Black Kos Tuesday: The theories, realities, and vibes of Blackness

Black Kos for Black Kos community

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday April 16, 2024 · 2:05 PM PDT

2024/04/16 · 14:05

BEVERLY HILLS, CA - JULY 29: Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. speaks onstage during the 'Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise' panel discussion at the PBS portion of the 2016 Television Critics Association Summer Tour at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on July 29, 2016 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images) — Harvard professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates

The theories, realities, and vibes of Blackness

Review by Chitown Kev

Reviewed:

The Black Box: Writing the Race by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Penguin Press, 266 pp., $30.00

I know one thing: I have gotten sick and tired of (usually) young Black Twitterati making loud, bold and uninformed pronouncements that, ultimately, narrow the scope of the Black experience. The annoying thing is that they act as if they are posing original and even revolutionary arguments but as Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. points out in his latest collection, The Black Box: Writing the Race, Black people have been having these discussions amongst ourselves and with others (read: white people) since before the founding of the American Republic and Black people will, undoubtedly, continue to have these discussions.

Dr. Gates “jumping off point” for this essay collection is the birth of his granddaughter, Ellie, who “will test about 87.5 percent European when she spits in the test tube” yet his son-in law accedes to Gates’ request to check the “Black” box on the required form certifying Ellie’s birth. Gates runs with the “black box” metaphor and extends it from its common usage of flight recorders that “preserve the record of truth amid disastrous circumstances” to Oxford English Dictionary usages to metaphors of how (mostly) African Americans have defined themselves to themselves and others. Over the course of these essays, which originated in Dr. Gates’s lectures in his Intro to African American Studies courses that he has taught at Harvard for many years, we run into well known literary pioneers like Phillis Wheatley, Benjamin Banneker, David Walker, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, and Zora Neale Hurston, unknowns (at least to me) of the Enlightenment like the German Anton Wilhelm Ano, Francis Williams and even white people like David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Jefferson and the composer Antonin Dvořák.

Gates first essay, “Race, Reason, and Writing,” deals with Phillis Wheatley and the (white) reaction to the publication of her book of poems, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. While receiving overall good reviews at that time as evidence that Black people could be every bit as intelligent as white people given the chance, the achievements and obvious intelligence of Wheatley and even older Black thinkers were dismissed by the likes of Enlightenment luminaries like philosopher David Hume, in spite of Hume knowing that “Black people could read and write” and “were intelligent, articulate, sophisticated, and aristocratic” or by Thomas Jefferson’s dismissals of Wheatley and any other abilities of African-descended peoples (other than...you guessed it, musical ability). It was from white criticisms and denial of the intellectual abilities of Black people that people like Benjamin Banneker, David Walker and Alexander Crummell saw development of a FUBU literature in response.

Gates’s finest essay in The Black Box is “Who’s Your Mama: The Politics of Disrespectability”, where notions of what it means to be “African American” (primarily in the early 20th century) run the gamut from Dr. Dubois notions of The Talented Tenth to middle class Black Victorians to cultural tensions with the old-time Black vernaculars and religious worship of the South. Gates uses this chapter as a sort of set-up to the arguments about blackness that characterized the literary rivalry between writers Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright which is, indeed, worthy of the entire chapter that Dr. Gates writes about the two titans of Black literature.

While understanding that Dr. Gates is writing, for the most part, about Black people in the United States, I do wish that The Black Box dealt a little more with contemporary worldwide discourses on what constitutes “Blackness”; for example, Brazil’s very different system of race categorization (where Dr. Gates granddaughter would probably be considered a “little white girl”, I suspect, but would have more freedom to self-identify, if she so chooses it) or even a more contemporary issue like the Twitter smackdowns of African Americans by quite a few Caribbean Blacks over the appropriateness of British pop singer Adele’s Bantu knots at the Notting Hill Carnival; African Americans do not have a monopoly on discourses of Blackness. Nevertheless, The Black Box is a far more comprehensive, educated, and informed historical guide on what it means to be “Black” than any sort of vibe-fabulous discourse that one my find on social media.

