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racingtoaredlight · 5 years ago

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Opening Bell: September 6, 2019

Four days after pummeling the Bahamas for hours, causing widespread damage and killing dozens, Hurricane Dorian skirted along the Atlantic Coast of Florida and made landfall in the Carolinas as a category 2 storm. The track of Dorian had been drifting further north almost since it became a named storm in the Atlantic basin; there was great concern that it would impact the island of Puerto Rico, which has so recently undergone so much political turmoil and has not yet recovered from the devastation it experienced in last year’s hurricane season. But Dorian took mercy on the U.S. territory, withholding its fury until it collided with the Bahamas over the holiday weekend, where Dorian then idled in place, pouring several dozens of inches of rain on the islands. The storm was still capable of sustained 100 mph winds and inflicting widespread damage as it crosses from North Carolina into Virginia and then eventually back out into the sea where it is expected to diminish in the cooler waters of the north Atlantic. The amount of destruction it wreaks upon the Eastern Seaboard between now and then, and how the Trump administration reacts to it, will be the next story in the news cycle, at least until Trump opens his Twitter app again.

Jason Greenblatt, the White House's chief Middle East peace negotiator, who had been tasked by President Donald Trump with brokering a long-sought after peace plan in the region, is leaving his administration post in order to return to the private sector. Greenblatt, according to the White House, has assembled a detailed and comprehensive peace plan, but has never released it and now will not do so until at least the outcome of the next Israeli general election is known later this month. There seems little utility in releasing the plan since Palestinian negotiators have refused all contact with Trump administration officials since December 2017, shortly after Trump fulfilled a campaign promise by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. With the peace process essentially dead in the water and, depending on what combination of parties is able to cobble together a government in Israel, Greenblatt likely saw the writing on the wall and realized he was more likely to spend the next year counting crevices in the ceiling tiles than he was in actually working towards Middle East peace. While the Trump administration has become accustomed to filling vacancies with ‘acting’ officials, even for those roles which do not require Senate confirmation, it seems likely that Trump will not even bother to replace Greenblatt at all, which means that it truly now is on Jared Kushner alone to resolve decades—centuries really—of political, social, and economic enmity. We should not be optimistic.

This week, after months of protests, Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam finally announced that she would permanently withdraw a controversial proposed law which would have allowed suspects accused of felonies in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China. The law was seen as an attempted end-around of Hong Kong’s separate—and far more westernized—criminal justice system in particular, and as another attempt to infringe on the democratic values which make Hong Kong so vastly different from the rest of China. Protest leaders, such as they exist, however declared that Lam’s move was “too little, too late.” With that, it seems that the protests will go on, but without any discernible goal beyond the preservation of Hong Kong’s status as a democratic island on the doorstep of authoritarian China.

Britain’s political system is an odd conglomeration of tradition, convention, custom, and unwritten rules; the British constitution, is in fact, unwritten, rather it consists of all the political balancing tests between monarch and parliament conceived of since the Magna Carta was signed by King John in June 1215. As a result, the powers of the monarch remain technically in place: Queen Elizabeth has the sole authority to convene and prorogue (or end) Parliament, Parliament only debates, technically, with her permission. Technically, the queen selects the prime minister and the constitution only requires that she select someone that can command a majority in the House of Commons, but in practice the queen has since the 1960s, selected whomever the majority party had chosen as its leader. The reserve powers of the monarch remain vast, but largely unexercised. There is a reason behind this: the monarch is supposed to be an apolitical figure, who follows the advice of her ministers, no matter which party they come from. This system has worked fairly well for most of Elizabeth II’s time on the throne, but, Foreign Policy argues, that the practical nature of the her learned political apathy, has finally run into a major political problem which threatens Britain’s livelihood: the apparently enduring desire of Brexiteers to force Britain out of the European Union with no deal and no plan for the future.

