to immigrants with its network of 350 pro-bono attorneys. Donate here.

Remember, one person alone can’t do everything, so please take care of yourself and each other - but if we all do a little, we can make a difference together!

Captions for the Pewter call scripts under the cut, as well as a list of pro-bono legal aid and therapist volunteers organized by Joanna Rothkopf.

Tips for calling your electeds, especially if you’re leaving a VM

If you’re leaving a voicemail, make sure you clearly state your name and where you are calling from. (Zip, etc.)

Make sure you have a concrete ask, or specify a specific opinion. Imagine a staffer asking: “What’s the best outcome/resolution for you?” and frame your comment that way. E.g. If you want them to specifically oppose an amendment, say that, and explain why.

Always clarify if you would like a response, and leave a way for the office to reach you. (Phone number, email, etc.)

If you have another issue, bring it up on the phone at the time. Always personalize your comments.

For Cruz/Cornyn constituents on the TX detention facilities: (06/18, tweaked by OP)

You: Hi, my name is [name]. I am calling from [zıp code]. You: I am calling today to ask [Cruz/Cornyn] take a stand...

Opposing the detention facilities for young people in Texas, and

To also oppose the DHS’s overall zero tolerance policy.

You: The horrific conditions being experienced by these children are absolutely unacceptable, and betray the values of our state.

You: <Insert optional comments here>

You: Furthermore, I am also calling on [Cruz/Cornyn] to support their colleague Senator Feinstein’s Keep Families Together Act. President Trump has clearly and repeatedly stated he would support a bill to keep families together, so I expect [Cruz/Cornyn] to follow the GOP agenda.

Call the capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121 #ICALLEDMYREPS @CELESTE PEWTER

Talking points for Texas residents re: local/state electeds re: the detention facilities (06/13)

What did the city/county/state know about these proposals to hold children in warehouses, with limited access to fresh air? Does local city/county/state official condone these practices?

If yes: does [official] understand that these kids are in conditions that are comparable to what certain criminals experience in jail?

If no: great. How will [elected] address this with their federal counterparts? I do not support facilities like these, and want [elected] to exert all possible pressure with their federal counterparts.

Will [elected] come out with a public statement condemning these facilities?

Call the capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121 #ICALLEDMYREPS @CELESTEPEWTER

For House/Senators re: DHS’s Zero tolerance policy (opening investigations) Talking points post-Trump executive order (6/20)

The Executive Order would only create family detention centers which would continue to lead to expanded camps.

The executive order doesn't offer recourse for reuniting already- separated families The EO gives wide discretion to DHS Secretary Nielsen

Crossing the border will be deemed a criminal violation, vs. a civil one (which will lead to parents being charged criminally; and children likely being taken)

The EO doesn't address asylum seekers, and will still prohibit anyone seeking asylum under domestic violence/gang violence from seeking asylum

The House bill (Border Security and Immigration Reform Act) will also not fully address these concerns.

Call the capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121 #ICALLEDMYREPS @CELESTE PEWTER

Talking points re: the DOJ/DHS following Trump's Executive Order signing (6/20)

Ask the DOJ/DHS stop lying about the origins of zero tolerance policy - it's well documented it's a Trump Administration policy

Stop using Flores to justify this policy.

Stop saying it's about the wall. Democrats have actually offered funding for the wall before (during the DACA debate) and the GOP/Trump Administration passed. This is NOT about the wall

Per news reports this morning, DHS thought the zero tolerance policy would deter border crossings. According to public documents sited by outlets like the Hill, crossings have actually gone up, including crossings by unaccompanied minor children

The Executive order doesn't have a recourse for how families will be reunited. How will the DOJ/DHS address this?

Stop insisting this is up to Congress to act - this is a DHS/DOJ created problem

Call your SENATORS post-Trump's executive order signing re: family separation (06/22)

You: Hi, my name is [name]. I am calling from [zip code} You: I am calling to ask Senators to continue to do everything in their legislative power to address the DHS/DOJ's zero tolerance policy. You: This week's executive order does not adequately solve the problem of family separation; it just creates family detention centers, and doesn't address the overarching problem. You: We also need clarity on how this executive order helps the children who have already been separated. The administration is claiming 500 kids have been reunited. When will we get proof? When is this rumored staging ground in Texas supposed to be complete?

Dem Senators: Finally, I'd like to call on [Senator] to continue to express support for Feinstein's Keep Families Together Act. GOP Senators: I am calling on [Senator] to support Feinstein's Keep Families Together. You: <Additional comments>

Call the capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121 #ICALLEDMYREPS @CELESTE PEWTER

Call both chambers re: asking for Secretary Nielsen's resignation (06/18)

You: Hi, my name is [name]. I am calling from [zip code]. You: I am calling on [elected] to issue a public statement to ask for Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's resignation. Not only has she been complicit in helping the Trump Administration institute their new zero tolerance policy, she has lied repeatedly to the public on the policy, and what it does and doesn't do. You: I am calling on [elected] to follow in congressional colleague Senator Kamala Harris's footsteps, and call for Secretary Nielsen's resignation immediately. You: <insert optional comment>

Call the capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121 #ICALLEDMYREPS @CELESTE PEWTER

Call your GOVERNORS and ask them to direct the national guard to NOT send resources to the border (06/18)

You: Hi, my name is [name]. I am calling from [zip code].

You: I am calling to ask [GOVERNOR] to please follow Governor Baker of Massachusetts, by instructing the national guard to not deploy to the US-Mexico border. The National Guard cannot and should not be used to further assist in enforcing the Zero Tolerance policy being enacted by the Trump Administration.

You: I am also calling on [GOVERNOR] to commit to signing an executive order similar to Governor Hickenlooper of Colorado, prohibiting any state resources from being used to asssist the Trump Administration's efforts to enforce the zero tolerance policy. I understand it's largely ceremonial, but I want [GOVERNOR] to commit to taking a stand.

You: <insert optional comments here>

Find your governor's contact info here: https://openstates.org #ICALLEDMYREPS @CELESTE PEWTER

Talking points re: JAG corps allegedly being assigned to try cases at the border (06/22)

JAG lawyers have different rules to follow than civilian lawyers. How can we be sure they'll follow proper procedure when trying cases? How will any appeals process on behalf of the defendant be impacted (if applicable) given that military and civilian appeals are different?

WHY are we letting DHS/HHS utilize DOD resources, for something that is strictly in DHS/HHS territory? What is the justification?

Should we not be concerned we're allowing military personnel to handle civilian affairs? This is conflating multiple departments and cross issues.

Call the capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121 #ICALLEDMYREPS @CELESTE PEWTER

Call your GOVERNORS and ask them to continue issuing directives to NOT support border efforts + support their requests for clarity on children in their respective states (06/22)

You: Hi, my name is [name]. I am calling from [zip code]

You: I am calling to ask [GOVERNOR] to continue to refuse to utilize any state resources that would help the federal government's zero tolerance policy. [GOVERNOR] should commit to signing an executive order similar to Governor Hickenlooper of Colorado.

If there are children in your state: I am also calling on [Governor] to continue to be vocal on the need to get accurate numbers on how many children are in our state, and where these facilities are. I ask [Governor] to do everything in their power to tour these facilities. Accountability is needed. You: <insert optional comments here>

Find your governor's contact info here: https://openstates.org #ICALLEDMYREPS @CELESTE PEWTER

Call your local electeds to request a resolution condemning the zero tolerance policy/family separation (6/22)

You: Hi, my name is [name]. I am calling from [address/zip code].

You: I am calling to ask [MAYOR/CITY COUNCILMEMBER] to please endorse a resolution that makes clear [CITY] does not condone the Trump Administration's current immigration practices, including family separation, family detention centers, and the refusal to provide asylum to those who are seeking it under domestic violence and gang violence.

You: Yesterday's federal executive order does little to solve the problem. Families are still separated, and the executive order only opens up the pathway to family detention centers.

You: I am calling on [MAYOR/CITY COUNCILMEMBER] to show what our city stands for, and take a stand. You: <insert optional comment here>

#ICALLEDMYREPS @CELESTE PEWTER

Call your Attorneys general, and ask them to join the multi-state lawsuit. (06/22)

You: Hi, my name is [name]. I am calling from [zip code].