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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor

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A DIRE PROBLEM WITHIN THE PRISON SYSTEM IN THE U.S. Ebony: BLACK, PREGNANT AND INCARCERATED

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Being pregnant and giving birth are amongst the most memorable experiences in a woman’s life. The postpartum experience should be one of bonding between a mother and her child. However, this experience is much different for women who are in prison. Shackled until the moment they give birth—with only law enforcement and a doctor present, with no family or support person present—giving birth while incarcerated is one of the most inhumane experiences a woman can go through. The postpartum experience for incarcerated women is not one of mother to child bonding; the women are only given 24 to 48 hours with their newborn until their baby is taken away. And, they must also endure a period of lactating with no baby to breastfeed and heavy bleeding without access to proper menstrual products. Institutions don't always give mothers who are in the postpartum phase unrestricted access to hygiene products commonly used by mothers after they give birth—underwear, large sanitary napkins, and other items. Some institutions also don’t have appropriate waste disposal receptacles for said items.

The Prison Policy Initiative predicted that 55,000 women in the United States will be arrested while pregnant this year. In a single year, women in prison had 753 live births, 46 miscarriages, four stillbirths and 11 abortions. Of the 753 live births, there were three newborn deaths and no maternal deaths, and nearly a third of the live births were delivered via Cesarean sections. As laws are being passed to ban abortions and place those who have experienced miscarriages or stillbirths under suspicion for criminal acts, incarcerated women are dying and losing their babies inside of prison walls. The question at hand is: are the health rights of women being violated while pregnant in prison?

“Many women give birth in prisons and jails every year, but many more give birth in hospitals because most prison medical units aren't equipped to handle deliveries,” said Wanda Bertram, Communications Strategist of the Prison Policy Initiative.

Though incarcerated women may give birth inside of hospital walls, these women are often shackled. Restraining a woman by the ankles, wrists, or waist during pregnancy and delivery is medically hazardous, emotionally traumatizing and unnecessary. According to the AMA Journal of Ethics, pregnant women who are shackled are at an increased risk of falling and sustaining injury to themselves and their fetuses. Most correctional facilities do not have on-site obstetric care. Because of this, pregnant women are typically transported to community-based providers for prenatal care and women in labor are transferred to medical facilities for delivery.

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Medical Testing Supply Company Violated Title VII by Firing Black Employee Because of Her Natural Hair Texture, Federal Agency Charged. EEOC: American Screening to Pay $50,000 to Settle EEOC Race Discrimination Lawsuit

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Drug and medical testing supply company American Screening, LLC, has agreed to pay $50,000 and provide other relief to settle a race discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today.

According to the lawsuit, a Black employee interviewed and was selected for a sales position with American Screening while wearing a wig with long, straight hair. After she stopped wearing the wig and started wearing her hair in its naturally curly texture, the company’s owner instructed a human resources manager to counsel the employee about her hair and “looking more professional,” complaining that the worker “came in with beautiful hair.” The employee’s hair—considered type “4-A” on the Andre Walker Hair Typing System—is commonly associated with people who, like the employee, are Black.

The owner then directed the employee to begin wearing her wig with straight hair again. When the employee continued to wear her natural hair, the company fired her. The company later hired a white worker in her place, according to the EEOC’s lawsuit.

Such alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits firing employees or subjecting them to different terms and conditions of employment because of their race. The EEOC filed suit after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its administrative conciliation process. The suit (EEOC v. American Screening Case No. 22-01674) had been pending in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana and was resolved by a consent decree, which was entered by the court on April 4, 2024.