When your average American is asked to describe his or her impression of a spy, the first thought of most will be the dashing, braggadocio, and sophistication of James Bond, or, if slightly more literate, the persistent, curious, world-weary George Smiley. If the spy is American, one might think of the professional, accomplished, and highly-skilled operatives mentioned in a Tom Clancy novel or perhaps of the feats undertaken by the teams in Mission Impossible. Intelligence agencies are dens of intrigue, staffed by the best and the brightest that the country has to offer, every single person—from secretary all the way up to director of the agency—imbued with a strong sense of duty and patriotism. In truth, virtually none of these descriptions are accurate. The CIA in particular is riven with bureaucratic waste and, certainly worse, has forever been hamstrung by its own paranoia about the intelligence it gathers. And moreover, the importance of this intelligence is often missed, dismissed, or misunderstood. In an amusing irony, though, Adam Gopnik points out that this is not necessarily a bad thing: the nation with the edge in intelligence does not, and in fact rarely, comes out ahead. And intelligence agencies have over time become so obsessed with each other, they rarely take time anymore to spy on governments, their ostensible raison d’etre. This is an interesting read that upends many of the myths the public believes about spies, spy agencies, their activities, and their overall competence. And yet Gopnik, at the end, concludes that this reality, as ludicrous as it is, is infinitely preferable to the alternative.

During the Cold War, the only nation which could challenge the supremacy of the United States Navy, was the Soviet Navy. Unlike the naval arms race between Britain and Germany at the beginning of the 20th century, when the former did everything in its industrial power to build more dreadnought battleships than the latter, while the latter did everything in its power to maintain a two-thirds parity, the U.S. and the Soviet Union had different focuses when it came to naval power. The U.S. Navy focused on aircraft carriers and force projection around the globe, with attack submarines intended to shadow Soviet missile boats, and American missile boats quietly plodding the deep in solitude. The Soviet Navy, on the other hand, placed greater emphasis on submarines—building the largest nuclear submarine fleet the world has ever seen—and large surface combatants. In the period after the end of the Cold War, the new Russian Navy was starved of funds and hundreds of Soviet-built ships and subs were left to rust while tied to a pier. The U.S. Navy, the now master of the world’s oceans, was free to use the oceans as highways to move carrier strike groups to regions of the world in order to project American force and protect American interests. Over the last decade, the Russian Navy has slowly begun to rebuild itself into an important challenger to the U.S. Navy, and through much the same methods from the Cold War: by focusing on submarines and surface combatants. With this in mind, knowing the future direction of the Russian Navy is important in determining Russian strategic intentions and there is no better way to determine those than by reviewing current Russian naval leadership and analyzing the best candidates to step into their shoes in a few years.

It is no secret that we, all of us, are going to die one day. Those of us who are fortunate, will die on a bed, in a room surrounded by loved ones; or, as Chris Rock once said, when talking about health insurance, “We’re all going to die. But if you have insurance, you will die on a mattress.” The actual end process of death, however, is one that is not often studied for obvious reasons; few people, even those comfortable with the concept of death itself, wish to examine the physiological and psychological processes associated with a person’s final days and hours; it is, perhaps, easier to accept the concept of death and even the death of a particular person, than it is to indulge in the process of death. Regardless, some interesting things occur during this time, and as people live longer lives than ever before and more individuals die in a hospital or hospice or assisted living facility than ever before, the notion of recording what a person talks about as they slip towards death has slowly become a field, albeit a small one, in its own right. The takeaway from this is that there is no one way that people utter their last words and no one theme; sometimes it is depressing, sometimes funny, sometimes introspective or reflective, and sometimes it is downright inappropriate. The examination of what causes these different final expressions is a subject for more than just those obsessed with morbidity.