You: I am calling on [AG] to join the other state attorneys generals who are planning on suing the Trump Administration to compel reunification for the 2.3K children separated from their families.

You: As Maryland's AG Frosh confirmed in an interview: the executive order does not adequately address the problems that have resulted in family separation; including how to reunite the families, and the government appears to not have a concrete plan.

You: Please sign onto the lawsuit and compel the administration to act.

You: <insert optional comment>

Find your AG: http://www.naag.org/naag/attorneys- general/whos-my-ag.php

Attorneys:

Ted Colquett, Birmingham, AL - [email protected], (205) 245-4370

Morgan Petriello, Los Angeles, CA - [email protected], (323) 651-2577

Elleni Kalouris, Chicago suburbs, IL - [email protected]

Therapists:

Muni Olia, Philadelphia, PA - Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist - [email protected]

Ruth Durack, MSW, Peoria, IL - Social Worker - [email protected]

Lauren Fallon, LCSW, IL - Social Worker - [email protected]

Jennifer Goldstein, Chicago, IL - Therapist - [email protected]

Gloria Jetter, LMSW, New York, NY - Social Worker - [email protected]

Note: These attorneys and therapists/psychiatrists were shared via Jezebel, and have not been vetted by the website; their inclusion on the list is by request.If you are an attorney or therapist who would like to offer your services to immigrants and refugees pro-bono, email Joanna Rothkopf with your contact information at [email protected]. The descriptions I found for many of these resources are also courtesy of Rothkopf and Pewter.

Please consider boosting this post, @phonescripts, @justsomeantifas, and @nativenews!

#keepfamiliestogether #immigrant rights #undocumented immigrants #resist trump #protest resources #long post #l3 host post

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blackkudos · 6 years ago

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Angelina Weld Grimké

Angelina Weld Grimké (February 27, 1880 – June 10, 1958) was an American journalist, teacher, playwright and poet who came to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance. She was one of the first Woman of Colour/Interracial women to have a play publicly performed.

Life and career

Angelina Weld Grimké was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1880 to a biracial family. Her father, Archibald Grimké, was a lawyer and also of mixed race, son of a white planter. He was the second African American to have graduated from Harvard Law School. Her mother, Sarah Stanley, was European American from a Midwestern middle-class family. Information about her is scarce.

Grimké's parents met in Boston, where he had established a law practice. Angelina was named for her father's paternal white aunt Angelina Grimké Weld, who with her sister Sarah Grimké had brought him and his brothers into her family after learning about them after his father's death. (They were the "natural" mixed-race sons of her late brother, also one of the wealthy white Grimké planter family.)

When Grimké and Sarah Stanley married, they faced strong opposition from her family, due to concerns over race. The marriage did not last very long. Soon after their daughter Angelina's birth, Sarah left Archibald and returned with the infant to the Midwest. After Sarah began a career of her own, she sent Angelina, then seven, back to Massachusetts to live with her father. Angelina Grimké would have little to no contact with her mother after that. Sarah Stanley committed suicide several years later.

Angelina's paternal grandfather was Henry Grimké, of a large and wealthy slaveholding family based in Charleston, South Carolina. Her paternal grandmother was Nancy Weston, an enslaved woman of mixed race, with whom Henry became involved as a widower. They lived together and had three sons: Archibald, Francis and John (born after his father's death in 1852); they were majority white in ancestry. Henry taught Nancy and the boys to read and write. Among Henry's family were two sisters who had opposed slavery and left the South before he began his relationship with Weston; Sarah and Angelina Grimké became notable abolitionists in the North. The Grimkés were also related to John Grimké Drayton of Magnolia Plantation near Charleston, South Carolina. South Carolina had laws making it difficult for an individual to manumit slaves, even their own children born into slavery. Instead of trying to gain the necessary legislative approval for each manumission, wealthy fathers often sent their children north for schooling to give them opportunities, and hoping they would stay to live in a free state.

Angelina's uncle, Francis J. Grimké, graduated from Lincoln University, PA and Princeton Theological Seminary. He became a Presbyterian minister in Washington, DC. He married Charlotte Forten. She became known as an abolitionist and diarist. She was from a prominent family of color in Philadelphia who were strong abolitionists.

From the ages of 14 to 18, Angelina lived with her aunt and uncle, Charlotte and Francis, in Washington, DC and attended school there. During this period, her father was serving as US consul (1894 and 1898) to the Dominican Republic. Indicating the significance of her father's consulship in her life, Angelina later recalled, "it was thought best not to take me down to [Santo Domingo] but so often and so vivid have I had the scene and life described that I seem to have been there too."

Angelina Grimké attended the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics, which later developed as the Department of Hygiene of Wellesley College. After graduating, she and her father moved to Washington, D.C. to be with his brother Francis and family.

In 1902, Grimké began teaching English at the Armstrong Manual Training School, a black school in the segregated system of the capitol. In 1916 she moved to a teaching position at the Dunbar High School for black students, renowned for its academic excellence, where one of her pupils was the future poet and playwright May Miller. During the summers, Grimké frequently took classes at Harvard University, where her father had attended law school.

Around 1913, Grimké was involved in a train crash which left her health in a precarious state. After her father took ill in 1928, she tended to him until his death in 1930. Afterward, she left Washington, DC, for New York City, where she settled in Brooklyn. She lived a quiet retirement as a semi-recluse. She died in 1958.

Literary career

Grimké wrote essays, short stories and poems which were published in The Crisis, the newspaper of the NAACP, edited by W.E.B. Du Bois; and Opportunity. They were also collected in anthologies of the Harlem Renaissance: The New Negro, Caroling Dusk, and Negro Poets and Their Poems. Her more well-known poems include "The Eyes of My Regret", "At April", "Trees" and "The Closing Door". While living in Washington, DC, she was included among the figures of the Harlem Renaissance, as her work was published in its journals and she became connected to figures in its circle. Some critics place her in the period before the Renaissance. During that time, she counted the poet Georgia Douglas Johnson as one of her friends.

Grimké wrote Rachel – originally titled Blessed Are the Barren – one of the first plays to protest lynching and racial violence. The three-act drama was written for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which called for new works to rally public opinion against D. W. Griffith's recently released film, The Birth of a Nation (1915), which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed a racist view of blacks and of their role in the American Civil War and Reconstruction in the South. Produced in 1916 in Washington, D.C., and subsequently in New York City, Rachel was performed by an all-black cast. Reaction to the play was good. The NAACP said of the play: "This is the first attempt to use the stage for race propaganda in order to enlighten the American people relating to the lamentable condition of ten millions of Colored citizens in this free republic."

Rachel portrays the life of an African-American family in the North in the early 20th century. Centered on the family of the title character, each role expresses different responses to the racial discrimination against blacks at the time. The themes of motherhood and the innocence of children are integral aspects of Grimké's work. Rachel develops as she changes her perceptions of what the role of a mother might be, based on her sense of the importance of a naivete towards the terrible truths of the world around her. A lynching is the fulcrum of the play.

The play was published in 1920, but received little attention after its initial productions. In the years since, however, it has been recognized as a precursor to the Harlem Renaissance. It is one of the first examples of this political and cultural movement to explore the historical roots of African Americans.

Grimké wrote a second anti-lynching play, Mara, parts of which have never been published. Much of her fiction and non-fiction focused on the theme of lynching, including the short story, "Goldie." It was based on the 1918 lynching in Georgia of Mary Turner, a married black woman who was the mother of two children and pregnant with a third.

Sexuality

At the age of 16, Grimké wrote to a friend, Mary P. Burrill:

I know you are too young now to become my wife, but I hope, darling, that in a few years you will come to me and be my love, my wife! How my brain whirls how my pulse leaps with joy and madness when I think of these two words, 'my wife'"

Two years earlier, in 1903, Grimké and her father had a falling out when she told him that she was in love. Archibald Grimké responded with an ultimatum demanding that she choose between her lover and himself. Grimké family biographer Mark Perry speculates that the person involved may have been female, and that Archibald may already have been aware of Angelina's sexual leaning.