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A $475 million light-rail system serving Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa shows how some China-funded infrastructure investments across the continent are now suffering from neglect. Bloomberg: A Crumbling Metro Reveals Failed Promise of China’s Billions in Africa

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Almost a decade ago, the light-rail system in Ethiopia’s bustling capital of Addis Ababa was hailed as a revolutionary solution to the city’s transportation woes. Envisioned as a project that would redefine urban transport, the system promised to sweep up to 60,000 passengers per hour along its tracks.

Today it sits as a daily reminder of the broken promises of China-funded infrastructure investments that swept Africa in recent years. Frequent breakdowns, inadequate maintenance funding and operational constraints mean barely one-third of its 41 trains are operational, ferrying 55,000 passengers a day, a fraction of initial projections.

Once bustling and vibrant train stations now exude an air of desolation and neglect, contrasting sharply with the city’s urgent transportation needs for its almost 4 million residents. Inoperable trains are regularly parked at the railway’s garage, awaiting maintenance.

Overcrowding on those trains that do run has forced many commuters to seek new ways to get around. Yared Mekuanint, 36, who has been using the train since its launch, has largely abandoned the system.

Waiting times for a train can now stretch to 20 to 25 minutes, he said, four times the six minutes between services in the early days.

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Relief workers warn Sudan is hurtling towards starvation at a larger scale than the humanitarian crisis afflicting Palestinians. The Grio: World paid little attention to Sudan’s war for a year. Now aid groups warn of mass death from hunger

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On a clear night a year ago, a dozen heavily armed fighters broke into Omaima Farouq’s house in an upscale neighborhood in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. At gunpoint, they whipped and slapped the woman, and terrorized her children. Then they expelled them from the fenced two-story house.

“Since then, our life has been ruined,” said the 45-year-old schoolteacher. “Everything has changed in this year.”

Farouq, who is a widow, and her four children now live in a small village outside the central city of Wad Madani, 136 kilometers (85 miles) southeast of Khartoum. They depend on aid from villagers and philanthropists since international aid groups can’t reach the village.

Sudan has been torn by war for a year now, ever since simmering tensions between its military and the notorious paramilitary Rapid Support Forces exploded into street clashes in the capital Khartoum in mid-April 2023. The fighting rapidly spread across the country.

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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH

IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSEL

On Race, Complexity, And The Challenge of Looking Within

Gaelsdottir

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday April 12, 2024 · 10:41 PM PDT

2024/04/12 · 22:41

Because he is Black, and his eyes see right into your soul. And because what this is really about is something called humility, and our crying need for more of it. He talked about that, too.

This began as a comment to YellowDogBlue, on their diary O.J. And White Racism: we should know better after 30 years. But that diary is almost a day old now, and I have a habit of coming late to these things with my thoughts. So instead, since someone I respect and value is in TimeOut now, and my comment, like that diary, relates to this, I decided to make it a standalone. With link.

Dear YellowDogBlue:

I was in the comments section of the AP O.J. diary when Mo was getting into trouble there. I made one comment in an effort to turn the tide, from anger at Mo to thinking more about why he might not be making blunt statements, but I was too late, and I didn’t have the idea fully formed. And the momentum was too much. My inability to help was frustrating, but that isn’t important. That Mo is on a timeout now IS. He’s too valuable to be lost to us over this.

Thank you for your diary, which said things I couldn’t yet articulate. Words have finally come to me.

In your diary, you quote a Black colleague, Sharon, whose thoughts on OJ’s acquittal were at variance with those of your white co-workers. She explained, as you put it [bold italics mine], that

she was glad to see O.J. acquitted, and I asked her why, and she told me. Sharon was like that. I admired her. Sharon said that white people get away with murder all the time, and if O.J. was white and had a lawyer that good, and a prosecution that bad, he’d be sure to be acquitted, but he might have been convicted anyway, because he was Black and the victim was white.

Your friend Sharon WAS being a friend to you when she respected you enough to say exactly what she thought. She did leave one thing unsaid, though. Implied, but unsaid.