Speaking of death, inanimate objects have final resting places just as people do. For aircraft, particularly civilian airliners and cargo carriers, it is generally one of three or four locations, all of them locate in the desert southwest of the United States, from Roswell, New Mexico to Victorville, California. The wellspring of this short blog post was the retirement of the last 20 MD-80 passenger liners, in one day, by American Airlines on Wednesday. At one time, the MD-80 represented 40% of American’s fleet, and the twinjet “Mad Dog” was as closely aligned to American Airlines as the unpainted aluminum fuselage, a livery which is also disappearing with the retirement of the MD-80s. If you flew on American Airlines at any point in the 1990s or 2000s, there is a good chance you flew on an MD-80, but as of yesterday, for the first time since 1982, American’s flight schedule does not include any Mad Dogs.

Finally, as the 2020 election looms, there remain a handful of special elections for congressional seats that were either not filled after the 2018 election, or which have since become available due to early retirements. Kyle Kondik of the Center for Politics looks at three districts, but takes a particularly deep dive on the North Carolina 9th District, which has been the focus of so much political and legal contention since Election Day in 2018.

Welcome to the weekend.

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googlenewson · 6 years ago

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Good morning. Eamon Barrett filling in for Clay who is taking a well-earned vacation.

On Wednesday the U.S. Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), an industry group that includes Intel, Micron Technology and Nvidia among its members, released a report no doubt designed to capture the imagination of President Donald Trump. It came out a day before the president met with China Vice Premier Liu He to discuss trade and was called "Winning the Future"--a very Trumpian sentiment.

The report sets out the challenge of securing America's leadership in the semiconductor space--where the U.S. has dominated ever since the industry was created.

Semiconductors are vital to all the next great tech advances, including 5G, AI, and quantum computing. However, as the report explains, Silicon Valley's supremacy is "under threat from [foreign] government policies that seek to localize supply chains and build state-backed national champions to compete abroad."

In case it isn’t obvious: they're talking about China.

We've mentioned before how last year's blockade on U.S. companies exporting microchips to Chinese telecom manufacturer ZTE was a wake-up call for Beijing, demonstrating how many of China's tech champions are dangerously dependent on supplies from the U.S.

In fact, Beijing became wary of China's crippling silicon addiction years before. The government released the National Guideline for the Development of the Semiconductor Industry in 2014 and established a $22 billion fund, nicknamed the Big Fund, to invest in domestic chip makers. The incident with ZTE only made Beijing realize it had to double-down its efforts.

China's private tech companies have promptly answered the call. Baidu released its smart chip, Kunlun, last July; Huawei unveiled the world's first 7nm microchip in August; Alibaba launched its semiconductor division Pingtouge last September; and this week smart phone maker Xiaomi announced it will reorganize its microprocessor subsidiary as part of a $1.5 billion AI strategy.

It’s the age of AI that might give China a chance to excel in the semiconductor business. AI chips are a different class from semiconductors of old so China is starting (relatively) fresh, rather than playing catch up. China's huge data pools also give it an advantage when it comes to testing and improving AI chipsets.

The problem for China, and the saving grace for the U.S., is that Chinese companies are designing chips too sophisticated for domestic foundries to manufacture. For example, Huawei had to outsource the manufacturing of its groundbreaking 7nm chip to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturer Company (TSMC).

But that won't be the case forever. Chinese foundries currently meet 30% of domestic demand. Beijing wants to boost that number to 40% by next year and is flooding the sector with subsidies to do so.

To keep an American hand in the lucrative silicon trade, the SIA recommends the government does three things: first, triple federal funding for industry research to $5 billion a year; second, scrap immigration caps on qualified STEM candidates; and third, protect intellectual property.

That last point is something the U.S. has a real chance to do now, as Chinese negotiators engaged in discussions on forced tech transfers last week for the first time since the Trade war began nearly a year ago. Hopefully, negotiators will be able to keep focus on this space and away from less important objectives, such as reducing the trade deficit and increasing sales of soy.

Enjoy the weekend!