Analysis of her work by modern literary critics has provided strong evidence that Grimke was lesbian or bisexual. Some critics believe this is expressed in her published poetry in a subtle way. Scholars found more evidence after her death when studying her diaries and more explicit unpublished works. The Dictionary of Literary Biography: African-American Writers Before the Harlem Renaissance states: "In several poems and in her diaries Grimké expressed the frustration that her lesbianism created; thwarted longing is a theme in several poems." Some of her unpublished poems are more explicitly lesbian, implying that she lived a life of suppression, "both personal and creative.”

Wikipedia

#Angelina Weld Grimké #02-27 #06-10

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96thdayofrage · 4 years ago

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In September the Reader was alerted to two complaints, one filed with the city's Commission on Human Relations and the other with the Illinois Department of Human Rights, detailing discrimination and racist statements made by high-level managers at Pangea, one of Chicago's biggest corporate landlords. Until the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the company was the city's most prolific filer of eviction cases. Its apartment holdings are concentrated largely in Black neighborhoods on the south and west sides of the city and in nearby suburbs, now totaling 9,400 units in 492 buildings. The company also has several thousand more units in Indianapolis and Baltimore.

The complaints were filed by Armando Magana, 45, the chief maintenance supervisor at Pangea in Chicago who'd been with the company since 2010. He's worked in various roles and received promotions and bonuses, most recently in February, Magana writes. "Notwithstanding my exceptional performance, Pangea has repeatedly discriminated against me because of my Hispanic ethnicity and my Mexican national origin. Throughout my employment, Pangea has also subjected me to a hostile work environment based on numerous derisive and derogatory statements made by Pangea's managers and executives regarding my ethnicity and national origin."

Magana's complaint includes several examples of such statements from vice president of operations Derek Reich and CEO Pete Martay. He claims that in 2017 Reich "told me that I should avoid being seen working with an African-American work colleague if I did not want to be viewed in the same way as that 'lazy nigger.'"

Magana details two occasions in 2018 when Reich "suggested hiring 'illegals' because they will accept less compensation," and resisted Magana's recommendations for which employees should get raises, allegedly saying, "'aren't these guys illegal?'"

Further in the complaints he recounts a 2019 meeting in which management for a newly acquired building near Loyola University on the north side was allegedly discussed. "My African American colleague asked, 'who will be managing the building,' to which Mr. Reich responded, 'they've never seen a Regional Manager of your kind in that area.' I asked about getting access to the roof top, to which Mr. Martay stated, 'Yeah I can imagine Armando showing up with his trash can and saying "Hello I'm Armando, the janitor here to clean up after you."'"

Later that year, Magana alleges he "met with Mr. Reich at a property that Pangea had recently begun to manage. During a discussion regarding employee staff assignments, Mr. Reich remarked that 'Mexicans are for custodial and maintenance, Blacks for property management, and Whites for the back office, that's it.'" The following month Magana alleges that Martay said to him, in front of other employees, "I should make you pull your fucking tools back out and make you clean shit out of the fucking tubs, like you used to."

Magana writes that he reported Martay's "derogatory comments" to Reich and both supervisors' comments to Pangea's HR manager Lori Bysong as well as the company's CFO Patrick Borchard and cofounder and former CEO Steve Joung. "Mr. Joung listened to me, then responded by saying that he doubted workplace discrimination was occurring."

Magana claims in the complaint that at the end of 2019 he also had a conversation with Pangea's operations manager Sean McQuade about hiring and pay for new workers, requesting $22/hour for one of them. "Mr. McQuade responded by asking 'Do you know if he's illegal? Do you think he has papers? . . . Do you think this guy is worth $22/hour?'" Again, Magana claims he reported these comments to HR, Pangea's in-house attorney Jennifer Dean, and other supervisors.

"Despite having complained on multiple occasions directly to multiple members of Pangea management, no one at the Company ever responded to, investigated, or otherwise communicated with me regarding my several complaints," Magana writes. "Rather, Mr. Reich continues to make derogatory, discriminatory comments toward me. Specifically, on May 12, 2020, Mr. Reich called me and stated, 'stop treating me like a shine. Last time I checked I was white.'"

In both an internal e-mail obtained by the Reader and in an e-mailed statement from CEO Pete Martay, Pangea has denied Magana's allegations and said he's refused to cooperate in the company's internal efforts to investigate.

"Pangea Properties has zero tolerance for racist or discriminatory behavior," Martay wrote to the Reader. "We take allegations of this nature very seriously. As a result, we hired a neutral investigator to carry out a prompt and thorough investigation and have also engaged legal representation to defend the company against allegations we believe are baseless. The complainant and his witnesses have refused multiple requests to participate in our investigation."

The Reader also presented the company with an opportunity to respond to additional allegations made by ten other current and former employees about Pangea's corporate culture. These included vivid descriptions of demeaning statements by Reich and other supervisors, as well as allegations of segregated and demeaning working conditions. "We categorically deny the claims in the complaint and also the statements made against us by former employees," wrote Martay. Neither Reich nor McQuade, whose conduct Magana also referenced in his complaint, responded to a request for comment.

Hostile work environments are both ubiquitous and difficult to reform. Their toxicity can be hard to pin down and prove on paper, especially when corporate promotions and official praise are interspersed with interpersonal disrespect and disregard. As a reckoning over the prejudices endemic to white-dominated workplaces roils the private and public sectors, employees of color from businesses and institutions as varied as Adidas, LinkedIn, Vogue, the San Francisco health department, and Loyola University have begun speaking out about the racial microaggressions, gaslighting, and harassment that defines office culture for them.

Even as he received glowing performance reviews, Magana could also feel hostility from management. For example, in an August 2013 e-mail obtained by the Reader, Reich wrote a brief note to another regional manager. The subject line read, "Armando was excited about converting to Islam . . . " and inside the body of the e-mail the sentence ended " . . . Until he found out you can't eat pork." Attached was a photo of Magana, grinning, in a little white hat reminiscent of a kufi skull cap.

When asked about the e-mail Magana said he was dismayed at being the target of a crude joke that appeared to be both Islamophobic and about his weight. "I never thought he was gonna take a picture and send it," he said with a grim chuckle as we looked at the image over beers at the nearly deserted patio of the Promontory in Hyde Park. Magana wore a black valve mask and a short sleeve blue polo, apparently unbothered by the biting gusts of wind on that late September afternoon. As he stared at the photo he said the fact that it had been e-mailed was unusual; in his experience Reich rarely left a paper trail of demeaning comments. "It was always phone calls with Derek," Magana said. "He really doesn't like to put anything in e-mail. If you send him an e-mail, he'll call. If you meet him in the field, he'll make those comments."

As documented in his complaints, Magana attempted to have the "discriminatory communications and behavior" he experienced addressed internally, but complaints to HR and leaders of the company didn't help. Finally he started working with attorney Marc Siegel to appeal to external authorities to intervene. The company soon also hired an outside attorney to help handle the situation.

Pangea's lawyers "kept telling [Siegel] that I was exaggerating and they always treated me good and they weren't being racist toward me," Magana told the Reader. "Long story short, I told my attorney I'm not gonna play this game, I'm gonna file this with the state and city and I'm gonna make it public."

By late spring the stress of working at Pangea had intensified due to the coronavirus pandemic. "I broke down because when the COVID started Derek was just calling me every other day, every other day: 'What are you doing?' I'd say 'We're working . . . but we don't have any sanitizing supplies. We don't have masks.'"

Magana said Pangea didn't offer hazard pay. Some field employees took time off because they were scared to go back into the apartment buildings, especially when word got around that tenants were falling ill. Magana says Reich didn't seem to care. "It was like, 'All these guys need to come back to work.' I'm like, 'Derek we're all working, there's some people who took off because they're scared.'"

Magana said that Reich demanded that he choose five of his staff to fire as part of a company effort to reduce the employee headcount to below 500 so that Pangea could qualify for a Paycheck Protection Program loan from the federal government.

He said that in late March Reich called him. "He says, 'You got any shitty people working for you? Give me five.' I'm like, 'I don't have any shitty people working for me.' He's like, 'Well, give me five.'"