She was absolutely right, white people get away with murder — figuratively but also literally — ALL THE TIME. The part she left unsaid — and considering she was the only Black person in your workplace, I understand why — was that for centuries of our history, most of those whose murders were “gotten away with” were Black, brown, golden or cinnabar.

For centuries, that’s “just the way it was”. Because all of the power in this country was on the side of the murderers, because they were wealthy, and white, and the system had been set up by them, and designed to favor them.

Mo, yesterday, recognized a group rage that had more than one source, but others were not seeing that, and I couldn’t yet articulate it.

Yes, there was rage at the idea that *anyone* could get away with murder. Rage at the police and prosecutors, at the media who turned the horrible deaths of two people into an entertainment circus, and at the way that serious, even deadly issues have been warped into entertainment ever since.

But it was more than that. People were defending that rage as a natural response to OJ “getting away with murder”. But the factor that was never articulated was that this rage was amplified by one salient fact.

OJ was Black. His alleged victims were white.

Of COURSE Mo didn’t feel safe pointing that out here.

Mo was quite possibly hoping that a white community member would do so; this is one of the things allies absolutely have to do. We HAVE to take on the explosive stuff, the stuff that will blow up if a Black person tries it because there’s still too much beneath the surface. Unfortunately I missed the target, only focusing on innocent Black victims of white killers. That just wasn’t enough.

Denial is an emotional defense first and foremost. It runs deep, below the level of conscious thought. Feelings are being defended, and we tend to think that our feelings are what define us. So when you confront someone who is “in denial” at that moment, about their denial, they will respond to you with rage, and even more denial. To them, at that moment, it feels like you are attacking their core identity.

That’s what happened to Mo yesterday. Since we are online, interacting in print, his words didn’t dissipate into the air; they remained. As more people saw them, and challenged him, the rage [and exacerbated denial] built up until things came to a head with his TO.

It is true that he didn’t “spit it out”. Aside from my conjecture that he was looking for a white ally to come alongside, I think he could see a trap being laid for him. Get him to admit what he was thinking so offense could be taken openly, and he could be flagged and expelled from the group, either via timeout or a ban. That has happened to others before him, I’ve seen it.

By the way, when this sort of thing happens to a longstanding community member, it almost never helps. It’s a substitute catharsis — the people targeted here become stand-ins for hated figures such as Trump, or in Mo’s case, OJ — and as such it never fixes anything, but it does drive from our ranks insightful and courageous people. Who ask the difficult questions.

The thing is, and it really IS the thing, there is only one antidote to denial. Humility. The ability to imagine that we, wonderful we, could actually be wrong about something. Maybe even something very fundamental and important. Maybe even something vital. The ability to accept that this could be true of us, just as it seems to be true of many we encounter. That we, too, might have feet of clay and no idea we do.

The sad part is that we behave as though admitting imperfection would kill us. Oh no, so much no, it’s the other way around! The thing that is killing us is our inability to admit our imperfection. Our inability to admit that we, too, are only human, and that we, too, can make mistakes, and terribly, spend our lives in those mistakes, and even more terribly, teach those mistakes to our children and grandchildren, become so invested in those mistakes that we think we need them in order to live. Or to live well.

None of that has to be. It is totally possible to stop investing in false narratives of virtue and just let ourselves be human.

And after all these sad parts, the saddest part of all is that the entire rest of the human race here in our beautiful imperiled nation… is waiting for us to do this. NOT because they want to “get” us. NOT because they want to go all Trump-MAGA on our tails. But because they want the Family Of Humankind to be whole, and safe, and well, and as long as we are holding out like this, that can never happen. They want us to join them and simply COME HOME.

This is one of the most disturbing songs that Joni Mitchell has ever written. The melody, of course, comes from Charles Mingus; but the lyrics are her own.

Listen to the words… I don’t know what she and Mingus talked about when she worked on this piece, but if you want to know what white male privilege will do to our society, listen to the words.