Eamon Barrett @eamonbarrett49 [email protected]

Economy and Trade

Wars don't just end. President Trump met with China's economic tsar Liu He this week to continue negotiations on a trade deal. Trump said a deal could be signed in four weeks, but reports say China might be given until 2025 to implement any agreed upon conditions, stretching out the tentative peace both sides have submitted to for another six years. CNBC

Silk Road Summit. The White House won't send top-level officials to China's upcoming summit on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), to be held in Beijing later this month. Broadly, the BRI finances large scale international infrastructure projects. The U.S. is a staunch opponent of the scheme, which it views as a vehicle to spread Chinese influence overseas. Last month, Italy became the first G7 nation to endorse the BRI. Reuters

Raise a glass. Kweichow Moutai, China's most prestigious baijiu distillery, is tipped to become the first Chinese stock to pass Rmb1,000 ($149) per share. Moutai's share price has rallied 47% this year and four analysts predict it could reach the Rmb1,000 mark within 12 months. Moutai, named after the village where the liquor is made, was included on Fortune's list of 50 companies best positioned for growth last year. Bloomberg

Innovation and Tech

The nine-to-nine grind. Employees of Chinese tech firms are protesting the so-called "996" culture pervasive in the industry. The digits refer to the expectation that engineers work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. The protest emerged as a post on software code sharing site Github where a user highlighted how 996 culture violates China's labor laws and advocated for better protection of worker rights. Roughly 30,000 users have saved the post. Mysteriously, web browsers operated by some of China's biggest tech players have since blocked access to the thread. South China Morning Post

5G and EU. ZTE, the Chinese telecom manufacturer brought to its knees by a U.S. embargo last year, has carried out Europe's first call over a 5G network. Local service operator Orange claimed to have conducted the call in Valencia, Spain, using 5G equipment provided by ZTE. Unlike Chinese telco Huawei, which been under intense scrutiny for its alleged ties to Beijing, ZTE is a public company with known state-owned shareholders. TechNode

Running out of Luckin. Luckin Coffee, the start-up that threatened to topple Starbucks in China, has offered $6.7 million in assets as collateral against a loan, suggesting all is not well at the feisty young brewer. Luckin was founded in 2017 and aims to outgrow Starbucks in store numbers by the end of this year. Starbucks China currently operates over 3,600 coffee shops, so Luckin is targeting exceptional growth. Rapid expansion has been the downfall of many a Chinese startup but also the success of a few. TechNode

In Case You Missed It

Uber, but for Xi Jinping NYT

Bolton builds anti-China campaign at the U.N. FP

MIT cuts funding ties with Huawei and ZTE citing US investigations SCMP

What's going on with Mar-a-Lago and Chinese spies, explained Vox

Politics and Policy

Warmer climes. The China Meteorological Administration released a "Blue Book" report on the effects, and causes, of climate change in China. The Blue Book found that sea levels in China were rising faster than the global average, and Chinese glaciers were melting at their fastest rate to date. China, the world's largest source of greenhouse gases, has struggled to rein in emissions. Sixth Tone

Duty Bund. The American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai released a report claiming the cosmopolitan city won't meet its target of becoming an international finance center by 2020 due to strict government controls on capital flows. The report says Shanghai is struggling to balance between being loyal to the Party and offering a safe haven to global capitalists. South China Morning Post

from Fortune http://bit.ly/2UhiroZ

#World News

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isaacscrawford · 7 years ago

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The Kentucky Armageddon

By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE

The Commonwealth of Kentucky, best known for its weirdly colored grass, fine bourbon and equestrian pageantry, is about to be destroyed by the Trump administration. Many will suffer and perhaps die because Kentucky obtained a Medicaid waiver to impose additional and often insurmountable hardships on poor people receiving their free health care from the State. Since all I need to know, I learned on Twitter, allow me to share with you some illuminating insights from the Twitterati.

The evil Republican Governor of Kentucky, Matt Bevin, is salivating at the prospect off changing Medicaid as we know it, which obviously means that poor people and especially people of color will be suffering greatly under this plan. You really don’t need to know more, since this should be reason enough to mobilize the worried wealthy, who are tossing and turning in their featherbeds night after night, searching for ways to save the poor. For those who are neither worried nor wealthy enough to really care, here are the ominous provisions of the Kentucky racist, homophobic and xenophobic plan to change Medicaid (it is all these things because it was not only approved, but encouraged by the Trump administration, and we all know what that means).