The Reader obtained an e-mail Magana sent to Reich the next day, listing four employees who changed positions in the company without being replaced and one who was about to leave Pangea anyway. "There's your four plus one, he's already out the door," Magana recalled thinking. He said that after that he got another phone call from Reich who demanded he name five additional people to fire because Pangea's employee count was at 512.

Magana said he submitted another list of names. "I was destroyed about that," he said. According to records released by the Small Business Administration in July, Pangea was awarded a $5-$10 million loan through the PPP program. They listed an employee count of 494.

By June, Magana needed a break. The stress of the job was getting to him and affecting his family, and he took a leave of absence for a month and a half. "I got kind of depressed, stressed out, I was trying to take care of my health," he said. "I found out my son was depressed, so I had to dedicate myself to him."

Magana said things got worse for him at Pangea after he came back to work in July. There were sudden extra meetings where he was questioned about his work. He felt increasingly micromanaged.

Nevertheless, Magana was still determined to continue working at the company, where he was making $115,000 in salary, got bonuses, and to which he'd devoted a decade of his life. "I'm happy where I'm at, I'm good at what I do, I've done nothing wrong," he said.

Word about Magana's complaint began to get out at Pangea, and e-mails from pseudonymised accounts suddenly appeared in all field employees' inboxes, sharing Magana's complaints and encouraging them to file their own. The company quickly deleted these e-mails from employees' inboxes, however. In a September 30 e-mail to all field employees obtained by the Reader, Martay acknowledged that deletion, adding that the "current employee" who complained about mistreatment "refused to cooperate and will not speak to the independent investigator" Pangea hired to look into the allegations. Though Martay didn't refer to Magana by name in this e-mail, Magana says he felt the CEO's message was meant to undermine him. "We categorically deny the claims made in the complaint and have engaged legal representation to defend the company against them," Martay wrote.

By the beginning of October, Magana felt he could no longer remain at Pangea. "I cannot continue to work under hostile environment with retaliation," he wrote to me in a text message. Though he technically resigned from his job himself, his attorney argues that he was "constructively discharged" by management because of the "discrimination and harassment and retaliation he faced at work."

According to legal precedent established by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2006 Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Co. v. White decision, the definition of retaliation for complaints about workplace discrimination is broad. "It could be making your work life more difficult. It could be micromanaging you. It could be icing you out—anything that could make a reasonable person feel dissuaded from bringing a complaint," said Siegel. "It doesn't have to be a termination or written suspension."

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stretchemersonarchive · 7 years ago

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God Save the King?

By Michael Atchue

I have, thank God, never read President Donald J. Trump’s best-selling book, The Art of the Deal, and in equal measure I hope that I will never have to read it as long as I live. I say this not out of spite towards the President, but because the time to rant about his dastardly moral character or clownish presentation is long gone. The old, stuck-up prude in me might grumble about Trump’s personal foibles -- his ridiculous oratory, his laughable haircut, or that he is hardly any less vicious or crude than the average neolithic caveman -- yet none of this really matters in the grand scheme of things. Neither Trump’s latest absurd tweet, nor his most recent public relations gaffe, or, come to think of it, any bizarre act he undertakes in his apparent obsession with shooting himself in the foot shall have any distinguishable impact on the course of human events, and should be ignored.

What does matter, however, is that President Trump’s much-touted skill in deal-making is perhaps the most pitiful out of any head of state, not just in the history of my great country but of any nation. Instead of bringing people together, as any great deal-maker would, Trump has driven them apart by encouraging violent racial tensions between white and black Americans for his selfish political gain, twiddling his thumbs while hurricanes ravaged Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico, and pursuing an approach to international affairs that resembles not an actual foreign policy but more so the folly of a town drunk stumbling through a liquor store. Above all, the most telling sign that Trump completely lacks any sort of dexterity as a negotiator is that every single one of his domestic initiatives have died in either Congress or the courts despite Republican control of all three branches of government.

During his campaign, Trump boasted of his supposed deal-making prowess as a qualification to hold the highest office in the land. Like all successful politicians, Trump no doubt understood that in order to get elected he needed to craft an alluring self-image. Before the Donald’s rise to power, Abraham Lincoln marketed himself as “Honest Abe,” the plain-speaking country lawyer who would address the issue of slavery with good old common sense and integrity. Once Lincoln was elected, this image turned out to be based in fact, albeit exaggerated for maximum political effect. But it goes without saying that Trump is no Abe Lincoln, and his “Deal-Maker” alter ego is a complete fiction.

Throughout his long and storied business career Trump found both great triumphs and great travails, but mostly travails. While Trump acquired a tremendous fortune renovating and re-branding old real estate, properties which he founded outright largely went belly up, leaving Trump in debt. In 1973, he and his father Fred Trump were sued by Richard Nixon’s Justice Department for discriminating against African-American tenants in New York City, and Donald Trump’s own career as a real estate mogul was made possible only because, in his words, “my father gave me a small loan of a million dollars” (Gass). Without Fred’s silver spoon, odds are the young Donald would’ve gone nowhere in the business world, much like a great many untalented but rich young men who leech off their parent’s purse.

With this in mind, we should consider his multitude of failings as President to be a simple continuation of his ineptitude as a businessman. The single most powerful tool at the President’s disposal is America’s vast nuclear arsenal, so any Chief Executive’s feelings towards the military threat posed by North Korea should be the very first thing one takes into account while evaluating their presidency. Trump’s recent announcement that he will meet with Kim Jong-Un in the near future comes as quite a shock to those of us who’ve endured the ghastly horrorshow of Trump galavanting around the world like a god of death, promising to reign, “fire and fury” (Zeleny, et al), down on North Korea if their leader didn’t terminate his nuclear program. Even if a peace summit between Trump and Kim Jong-Un does come about, it’s unlikely to be effective unless those two swallow their pride and abandon the infantile mudslinging that’s defined the past year of fruitless diplomatic mishaps.

It is no coincidence, after all, that just this year the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists turned the hands of the Doomsday Clock to two minutes to midnight - only a hair’s breadth away from the apocalypse. In a chilling public statement, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board referenced “the downward spiral of nuclear rhetoric between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un,” as a primary factor in their decision to set the Clock, “the closest the [it] has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.”

It is thus unfortunate that most Americans have forgotten that critical time in world history -- when the Korean War raged on and on in a bloody three-year stalemate -- for otherwise Trump might actually be held accountable for his blatantly stupid handling of Kim Jong-Un’s regime. In 1949, when President Harry Truman’s State Department made a public affirmation of its commitment to defend America’s foreign allies, out of sheer negligence Secretary of State Dean Acheson forgot to mention South Korea. As a result, North Korean dictator Kim Il-Sung -- Kim Jong-Un’s grandfather -- assumed that Truman would not oppose his planned invasion of South Korea, and he promptly attacked the ROK in June 1950. This illegal act of aggression launched a massacre on the Korean peninsula that killed up to three million people, practically destroyed North Korea itself, and brought human civilization to the very brink of World War III.

Just like Trump, Truman was absent-minded and irresponsible as President of the United States. His failure to correct Acheson’s very public blunder ultimately produced a wasteful and catastrophic war that drove Truman’s approval rating down to twenty-two percent, infamously the lowest ever recorded for an American President. Indeed, the Harry Truman presidency, haphazard and rife with internal corruption, became so unpopular that the failed Missouri businessman turned politician was rejected by his own party in the 1952 Democratic primary race. In light of Trump’s massive unpopularity and Robert Mueller’s promising investigation into the President’s alleged misconduct, I seriously doubt that Trump will be able to campaign for his own party in the 2018 midterms, let alone run for re-election. Nonetheless, the historical parallels between himself and Truman are eerie; in fact, too eerie.

Alternatively, the Donald’s record on domestic policy is, by comparison, not nearly as grim. Unlike Kim Jong-Un, none of Trump’s Congressional enemies have threatened to destroy Guam, for example -- although they certainly have designs on bankrupting the Treasury through deficit spending. Instead Trump’s great faux pas as a dealmaker was neglecting to unite the Republican Party behind a health care bill that would pass Congress. Since the GOP has majorities in both legislative Houses, any bill that the party cooked up should have been enacted. Yet because Trump could not bring moderate Republican Senators like John McCain, Susan Collins, and Bob Corker on board with his American Health Care Act of 2017 -- a bill too extreme for these lawmakers to support -- the legislation was voted down, and all of the Republican Party’s subsequent attempts at health care reform have suffered the exact same fate.