The Wolf That Lives In Lindsey
[C. Mingus, J. Mitchell]

Of the darkness in men’s minds
What can you say
That wasn’t marked by history
Or the TV news today?
He gets away with murder
The blizzards come and go
The stabbing, glaring buckshot
Of the heavy, heavy snow…
It comes and goes
It comes and goes.

His grandpa loved an empire
His sister loved a thief
And Lindsey loved away the darkness
Beyond belief
Girls in chilly blouses
The blizzards come and go
The stabbing, glaring buckshot
Of the heavy, heavy snow…
It comes and goes
It comes and goes.
It comes and goes.

Cops don’t seem to care
For derelicts or ladies of the night
They’re weeds for yanking out of sight
If you’re smart or rich or lucky
Maybe you’ll beat the laws of Man
But the inner laws of spirit
And the outer laws of nature
No man can.
No, no man can.

There lives a wolf in Lindsey
It raids and runs
Through the hills of Hollywood
And the downtown slums
He gets away with murder
Blizzards come and go
The stabbing glaring buckshot
Of the heavy, heavy snow…
It comes and goes
It comes and goes.

YouTube Video

If we must hate, let us direct it at deserving targets, at those who wish to do us harm; not at those who challenge us to practice honesty and humility.

Black Kos, Week in Review ~ OJ and white rage

Black Kos for Black Kos community

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday April 12, 2024 · 2:01 PM PDT

2024/04/12 · 14:01

no image description available — He was proud to be an honorary white man, and then he murdered a white woman.

Commentary by BlackKos editor JoanMar

I imagine that in the unlikely case that I’m still here 30 years from now, my blood will still boil at the mention of the names of George Zimmerman and Derek Chauvin. But what I will not be doing is trying to convince people that my hatred for those two has nothing to do with race. I will not be trying to convince people that I’m mad at them, not because they are white representatives of a system that dehumanizes, brutalizes, and marginalizes Black lives, but only because they were murderers.

Similarly, white people ought to stop trying to convince us that their searing, intense hatred of OJ is not all wrapped up in race and the primal need to avenge the death of a beautiful white woman. Stop lying to yourselves. Know that you aren’t lying to us, because we know the truth.

After OJ became an honorary white and reveled in his new “colorblind status,” Black people were not that in love with him. For the most part, he was all yours. I remember as a young woman seeing a clip of OJ in a restaurant surrounded by all white men and being served by a young blonde, and him turning to the camera and saying, “If she doesn’t look like this, like this [pointing to her as she stood over him], I don’t want her.” It was pathetic. So when news of his ex-wife’s murder broke and that he was the prime suspect, for most of us, it was just news — sensational yes, but just another murder like the thousands of murders that we hear about every year. And then the media remembered that he was Black and began treating him as such. That was when Black people started taking notice. They blackened his skin, thuggified him, called him the worst kind of animal, and all the while made no bones about the fact that their animus was directed at the Black community in Toto. OJ represented the Black community, and we were all on trial. Anyone remember that subplot in the whole saga?

For most of us in my community, Johnny Cochrane was the person we were rooting for. If it were a soap opera, Johnny Cochrane would be the star. OJ was just a sidekick who benefited from the pride and admiration people felt for the brilliant Johnny Cochrane. The Dream Team, under the leadership of Johnny, ably assisted by Barry Scheck and the rest of the crew, took on a system that, up until that point, had had their way with Black folks. The outpouring of emotion after the verdict came down was for Johnny, and Barry, and the fact that the racist media and all the pundits who could barely contain their racism, and who then went on to become media darlings, had all lost. The racist Los Angeles police department and all of its little bloodthirsty, petty tyrants running around had lost. It had very little to do with OJ himself.