The most egregious transgression in the Kentucky HEALTH plan is the imposition of work requirements on Medicaid beneficiaries. The first thing that comes to my mind when they say “work requirements” is that sign at the entrance to Auschwitz saying that work makes you free. In Kentucky, the Republicans argue that work makes you healthy. Same thing. So, what are those monstrous work requirements? Medicaid recipients who are not children, who are not below the poverty line, who are not elderly, who are not pregnant, who are not disabled, who are not medically or mentally frail, who are not providing care to children or other disabled individuals, who are not experiencing hardships such as domestic abuse or homelessness or other disruptions in their lives, must spend approximately 4 hours a day in school (any school), training (any training), apprenticing, acquiring useful skills, volunteering in the community, searching for a job or actually working somewhere.

Wait, wait…. Don’t raise your eyebrows and don’t think or say anything. If you are reading this, you are most likely rich, likely white, well-educated and perhaps even male. Medicaid beneficiaries are none of these things. We all know that any of those endeavors could be truly insurmountable hardships for people who are poor, black or Hispanic, uneducated and female. We know that because we are not racists, misogynists or just plain bigoted SOBs, like the Republicans running Kentucky and that insufferable man running the country (or so he thinks).

Besides, most Medicaid beneficiaries who don’t fall in the exempt categories are already working. The ones who don’t work, or study, or do anything beneficial for themselves or others, are experiencing circumstances beyond their control. Helping them gain control over their lives is not Medicaid’s job because health and wellbeing have nothing to do with socioeconomic circumstances. And even if Kentucky wanted to “nudge” people into, say, getting their GED by funding a special rewards account, the bureaucracy involved in tracking all sanctioned activities, all exemptions and special circumstances is just too daunting for “these people” to navigate. Trust me on this one, I read it straight from the keyboards of Hollywood celebrities and several current and former big health care executives.

The second affront to humanity in the Kentucky plan is to charge poor people premiums for health insurance. Not only that, but those who can’t pay the premiums may be kicked off Medicaid. Granted the premiums range from $1 to $15 (in lieu of regular copays), and all the exemptions for ill health, frailty and poverty do apply here as well, but that still leaves a sizeable number of poor people who could be denied medical care just because they forgot to pay the monthly dollar twice in a row, or couldn’t afford the higher premium. These highly discriminatory practices targeting the poor are unheard of in other industries or even in the commercial segment of health care itself, where insurance premiums are largely voluntary.

To be fair to Kentucky, there is a mechanism by which people who did not pay their premiums on time can regain their Medicaid coverage, which brings us to provisions reminiscent of the Jim Crow days in the South. The Kentucky plan, you see, has a literacy provision for regaining access to care. This is obviously targeted at people of color and immigrants from what the GOP Leader calls “shithole” countries, which as every wealthy person in Bel Air knows, cannot read or write, and as evidenced by the thumbprint (or large X, depending on the State) appearing on most Medicaid applications. I have zero doubt that the Attorney General of the State of California will be taking the depraved Governor of Kentucky, and the Trump administration that enabled him, to court, and I have no doubt that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will find in favor of justice and equality, as it always does.

Until then, it seems that some Medicaid beneficiaries in Kentucky may have to sit through torturous health literacy or financial literacy classes, where they teach boring stuff about how to deal with debt, how health insurance works and how one can navigate these treacherous waters. There is no mention of a test or anything at the end, but this still seems like an unwarranted and blatantly racist imposition on “these people”. Even more outrageous though is that Kentucky is providing incentives, which can be used to purchase gym memberships, for Medicaid beneficiaries to take other classes, such as chronic care management or nutrition or drug addiction coping skills. What do illiterate people, drug addicts and all “these people” need gym memberships for? It’s like telling them to “eat cake” ….