Journalist Bob Woodward once asked President George W. Bush how history would judge his administration. By the final year of his presidency, historians had already tossed Dubya into the bottom tier of American Presidents alongside the corrupt Warren G. Harding and the clueless James Buchanan. Bush, who never seemed to think deeply about the Presidency -- or about much of anything, come to think of it -- simply responded with, “History. We don’t know. We’ll all be dead” (Hamilton). A facetious truism, but a truism nonetheless. All of America’s living former Presidents - Carter, both Bushes, Clinton, and Obama will have passed on by the time academics establish a fully formed view of who they were and what long-term impact they had upon the United States. The same goes for Trump. As it stands nobody knows what really makes him tick, and he has yet to vacate the Oval Office, leaving it up to him to determine his legacy. But one thing is for sure: this so-called “deal-maker” has proved himself a deal-breaker, one who’s dropped the ball far too many times to put his presidency back together again.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the writing style of that great Anglo-American author Thomas Paine as a direct influence on this piece. I challenged myself to craft an essay in his distinct rhetorical style, and I hope this comes through in my finished work.

#vol3 #politics

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techcrunchappcom · 4 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/allegations-of-racism-have-marked-trumps-presidency-andbecome-key-issue-as-election-nears-the-washington-post/

Allegations of racism have marked Trump’s presidency and become key issue as election nears - The Washington Post

In Trump’s case, there is now a substantial record of his actions as president that have compounded the perceptions of racism created by his words.

With the election looming, the signaling behind even second-tier policy initiatives has been unambiguous.

“Johnson made it clear that he was really the president of a few people, not the American people,” Anderson said. “And Trump has done the same.”

A second White House official who worked closely with Trump quibbled with the comparison, but only because later Oval Office occupants also had intolerant views.

“Woodrow Wilson was outwardly a white supremacist,” the former official said. “I don’t think Trump is as bad as Wilson. But he might be.”

White House officials vigorously dispute such characterizations.

White House officials also pointed to achievements that have benefited minorities, including job growth and prison-sentence reform.

Coded racial terms

Others have offered less charitable assessments.

These authors did not provide direct evidence of Trump’s racist outbursts, but the animus they describe aligns with the prejudice Trump so frequently displays in public.

Exploiting societal divisions

None of the administration officials interviewed for this story agreed with Trump’s self-appraisals. But several sought to rationalize his behavior.

Several current and former administration officials, somewhat paradoxically, cited Trump’s nonracial biases and perceived limitations as exculpatory.

Trump “has fought alongside me” on such issues, Scott said, urging voters “not to look simply at what the candidates say, but to look back at what they’ve done.”

For all the prominence that Scott and other Black Trump supporters were given at the convention, there has been no corresponding representation within the Trump administration.

Retreating from civil rights

Months later, when that failed to materialize, Trump “went s—house crazy,” one former official said, yelling at aides, “Why the hell did I do that?”

Later, the department went from opposing, under Obama, an Ohio law that allowed the state to purge tens of thousands of voters from its rolls to defending the measure before the Supreme Court.

The Justice Department’s shift when faced with allegations of systemic racism by police departments has been even more stark.

The authority was put to repeated use by three consecutive presidents: 25 times under Bill Clinton, 21 under George W. Bush and 25 under Obama. Under Trump, there has been only one.

“I don’t believe there is systemic racism in police departments,” Barr said.

Deport, deny and discourage

People with far-right views or white nationalist sympathies gravitated to the administration.

As a descendant of Jewish immigrants, Miller is regarded warily by white supremacist organizations even as they applaud some of his actions.

The moral character of his presidency

Trump’s presidency has corresponded with a surge in activity by white nationalist groups, as well as concern about the growing danger they pose.

The largest, and most ominous, was the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.

Trump’s vacillating response in the ensuing days came to mark one of the defining sequences of his presidency.

Trump’s comments set off what some in the White House came to regard as a behind-the-scenes struggle for the moral character of his presidency.

“Not only did you say it, you continued to double down on it,” Cohn shot back, according to officials familiar with the exchange. “And if you want, I’ll get the transcripts.”

Aides were briefly elated. But Trump grew agitated by news coverage depicting his speech as an attempt to correct his initial blunder.

The next day, during an event at Trump Tower that was supposed to highlight infrastructure initiatives, Trump launched into a fiery monologue.

Kelly and Cohn declined to comment.

“A lot of our people were expecting him to actually secure the borders, build the wall and make Mexico pay for it,” Black said.

Julie Tate, Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey, Dalton Bennett and Josh Partlow contributed to this report.

#allegations #become #issue #marked #presidency #racism #trump #Politics

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un-enfant-immature · 4 years ago

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Are option grants promoting gender and racial inequity?

Stephen Ratner Contributor

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Stephen Ratner is a startup attorney who has advised emerging companies and venture funds. Prior to law school, he served as Deputy Press Secretary to Attorney General Eric Holder at the U.S. Department of Justice.

You’ve probably seen them on highway billboards and your Instagram feeds: startups promising to get it right on racial and gender inequity when it comes to employee pay. But how much progress has actually been made? Are companies even aware that upcoming stock option grants might worsen the very problem they claim to be fixing?

Last week, a top female executive at well-known equity management platform Carta resigned, alleging hypocrisy in the company’s public advertisements for equity compensation — or the now infamous statement by their CEO “Fair equity should be table stakes” — and their actual stance on correcting these wrongs within the company. This top executive was Emily Kramer, the very Harvard MBA brought on board in part to help improve stock option inequity at Carta and within its thousands of company users. These developments left me wondering what more can be done by leaders in equity management to help ameliorate these issues before they get harder to solve.

Anyone who’s worked closely to venture capital and tech in America knows that stock options are a key lever of attracting top talent, especially for companies with risky business models and low odds of success. Yet, equity compensation has received much less attention than cash pay. Further, this “paper wealth” can be invaluable to women and persons of color as the country attempts to attack its shameful income inequality. If you’ve had the opportunity to work with Carta, then you also know that gender and racial inequity in compensation exists with stock options too, not just cash.

Carta must act swiftly to implement a new feature across its entire platform: an alert to startup founders and legal administrators that upcoming option grants result in gender and racial inequity, when compared with the rest of the company’s employees doing similar work. Backed by the precept of “equal work, equal pay,” Carta has a unique opportunity to use its near informational monopoly to ameliorate “equity inequity” and make good on unkept promises. This feature ensures internal parity: that women and persons of color are compensated by equity grants on par with white and/or male colleagues performing the same work, in similar positions.

Carta’s former marketing VP is suing over gender discrimination after spearheading report on unequal pay

Having input equity compensation into Carta myself as a startup attorney, there’s no way I could have known if new grants were equitable across the capitalization table, unless Carta sent an alert or the company circulated its own report. The sad reality is that it’s way too challenging to independently perform this review on your own. Carta can because it’s a clearinghouse for equity compensation, used by more than 14,000 companies across the marketplace, with unique access to the tools and information required to know if a company’s astray from its stated values.

Wouldn’t it be helpful if Carta notified a client’s management team and lawyers that new grants didn’t achieve gender and racial equity while they still had a chance to adjust the numbers, before board grants? According to Carta’s own 2019 gender equity gap study published following a review of a sample of their own users’ capitalization tables, male founders represented 6.5% of equity holders but own 64% of all equity. Further, at the employee level, female employees own 49 cents in equity for every dollar men own. If companies affirmatively understood the gravity of their actions, the state of paper wealth in the United States would be far more equitable and inclusive.

I’d imagine social justice-minded companies would be happy to make adjustments to stock grants when it was easiest, not after the fact. After all, once options are granted by the board, it becomes an administrative hassle to redo. Yes, many companies do internal audits afterwards, uncovering inequities — but it’s usually too late or burdensome to make all of these employees whole, some of whom might have already departed. Let’s not forget that startups generally can’t even grant options to individuals no longer providing services to their company. A proactive, preemptive approach is not only reasonable, but required. Carta’s well-placed to make up for its broken promises by nudging users to get it right the first time.