Did I believe OJ was guilty? I wasn’t persuaded by the tainted blood evidence or by the motive. Was it a crime of passion or was it premeditated. In this case, it couldn’t be both. With premeditation, we’d have to believe that OJ, with his very distinctive body type, grabbed a butcher knife—not a gun, mind you, but a knife—got his ski mask, drove to the murder scene in his distinctive white bronco, brutally killed two people—one of whom was a very fit young man of whom it was said “he put up a spirited fight for his life”—jumped over a back fence after the act, and only managed to leave spots of blood and a minor scrape on one of his fingers. If it was a crime of passion, why was he armed with a knife, had a ski mask, and why was he parked in the back? The one bit of evidence that pointed to his guilt, in my mind, was the noise Kato heard in the back of the house around the time of the murder. That was Mark Furhman planting evidence, or OJ returning to the house after committing the murders and trying to avoid the chauffeur parked in front of his gate. Something happened that night that connected both locations. But what do I know? I’ve only ever studied Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and Columbo. What I do know about, however, is how racism works in this country.

If Nicole Brown Simpson was Black, most white ppl wouldn’t care if OJ did it or not. The fact is, many white ppl wanted to lynch him in the town square like their grandparents used to if a Black Man was accused of even smiling at a white woman. Even after he was found NOT GUILTY pic.twitter.com/4FthMXd8D8
— Etan Thomas (@etanthomas36) April 11, 2024

Why do you suppose Oj’s 94 trial & current death causes a racial divide, if there was no racism? The same people who claim “it’s not about race” didn’t celebrate when Robert Blake died last year?
Both were accused of murdering their former wives and both were acquitted. https://t.co/jyePwFCNBM pic.twitter.com/aWRi8ykFqG
— UNAVA_46 (@46Unava) April 11, 2024

And so, here we are 30 years later, and white folks are still trying to have their cake and eat it too. Still trying to set themselves up as the arbiters of what is righteous and moral, and cast Black folks as supporters of evil. Still trying to act as if we have or have always had a level legal playing field and that Lady Justice is and has always been blind. Still holding on to their soul-corrosive hatred even as they dare to chastise Black folks for having the audacity to remember history and the atrocities that have gone unpunished for centuries.

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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor

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Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman told people they could be subjected to arrest, debt collection and forced vaccination if they voted by mail. Reuters: Republican operatives to pay $1.25 mln for robocalls threatening Black voters, NY prosecutor says

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Two conservative operatives who launched a robocall campaign designed to prevent Black New Yorkers from voting by mail in the 2020 U.S. election will pay $1.25 million in a settlement, New York state Attorney General Letitia James said on Tuesday.

Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman were found liable by a federal judge in New York in March 2023 for targeting Black voters and sending false and threatening messages intended to discourage voting.
"Wohl and Burkman orchestrated a depraved and disinformation-ridden campaign to intimidate Black voters in an attempt to sway the election in favor of their preferred candidate," James said in a statement.

During the summer of 2020, the automated calls claimed that mail-in voting would allow the voter to be tracked for outstanding warrants, credit card debt and mandatory vaccines, James said.

The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, which was a plaintiff in the lawsuit, was forced to redirect considerable resources to address the false claims made in the call, James said.

During the 2020 presidential campaign that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, Republican President Donald Trump and his allies repeatedly made false claims that mail-in voting would lead to fraud. Trump, who is challenging Biden in the Nov. 5 presidential election, has continued to repeat the claims.

The 2020 robocall also was distributed in Cleveland, Ohio; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Chicago, the Pennsylvania cities of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia; Detroit; and Arlington, Virginia, according to filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

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Despite criticism for the use of potentially harmful chemicals, companies are still selling the products around the world. The Guardian: The truth about hair relaxers: in the US, lawsuits over cancer. In Africa, soaring sales

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She no longer straightens her hair because she thought it was starting to thin. But over the years, Moraa used almost every relaxer on the market, with one goal: making her coily hair silky. The ingredients didn’t matter.

“I did not have the time or the expertise to discern the effects of listed ingredients,” Moraa says. “I’m a consumer, not a chemist.”