And on and on goes the Kentucky HEALTH plan, listing one offensive section after another. The problem with this plan, which will live in infamy until the Sun goes supernova, is the cold, heartless and blatantly racist assumption that people who need Medicaid are as capable of functioning in modern society as anybody else. It ignores decades of teachings. It ignores hundreds of years of slavery and Anglo Saxon colonialist supremacy. And it ignores basic Christian values, because Jesus didn’t just sit there giving classes on how to fish. He gave people fish, and it worked great for Him and for His followers, eventually. If you see yourself as the Lord and Savior of huddled masses, you will want to do what Jesus did. If you feel equal to people who need Medicaid, but perhaps a bit luckier at this moment, you will dismiss everything I wrote here as total bullshit.

Article source:The Health Care Blog

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handandbanner · 7 years ago

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Answering Questions

Why do you post so much on race issues? What about posting on other things so that it doesn’t look like you’re seeking out these issues and they are taking over your life?

My work in real life is as a racial justice activist with particular interest in African, Caribbean and Black identifying experiences locally. I also find connection between local issues and what is happening in other parts of the country/world. My activism has taken different forms. Primarily it’s been about using grassroots programmatic intervention to address wellness issues (social, economic, etc.) being experienced by especially Black children and youth locally. Through grant-writing I have been able to redistribute over $1/4 million directly into the local grassroots community in the past seven years that has mostly been used to provide various youth jobs through programs like Young City Grower and Canada Summer Jobs employment that has provided youth people with admin and community organizing roles, so decreasing their socio-economic isolation through jobs. It has also largely been used to create urban agricultural infrastructure, creating inclusive gardening spaces that have benefited Black immigrant families but also immigrant families of every background who want to grow their own food or just experience wellness that comes form connecting to the land, and families who are not immigrants but may be experiencing food insecurity. In this capacity, I have also worked as a land based activist, pursuing food justice by working with my hands in creating urban agriculture spaces around the city. The money has also helped fund cultural, arts and educational events that have had social and emotional health benefits to Black communities locally. One of the most important things is that the money has helped in creating after school educational support programming for Black immigrant children that is led by their communities. Thes is just the time put in writing and re-writing grants that mostly get rejected but some are successful. I have also contributed my own labour in a volunteer capacity. Sometimes I have had part time employment doing the work I do, and the seasons where there has been employment the labour has usually exceeded the reimbursement significantly. Most people know that $250,000 to approx. $300,000 over seven years in social services is not a lot of money. Most agencies have an annual budget of 1 million plus dollars to deliver services in their given area. We have used what we have gotten in the grassroots to create significant impact for many lives over the last seven years. I entered this form of activism after learning of the local expression of systemic racism of excluding Black folks from participating in creating solutions to the problems that face them. Poor Black communities locally are considered underserved communities. We have educational crisis as well as social crisis being experienced by the most vulnerable members of our communities. Programming funds don’t actually solve the issues because they are based on often one-time hit and miss funds. The kind of work that we do is not part of any ongoing government funding strategy (municipal, provincial or federal). We depend on activists, volunteers and hit and miss grants to try and address the documented gaps being experienced by the local Black community. So, though we are tax payers, our communities continue to experience funding racism from local government with regards to services.

So that is one area of racial justice activism that I have given my life to. I have been economically impacted by being a grassroots organizer. And recently I have had to pause some of the programs and explore new ways of sustaining myself and the labour as I work on finishing my schooling to become a registered social worker which would also hopefully increase my financial security in the future to support the work that is being done, even if others take over the frontline labour.

Another expression of my activism beyond being a community organizer is as a race scholar (student). While I have been reading and learning about Black issues and from Black scholars ever since entering the work, I guess on an official capacity I have just recently been involved in race-based research geared at documenting the systemic racism affecting the lives of our communities provincially and across the country. Research contracts especially in the last year have both been a source of income and my primary form of engagement.