Remember, later-stage companies have the money to perform comprehensive equity pay analysis, but early-stage companies often don’t. It’s at formation when inequities are easiest and cheapest to tackle, particularly for the promising early-stage, future unicorns that Carta spends so much time attracting in its successful Launch program — one that offers discounted services to retain startups as they grow. Attorneys, board members, startup operators — heck, even the most junior staff — need to be unafraid in using Carta as a tool to help bring these issues to light.

I want to believe that companies that promise racial and gender equity in compensation make it happen, but not all do. Some don’t care. But others are just overloaded with pitch decks, Slack notifications and the immense expectations of investors searching for big returns. It’s not an excuse, just a reality. What a difference it would make if Carta let management know of the problem before it was too widespread to fix.

#TechCrunch

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indianpolsoc · 4 years ago

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Can we afford to leave Gandhi behind?

The following is an opinion piece by guest writer Anunay Chowdhury and does not reflect the views of the Indian Political Society.

Gandhi was a racist but fortunately his journey did not end there. He lived a life that inspired people from all over the world to struggle against the discrimination. A real learning of his story establishes him to be everything but a racist.

In my experience, every episode of manifest discrimination against the people of African descent is followed by a brief period of historical revisionism. This allows us to position ourselves where we can better understand the experiences of the people as a member of the minorities and discriminated groups. These voices are often lost in the lofty volumes of indifferent historical accounts by historians of our time. Every attempt to unearth these historical accounts only allows us to reflect and interrogate history from a different, often neglected, point of view. The George Floyd’s murder and subsequent protest in its wake has brought about the same period of revisionism. And as a consequence of that, in many places, there has been growing demand to take down statutes of persons who have had a history of abuse towards black people and minorities. These people, apart from there excellence in their respective field of profession, have had an unfitting side related to their treatment to black and minority groups in retrospect. They have exhibited either a sheer lack of sympathy or a general lack of concern to human life. For lack of a more appropriate expression, they cannot be protected by a veneer of “acceptable action by the erstwhile standards”. The argument for retrospective assessment of people for their past action is not a newfound one. The Nuremberg trials in 1946 and International Military Tribunal for Far East in 1948 are apposite examples in this case. Academic inquiry into the validity of these tribunals will reveal a spectrum of justifications and contradictions. Broadly these tribunals do establish a general principle to allow revisionist assessment of the past actions of the people by standards that evolved after their alleged actions. Key historical figures cannot escape the same scrutiny irrespective of their grandeur and significant contribution otherwise. They should be held to the same standards as the west has created for itself much later after the alleged actions in question. How do we act as a consequence of this revisionism is beyond the scope of this piece.

The above discussion brings me closer to the actual narrow subject of today. The recent desecration of the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Washington DC outside the Indian Embassy and some residents demanding to bring down the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the city of Leicester UK. Their actions were motivated by past actions, rather words by Mahatma Gandhi during his early days of 21 years stay in South Africa. This was the time Mahatma Gandhi was just Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi; an English- educated lawyer who had completed his studies in London’s Temple Inn, looking to earn a livelihood. The origins of bestowing the title “Mahatma” or “a great soul” is a debatable one but is popularly believed to have been given by Rabindranath Tagore, another Nobel Laureate of Indian origin (Confirmed by Gujarat High Court). Tagore gave this title to MK Gandhi much later in life at around 1915 after being deeply influenced by the thoughts and ideas of MK Gandhi. Although this title did find some opposition later during the Indian independence struggle by some of the other leaders of the time, the title remained associated with Gandhi even long after his death. Gandhi lived an extraordinary life upon returning to India from South Africa in 1915. He found his voice resonated among the middle-class and the lower-class people and was very successful in organising mass movements – for which he is renowned in modern history. But to no one’s astonishment, MK Gandhi lived a life of a common man with common goals in life and not much before he was known to be a “Mahatma”. Most of the people who study him diligently find his journey from a common man to saintly figure and leader, inspiring. The most important aspect of the life of Gandhi is not the man himself but the ideas that he propagated. He is a construct of worldly principles and thought which goes well beyond the biological template of his body. But before his transition, he led a normal life of struggling lawyer and agreed to work in South Africa for a meagre salary. The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire, a book by Ashwin Desai and Goolam H. Vahed, traces, in detail, the time spent by M. K. Gandhi during his stay in South Africa. The book also unearths, although not for the first time, MK Gandhi’s manifest disdain for the people of the Black community. M.K Gandhi contested unsuccessfully to the British authorities to treat Indian subjects in South Africa at par with the White English imperialist but most importantly above the black native population. He contested that the Indian community is intellectually and culturally superior to that of Black people. He addressed members of the black community as the “kaafirs,” a derogatory term by today’s standards.

To his defence, M.K Gandhi’s grandson – Rajmohan Gandhi, also a notable historian, spoke at the Interfaith Scholar Weekend in Fresno, California around March 22 2020 (Video available on Youtube)[1]. He said that his use of the term was a term exhibiting racial superiority, but his usage of the term belonged much to the period than to him. Kaafir was a common term which wasn’t objected by the people of the black community and Indians in the Indian subcontinent at that time. He was merely acting within the social construct of the time. Another submission to further that point is that when Jacobus Matiwane, addressed the Indian community as “Coolies,” an equally derogatory term by today’s standards. John Dube, the first president of African National Congress in 1912 in his address to Chiefs of Zululand to support the ANC, addressed Indian community as “Coolies” (See paper by Heather Hughes). It only implies that these titular addresses were reliant upon the erstwhile social vocabulary. It was a complicated period where the leaders were in cut-throat pursuit to further the well-being of their communities.

The other part of his life, which would help me establish my main argument is his flourishing practice as an attorney in the Transvaal province. In 1903, Gandhi founded the weekly magazine – Indian Opinion. He helped build an_ Ashram_ in Phoenix, Durban which was incidentally near the school of John Lagalibalele Dube. Dube’s weekly magazine called _Ilanga lase Natal _was initially printed in the press of Indian Opinion. The people from his school often visited the ashram. Remember, Africans whom he initially described as “savage,” “raw” and living a life of “indolence and nakedness,” were being helped now by Gandhi to publish the weekly magazine. This was a time when he only voyaged to help the Indian community and the treatment which was meted out to them by the ruling minority of white people. This was also the time when Gandhi supported the idea of imperialism and all the social change that it promised - to elevate the fate of humankind. Acting upon his belief, he led a small ambulance corp. in 1906 to help the establishment against the Natal militia chief- Bambatha, who rebelled against the new poll tax. This, he thought, would help in rapport- building between the Indian community and the white Europeans. The corps, which served for a little over a month, was asked to take care of the wounded and whipped Africans since no white would treat them. Seeing the brutality of the whites against the Africans was a traumatic experience for Gandhi. Nelson Mandela wrote in an article in Time magazine on December 31, 1999:

“His awakening came on the hilly terrain of the so-called Bambatha rebellion… British brutality against the Zulus roused his soul against violence as nothing had done before. He determined on that battlefield to wrest himself of all material attachments and devote himself completely and totally to eliminating violence and serving humanity.”