But questions are being raised about the safety of the ingredients in these products.

In October 2022, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) published a study that found women who used hair relaxers more than four times a year were at a higher risk of uterine cancer. The study marked a tipping point in the US, building on more than a decade of scientific research in which women’s exposure to chemicals known as endocrine disruptors appeared to correlate with the development of uterine and breast tumours.

Endocrine disruptors interfere with hormones that regulate functions such as mood, appetite, cognitive development and reproductive health.

While many black women in the US are now rejecting chemical straighteners – filing thousands of lawsuits against manufacturers in the wake of the study – sales of the products in some African countries continue to climb.

Tunisia, Kenya and Cameroon were among the countries worldwide leading sales growth for perms and relaxers from 2017 to 2022, according to Euromonitor, a market research firm. Sales in Tunisia and Kenya jumped 10% over the five-year span. South Africa and Nigeria also saw growth.

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Some say these images shows how Black people can be used as stereotypical props. Others point to larger problems with AI-fueled misinformation and the election. NBC: What AI-generated images of Trump surrounded by Black voters mean for this election

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Wayne L. Smith, an engineer in the Washington, D.C., area, scoffed at an image he saw last week of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gleefully nestled among a group of smiling Black people. Seeing the image immediately alarmed him.

“Everything he does to try to get Black people to like him is fake,” Smith said. “Why wouldn’t that photo be fake, too? It just didn’t feel right.”

Smith’s instinct about the photo was correct; it was created by Trump supporter and conservative radio host Mark Kaye, who admitted he used artificial intelligence to create the image and posted it on social media for his 1 million Facebook followers to see. Kaye did not respond to an NBC News request for comment.

“I’m not out there taking pictures of what’s really happening. I’m a storyteller,” Kaye told BBC News, which tracked down the images’ origins. He added, “If anybody’s voting one way or another because of one photo they see on a Facebook page, that’s a problem with that person, not with the post itself.”

Trump’s campaign did not respond to an NBC News request for comment on this article, but last week one campaign official said: “The only ones using AI to meddle in an election are President Trump’s opponents. The Trump Campaign has absolutely nothing to do with these AI images. Nor can we control what other people create and post.”

Fake, AI-Generated Images of Donald Trump and Black Voters

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After a history-making 2021 debut, "Fire Shut Up in My Bones" returns to New York's Metropolitan Opera with a gripping take on Charles Blow's bestselling memoir. The Grio: The Met’s revival of ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’ brings the complexity of Black manhood to the operatic stage

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The core cause of Charles Blow’s inner conflict in the Metropolitan Opera’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” stems from sexual abuse, a subject egregiously overlooked when it comes to African-Americans — and for Black males, in particular. Actor Laurence Fishburne explored his own adolescent molestation in last month’s one-man play, “Like They Do in the Movies,” shining another spotlight where precious little exists about the assault of Black boys. The first work staged at the Met by a Black composer (Terence Blanchard, with a libretto by Kasi Lemmons) in its 138-year history when it debuted in 2021, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” got there first. Returning now with all the majesty and pathos of its initial run, the opera makes a welcome return.

A Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity step show opening Act III elevates the production in all the right ways, with 12 dancers bringing pure Black culture to the highbrow halls of one of the world’s preeminent opera houses. The moment arrives as Charles first matriculates at Grambling State University, an HBCU a stone’s throw from his childhood home in rural Louisiana. His pledging of the frat mirrors the earlier loss of his virginity to a local girl, Evelyn, in Act II, a rite of passage to manhood that also fails to quell his inner demons. But the ritual brings into question the various ways Black males feel the need to “man up” in American society, and the turmoil that often lies underneath the bluster.