I have also been involved in direct action resistance. I have helped organize when folks in my community have wanted to publicly demonstrate their concerns with the justice system and concerns around the loss of Black life in our community or in other parts of the country as part of the BLM movement. I have also helped organize community solidarity gatherings in response to state violence against Black communities in America. I have hosted racial healing circles in local universities and at my local church and I am currently planning to hold more spaces this Fall that tend to trauma and engage racial justice concerns.

So, I post about these topics because they connect to my work, they are not taking over my life they are already my life, they are an important part of who I am. I also I am not sure about the idea that social media is a place where I must present my whole balanced self, it’s certainly not the primary avenue for folks to get to know me. But I am not necessarily opposed to posting about other parts of my life. I am also a mother and I post about that sometimes. I don’t post about vacations and travelling the world (I’m assuming those are the normative good kind of things to post about?) because there is a high cost associated with that work, so I cannot typically afford to take big vacations. When I have had the chance to travel (thanks to my work) I have posted those pictures. But the things that give me joy in my life are predominantly my sons, reading and a bit of gardening. I live a very simple life and I try to embrace that. My short-term goals are to achieve physical health and to grow lots of flowers and be involved in lots of physical activities with my boys. I have had hard seasons associated with living simply but ultimately, I love Black people especially our most vulnerable members of community. I am inspired by folks who have died for us. So, I understand that sacrifice is part of this beautiful and demanding work. My boys have paid the highest price in this early days of my activism, so my life is about coming to peace with that and seeking help and guidance on how to best parent them and protect them. It helps to seek meaning and strength from a son-sacrificing Creator who understands my heartbreak. I know that pain and suffering can be addictive (chemically) after long-term exposure, so I am careful of that and I’m constantly trying to lean into figuring out ways of engaging that support my health and wellness and better my financial security. I look forward to less financially precarious avenues of engagement.

Why use social media at all?

I am intrigued by the role of social media in racial justice, particularly in contemporary Black liberation movements. It didn’t start as an intentional decision that this was going to be a use of my social media space. It was just about sharing what was going on in my life. But it has grown into an intentional kind of use of social media. Social media is not perfect but I am very much impressed by the kind of change that has been achieved by Black women leaders on social media to bring attention to racial injustice. I am not a social media activist as others are and do so effectively, for me it’s been almost more of a personal documenting of process and thought. I can’t remember who said this but I remember a quote during a Princeton AAS podcast that resonated to my experience. That social media for the Black activist becomes a space to live out the liberated life that is not afforded in the physical space. I also think about Toni Morison’s whole thing about writing the book you always wanted to read. It has had a therapeutic role for me. I want to live in a space where witness is provided to Black struggle through naming and reporting, so even if it’s just my own posts that break the loud silence, I feel better about it because I can’t stand the silence. There is almost a sense of talking to ones-self in public. I won’t say being understood doesn’t matter, but it is not paramount. I’m certainly not doing it for White people. I say that because I have had people tell me that if I’m looking to engage White people then perhaps how I am going about it is not the best way. I think sometimes because of White supremacy; white folks dominate so much existence for BIPOC in physical spaces that it’s hard in our world to make sense of any BIPIC activity that is not necessarily about appealing and appeasement to Whiteness. Very recently I have engaged in speaking directly to Whiteness, but again it’s a process figuring it out but I don’t know that it is always for specific results. In a strange way, it’s almost like political art or poetry in the sense that it is primarily about expression. So, like art, I can say that it’s not so much that I don’t care about engagement but it’s just not the central thing. There is something being documented here which is sometimes the raw responses of a Black woman to racism and maybe it’s just about being a human being, and maybe under White supremacist empire that is something that folks sometimes have a heard time making sense of, a Black human. I have sometimes benefited from meaningful engagement, I have also had people a few years down the road email me about how positively impacted they have been by my posts and public musings, other times I have had folks be scared, offended or hurt. I particularly obviously love it when Black folks feel positively impacted by anything I do. But I just don’t centre all of that. And I’d like to emphasize that my primary ways of connecting with folks around mobilization, action or conversation about racial justice is not primarily on social media.