“Satyagraha” was the Gandhi’s most potent tool of passive resistance (passive meant espousing non-violent means. It has been often confused with non-activity. See Erik H Erikson’s Gandhi’s Truth: On the origins of militant nonviolence). It, literally, translates to “insisting truth with love” (Satya = Truth, agraha = insist). It was his time during South Africa that he was able to hone satyagraha. After serving in the rebellion from the side of the government, he realised that mere petition and deputations would not bring about the desired result. He organised a large number of Indian workers to defy the laws as a mark of protest. 50,000 Indian workers went on the strikes by 1914 with over 10,000 being put to jail. Those who were jailed were often subjected to long hours of tortures and inhumane punishments. The protests were ultimately successful. A precedent was set that would help him mobilise masses in India after his return from South Africa. Gandhi, more or less, began to transcend into his later self - A self that would inspire struggles against oppression all over the world. The immediate and local impact was when The South African Native National Congress (SANNC) Constitution, which was drawn up in 1919, had, in Chapter IV, Clause 13 emphasised “passive action” as a means to be used. It has been suggested that this “was perhaps a reflection of the impact Gandhi’s passive resistance campaigns among South African Indians had made upon African opinion” (See ES Reddy, Gandhiji’s Vision)

Although Gandhi had appreciated the efforts of local leaders in attempting to advance the interests of the natives which was duly reciprocated, The leaders of both the groups (Indians and Natives) still voiced their concerns to the white rulers on the racial lines. They believed that a joint effort would endanger the whole movement that had taken shape over the years. Gandhi, around this time, had recognised the parallel resistance propelled by the native leaders. In an address to the YMCA in 1908, he said:

“South Africa would probably be a howling wilderness without the Africans…”

“If we look into the future, is it not a heritage we have to leave to posterity that all the different races commingle and produce a civilisation that perhaps the world has not yet seen.[2]”

In an article published in Indian Opinion on October 22, 1910, He said:

“The whites… have occupied the country forcibly and appropriated it to themselves. That, of course, does not prove their right to it. A large number even from among them believe that they will have to fight again to defend their occupation. But we shall say no more about this. One will reap as one sow.[3]”

Gandhi was also able to use the work of John Tengo Jabavu, who raised the enormous sum of 50,000 pounds from Africans for establishing an educational institution, to inspire the Indian diaspora. He wrote:

_“… it is not to be wondered at that an awakening people, like the great native races of South Africa, are moved by something that has been described as being very much akin to religious fervour… British Indians in South Africa have much to learn from this example of self-sacrifice. If the natives of South Africa, with all their financial disabilities and social disadvantages, are capable of putting forth this local effort, is it not incumbent upon the British Indian community to take the lesson to heart, and press forward the matter of educational facilities with far greater energy and enthusiasm that have been used hitherto?[4]” _

On WB Rubusana’s election to the Cape Provincial Council, he commented:

_“That Dr. Rubusana can sit in the Provincial Council but not in the Union Parliament is a glaring anomaly which must disappear if South Africans are to become a real nation in the near future.[5]” _

The South African Native National Congress (SANNC) was formed as a reaction to the formation of the Union of South Africa by the British masters. Pixley ka Izaka Seme led a group of attorneys who formed the SANNC after a round of conference. John Langalibalele Dube was chosen as its first president. Dube then wrote a letter to various luminaries of the time and published it in his newspaper Ilanga lase Natal on February 2, 1912. _Indian Opinion _reproduced an extract from his letter in its issue of February 10, 1912, under the title “The Awakening of Africa.” It referred to Dube as “our friend and neighbor” and called the letter a manifesto.

Perhaps the clearest exposition of “transcended Gandhi” came in the form of an editorial. In 1913, when the Natives Land Act was passed by the Union Parliament, Gandhi was vehement in his denunciation. An editorial in Indian Opinion on August 30 1913, reported:

_ “The Natives Land Act of the Union Parliament has created consternation among the Natives. Indeed, every other question, not excluding the Indian question, pales into insignificance before the great Native question. This land is theirs by birth and this Act of confiscation – for such it is – is likely to give rise to serious consequences.[6]”_

After he departed from South Africa in 1915, he did not forget the struggle that was going on in the African continent. He regularly addressed the issues of South Africa on different forums and occasions. In referring to “South African races”, He declared in Cambridge on November 1, 1931:

“Our deliverance must mean their deliverance.[7]”

In an interview to Reverend S.S. Tema – a member of the ANC – on January 1, 1939, he said:

“The Indians are a microscopic minority. They can never be a ‘menace’ to the white population. You, on the other hand, are the sons of the soil who are being robbed of your inheritance. You are bound to resist that. Yours is a far bigger issue. It ought not to be mixed up with that of the Indian. This does not preclude the establishment of the friendliest relations between the two races. The Indians can cooperate with you in a number of ways. They can help you by always acting on the square towards you.[8]”

The influence of Gandhi did not limit to South Africa and India. The universality of the principles found a new home in the movements of the African American struggle towards equality. WEB Du Bois was one of the most prominent leaders of the American civil rights movement. He founded the Nation Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 1929, Du Bois asked for a letter from Gandhi to the American Negroes, acknowledging that while Gandhi was busy struggling for the freedom of his people, “the race and color problems are worldwide, and we need your help here.” In reply Gandhi wrote:

“Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is no dishonour in being slaves. There is dishonour in being slave-owners”[9].

Du Bois saw in Gandhi a force that challenged the colour line by challenging the civilisation that created it as a force of disruption, oppression and violence, rather than a force of civilisation as it claimed to be. In his 1948 essay “Gandhi”, Du Bois writes that Gandhi was the “greatest man in the world” and the “Prince of Peace” among living leaders:

“It is singular that a man who was not a follower of the Christian religion should be in his day the best exemplification of the principles which that religion was supposed to lay down. While the Christian Church during its two thousand years of existence has been foremost in war and organised murder, Mohandas Gandhi has been foremost in exemplifying peace as a method of political progress”[10].

Interaction with Gandhi was instrumental in inspiring Howard Thurman to write his magnum opus - Jesus and the Disinherited in 1949. During his interaction with Gandhi in 1935, he was questioned as to why the blacks in America stayed Christian, and why did they not turn to Islam as it guaranteed equality between slaves and masters. Thurman comprehensibly addressed the question in his work which inspired Dr. Martin Luther King (he always kept a copy of the book on his side as he assumed leadership of the Civil Rights Movement). One of the most apparent exhibitors of the Gandhian philosophy was Dr. Martin Luther King himself. The connection was so palpable that the screenplay writers in the movie Selma 2014 did not forget to hang the portrait of Gandhi in the backgrounds of Dr. King in his workplace. In his speech “My Pilgrimage to Non-violence”, Dr. King explains how he came to a Gandhian practice of non-violence after engaging with Western philosophers from Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Hobbes, and Rauschenbausch. As he says:

“Gandhi was probably the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social force on a large scale. Love, for Gandhi, was a potent instrument for social and collective transformation. It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and non-violence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking for so many months. The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social-contracts theory of Hobbes, the “back to nature” optimism of Rousseau, the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the non-violent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.[11]”

The influence of the Gandhi’s principle cannot be limited to the text of this article. To be able to gauge the effects of philosophy propounded by Gandhi is a matter of separate academic discipline. Gandhi said, “My life is a message”. The journey of an ordinary man and how he dismissed his early prejudices and championed an ideology that propounds for an equal space for the unequals. Even after being given a title of “Mahatma” (Great soul) that enunciates sainthood, his greatness is not because of a contestable record of saintly life but owing to his proximity to a life of an ordinary human being. His imperfections are the only things that make him a perfect fit human to emulate. Apart from his polymathic contributions, one aspect of his life teaches us a lesson in building oneself and an ability to recreate and embrace our differences. I interpret that as the sole objective of the Black Lives Matter movement. The movement calls for a “hriday parivartan” or “change of heart” of the other side.

I deem his contribution to the philosophical underpinning of the protest movements as the most irreplaceable principle in the current struggle. “We seek to convert them, not to defeat them on the battle-field” said Mahatma Gandhi in his letter to Adolf Hitler on December 24, 1940, while describing the nature of Indian independence movement. I do not want to make an impression of castigating the whole movement because of the violence that broke in several areas during the protest. The stand here is to only appeal to subscribe to the foundations laid by Gandhi. Of Gandhi not as a man in bone and flesh but as a philosophical skeleton. It is not a time to distance us from him; It is a perfect time to revive his teachings and ideals. Let us judge a man of not what society made him but what he made of the society. In my limited understanding, the Black Lives Matter movement is not about the equal opportunity to fight with others but about the equality of respect that a human being deserves. It is a movement not about making equal boundaries between communities but to diminish all the boundaries to create a uniform space. Let us not bury our past with indifference. Let us revive it so that it could guide us in becoming a more accepting society. I do not contest the rights and wrongs of the statue vandalism that took place. I only ask a step behind and ask ourselves, do we not want everyone to be like Gandhi? An ordinary man with distasteful prejudices for the black community and who transcended into a person who ended up inspiring the most prominent of leaders of the black community over the world in their struggle against discrimination. Do we not have a perfect face to show to the world while we march to protest the systemic behaviour against the black community. By invoking Gandhi, I believe, we would not have only raised questions about the discriminatory behaviour but also provided the answers as to how to amend ourselves. To give remedy while we question injustice is the best form of protest, I believe. While I make a passionate appeal to you, I shall also leave the judgment with you.