I also can’t say that I think for sure that all of this is healthy, I think there are risks for sure. I don’t know how long I will continue to express myself in this way. I am interested in the work of folks like Imani Perry and their critiques. I recognize this is a new thing and that we don’t know the long-term effects and impacts of social media in general on our health.

Why not create a page that deals with racial issues as part of your work and separate it from your personal life?

I may in the future If I think there is some benefit to it. But the short answer is that I don’t ascribe to the private/public dichotomy with regards to work that was created by patriarchy to designate domestic and outside the home labour. So, there is a feminist turned womanist understanding that my private life informs my work and vice versa. My being a mother and my caring about other people’s children is intertwined. Racial justice is part of parenting and part of self love. I bring my whole self into theorizing about race. I also intertwine my faith and spirituality into my politics. I ascribe to the African indigenous worldview of the interconnectedness of all things. And I want to get even better at it. There are things I may chose not to disclose to avoid harm to myself and others. But as I grow older I want to understand better how all of me is intertwined with my contribution in the world. I don’t know what Creator has in store around the corner and I might have to work in a setting that where I cannot be my full self, and then I would be working even harder to create spaces that I can enter as my whole self. I don’t think it’s my accident that in a White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy we must live as divided selves. Lying is central to maintaining domination and we all lie (bell Hooks does a lot of good work on lying and domination). I want to lie less and be less scared.

Do you hate White people? Are White people the enemy? Why do you make generalized statements about people groups?

No, I don’t nurture hate towards White people. But nobody is beyond hate especially towards oppressive forces in one’s life, so it takes work to operate from a place of radical love and it takes spiritual practice and re-orientation when I do struggle with hate. It helps to be able to have loving connections with White people through personal or community relationships. When talking about race as a social issue I make generalized statements that are statistically and experientially supported. My spiritual framework dictates that flesh and blood is not the ultimate enemy but rather powers and principalities. I believe that White supremacy and racism are major enemy ideologies in the work that I engage in and I do believe that these ideologies are carried out in particular ways by White people who get to have stake-hold in these enemy ideologies. Having said that I do think that folks can embody and carry out harmful ideologies and in doing so set themselves as physical manifestations of oppositional forces. So in the process of dealing with folks in such situations even though there may be love, there may also be strong resistance, boundary setting, reporting and naming and maybe righteous force depending on one’s embraced values of engagement.

Do you believe all White people are racists and White supremacists?

It is hard for me to imagine anyone who has been socialized in any part of the world that is impacted by White supremacy and colonization as not having to do work to dismantle internal as well as social systems that idealize whiteness and denigrate other forms of humanity. It is also the case that spaces for carrying out such work are yet to be made readily available worldwide, and less so in White dominant societies. So yes, it is my experience that all White people are on the spectrum of embodied White supremacist ideologies.

What about all the problems in Africa and tribalism? Why are you just worried about White Supremacy?

This is a bad racist question to ask Black first-gen folks engaged in anti-racist work but you could see articles on asking about Black on Black crime in response to anti-racist work, same principles apply.

What kind of relationships do you envision with White people given the work you do?

I don’t have a manifesto of desired ways of connecting with just White people. But I do envision inter-racial relationships in my life where it is possible to know folks of diverse backgrounds and to be known. With regards to engagement of myself as a racial justice worker, I appreciate expressions of love and support, and I am glad for those that have been brought to my path who extend love and support. In other spheres of relationship not related to my work, I don’t want to experience stigma related to my politics or the work that I do. Instead of demands or questions like; “What should I do as a white person” when folks come across my concerns for racial justice, you might ask; “Would you be interested in having coffee sometime and sharing more about your work?”. If you don’t desire to get to know me better, that’s okay too. I also tend to be open to get to know people but there are times that I can’t invest in that manner for a number of reasons. I’m always welcoming prayer and happy to pray for you too. But outside of knowing each other, don’t try to shape or control how I express myself as a Black woman. It is also okay to disconnect on social media and be connected in other ways.

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