It will be a waste of good money to spend Rs 25,000 on erecting a clay or metallic statue of the figure of a man who is himself made of clay…” Gandhi, Harijan on February 11, 1939

Dr. King reading “The Gandhi Reader”, edited by Homer A. Jack

Dr. Martin Luther King with a portrait of Gandhi in his workplace.

Anunay Chowdhary is a first-year Law student at King's College London.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwoPwPOI4m0&t=1272s

[2] See Ramchandra Guha, Gandhi Before India

[3] Indian Opinion on October 22, 1910

[4] Indian Opinion, March 17, 1906

[5] Indian Opinion, September 24, 1910

[6] Indian Opinion, August 30 1913

[7] R.K. Prabhu & U.R. Rao (Compiled_), Mind of Mahatma Gandh_i (Oxford University Press, London, 1945) 135

[8] 'Interview to S.S. Tema', H, 18 February 1939, CWMG, LXVIII

[9] Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869-1948. Letter from M. K. Gandhi to W. E. B. Du Bois, May 1, 1929. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

[10] Prashad, V. (2009). Black Gandhi. Social Scientist, 37(1/2), 3-20. Retrieved June 20, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/27644307

[11] My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” 1 September 1958, in Papers 4:473–481)

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Minnesota files human rights complaint against police dept: Live | USA News

The United States has been gripped by protests over the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died last week in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and police brutality nationwide.

US President Donald Trump has outraged faith leaders and protesters for walking to a historic church near the White House and creating a photo opportunity, just minutes after police used tear gas and flash bangs on peaceful protesters to clear the way for the rare walk.

Protesters are demanding all four officers involved be charged in Floyd’s death. So far, only one – white officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes as the Black man pleaded, “I can’t breathe” – has been arrested and charged on Friday with third-degree murder and manslaughter. Medical examiners have ruled the death a homicide.

Those protesting against police brutality have been met with, at times, excessive force by authorities. Journalists have also been targeted by police. Officers have also been injured in the protests.

Protesters have remained undeterred by curfews and the presence of the US National Guard in some cities. Largely peaceful protests have turned violent, with looting and vandalism as the night raged on.

Latest updates:

Tuesday, June 2

20:30 GMT – Indianapolis mayor extends curfew for 3rd night

Indianapolis’ mayor extended an overnight curfew into a third night.

Mayor Joe Hogsett’s office said officers would continue to use an “education first” approach before arresting people who violate the curfew, which will run from 9 pm Tuesday until 6 am Wednesday.

During the curfew, residents cannot travel on public streets or be out in public unless they are traveling directly to or from work, their jobs involve travel, are seeking medical care or are fleeing danger.

20:25 GMT – New Jersey to overhaul police use-of-force guidelines

Citing Floyd’s death, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said the state will update its guidelines governing the use of force by police for the first time in two decades and will move to require a statewide licensing program for all officers.

“To the thousands of New Jerseyans that assembled peacefully this week let me be clear: we hear you, we see you, we respect you, we share your anger and we share your commitment to change,” Grewal said during a news conference.

20:20 GMT – Governor says Texas won’t seek military support for protests

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said his state would not request military support after President Donald Trump threatened to deploy troops across the US to confront protesters.

Abbott also said he was not asked to send Texas National Guard members to the District of Columbia after days of violent demonstrations there led to fires, destroyed businesses and the use tear gas and flash bangs, including on peaceful protesters.

20:15 GMT – US attorney general asked for protesters to be pushed back

US Attorney General William Barr personally asked for protesters to be pushed back from Washington’s Lafayette Square the Washington Post reported, just before Trump spoke from the White House Rose Garden.

Demonstrators walking in downtown Washington near the White House as protests continue over the death in police custody of George Floyd, in Washington, US [Jonathan Ernst/Reuters]

Following a brief speech on Monday, Trump walked out of the White House, with a heavy security detail, across Lafayette Square to St. John’s Episcopal Church, where he stopped in front of boarded-up windows and held up a Bible for cameras before walking back to the White House.

The Washington Post reported that Barr made the request about pushing back protesters from the square after finding a previous decision to widen the security perimeter around the White House had not been acted upon.

20:10 GMT – Facebook staff walkout, Zuckerberg defends no action on Trump posts

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees that he stood by his decision not to challenge inflammatory posts by Trump, refusing to give ground.

A group of Facebook employees – nearly all of them working at home due to the coronavirus pandemic – walked off the job on Monday.

They complained the company should have acted against Trump’s posts about protests containing the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

Zuckerberg told employees Facebook had conducted a thorough review and was right to leave the posts unchallenged, a company spokeswoman said. She said Zuckerberg also acknowledged the decision had upset many people working at the company.

19:25 GMT – Minnesota files rights complaint against police in Floyd’s death: Live

The state of Minnesota filed a human rights complaint against the Minneapolis Police Department in the death of George Floyd.

Governor Tim Walz and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights announced the filing at a news conference.

The department enforces the state’s human rights act, particularly as it applies to discrimination in employment, housing, education, public accommodations and public services. Mediation is one of its first-choice tools, but the cases it files can lead to fuller investigations and sometimes end up in litigation.

The investigation will examine the” department’s policies, procedures, and practices over the past 10 years to determine if they engaged in systemic discriminatory practices,” Walz says.

The Minneapolis Police Department has faced decades of allegations brutality and other discrimination against African Americans and other minorities, even within the department itself. Critics say its culture resists change, despite the elevation of Medaria Arradondo as its first black police chief in 2017.

Arradondo himself was among five black officers who sued the police department in 2007 over alleged discrimination in promotions, pay, and discipline. They said in their lawsuit that the department had a history of tolerating racism and discrimination. The city eventually settled the lawsuit for $740,000.

18:41 GMT – Ohio’s GOP senator says military shouldn’t be sent into his state

Ohio’s Republican senator said Tuesday the US military shouldn’t be sent into his home state.

“That should be a local decision,” said Rob Portman, who lives in the Cincinnati area. “It should be what the mayors and governors want … I don’t see that happening right now. … The National Guard certainly in Ohio is capable of handling the situation.”

Trump is vowing to send the military into states to quell protests over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody if state authorities don’t restore order.

Questioned sharply by Ohio reporters about the president’s recent actions and rhetoric, Portman said he agrees with Trump on such positions as expediting the federal probe of the latest death of a black person in police custody and on the need to stop violence.

“But I do believe he can and should do more … you know, words matter. And we need to be sure we’re not inflaming this situation,” Portman said. “This is a time for healing, it’s a time to calm things down so we can have a dialogue. And I think that’s what’s needed right now.”

17:25 GMT – Democrats plan to introduce legislation in response to George Floyd killing

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday promised legislation on racial profiling and other issues raised by the police killing of George Floyd, while other lawmakers warned against using troops to quell protests sweeping across the United States.

House Democrats are mulling proposals on a number of topics. But Pelosi described the racial profiling of suspects as a “universal” issue “that we must be rid of.”

“In a matter of just a short time … decisions will be made and I think the American people will be well served,” she said.

Pelosi and other Democrats attacked President Donald Trump’s handling of protests after tear gas and rubber bullets were used to clear peaceful protesters from outside the White House, just before he marched through the area and posed at a church with a Bible.

17:02 GMT – Biden levels blistering attack on Trump for church photo-op

In his first major address in weeks, former Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday promised not to “fan the flames of hate” if elected president and instead seek “to heal the racial wounds that have long plagued” the United States.

Biden, a Democrat who will most likely face the Republican Trump in the November 3 election, was particularly critical of the president’s decision on Monday to stand for a photo beside an historic church across from the White House after law enforcement authorities tear-gassed protesters to clear the area.

“When peaceful protesters are dispersed by the order of the president from the doorstep of the people’s house, the White House – using tear gas and flash grenades – in order to stage a photo op at a noble church, we can be forgiven for believing that the president is more interested in power than in principle,” Biden said.