Opening with Charles (bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green) holding the audience at gunpoint in a narrative flash-forward, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” sets out its conflict from the start: our lead wants revenge. Eventually, as 20-year-old Charles trails his 7-year-old self (treble Ethan Joseph as Char’es-Baby) throughout his boyhood life in the Louisiana backwoods, we learn its particulars. Raised as the youngest, most sensitive of five boys by his mother Billie (soprano Latonia Moore), he’s continually called a baby, ostracized by his brothers and initially even kept out of school in order to stay under the watchful eye of his somewhat distant mom and Uncle Paul (played by bass-baritone Kevin Short).

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In her book, the country songwriter looks back on her career and the Black artists that shaped the genre, from DeFord Bailey to Beyoncé. Market Place: In "My Black Country," Alice Randall returns color to the heroes, and she-roes, of her songs

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Alice Randall has been in the world of country music for decades. Her professional career started back in the early ’80s, when she moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a songwriting career and launch a publishing company with the hope of supporting Black artists. In 1994, Randall would become the first Black woman to co-write a No. 1 country hit with Trisha Yearwood’s “XXX’s and OOO’s (An American Girl).”

Yet she had never heard someone who looked like her sing one of her songs until 2023, during the production of the companion album to her new book, “My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future.” The album, in keeping with the themes of the book, is a collection of some of Randall’s songs performed by Black artists.

“Listeners thought all the heroes and she-roes in my songs were white because the singers were white,” Randall said in an interview with “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal. “All of them I had imagined as Black, and I was willing and embrace people projecting their identities onto them, but I resisted the identities I originally imagined and created being erased.”

In her book, released as Beyoncé becomes the first Black woman to have a No. 1 country chart-topping album with “Cowboy Carter,” Randall explores the legacy of Black artists in the country music industry, including artists like DeFord Bailey, who helped shape the genre.

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O.J. and white racism: We should know better after 30 years

YellowDogBlue

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday April 12, 2024 · 5:43 AM PDT

2024/04/12 · 05:43

Here’s how I first heard of O.J. Simpson: I was eight years old, and I’d never watched a football game before.

My parents were white middle-class left-wing intellectuals, and disdained spectator sports. I was at my friend Kenny’s house. I knew Kenny from fourth grade. Kenny was Black, as were all my schoolmates, because my parents had decided their three children would be the first white kids to attend the segregated Black elementary school in that miserable little racist southern town.

So I was at Kenny’s house, and there was a framed portrait of JFK in the living room, and Kenny and his family were watching football, and I was watching with them. It happened to be the Dallas Cowboys against the Green Bay Packers 1967 Championship Game, known as the “Game in the Snow.” Kenny’s family were Cowboys fans, but I decided to root for the Packers, because I was from Wisconsin, originally, before my family moved to North Carolina.

Bart Starr pulled off the legendary quarterback sneak, and the Packers were ahead with only, I don’t know, like 15 seconds to go—this is the way I remember it—and at Kenny’s house there was some speculation about whether by some miracle the Cowboys could return the Packers’ kickoff all the way downfield for a score and win. And I said nobody could even run that fast.

“O.J. could,” Kenny’s uncle said.

O.J. was at USC, a track star turned football player, with a sub-10-second time in the 100 yard dash. Obviously, he was going to shake things up in professional football. And that’s how much he was on the mind of Black sports fans--more than Charlie Scott, who was, that same year, the first Black player on the basketball team of the university that happened to be in that miserable little racist southern town.

But that’s about all the attention I paid to O.J., the years during his NFL career and after. I liked the ad with him running through the airport.

Then there was the murder and his arrest, and the trial, and Johnny Cochran and Lance Ito with the mug that made Peets coffee a thing.

By that time I’d survived my childhood and teenage years, been a laborer and an activist, belonged to a Marxist-Leninist collective, organized tenants, been to a hundred protest marches, gone to school for an engineering degree, gone back to school for another engineering degree. I was working for a small consulting firm in downtown Oakland.

That consulting firm had about 20 engineers and scientists and one clerical worker. And guess what, all the engineers and scientists were white and the one clerical worker, Sharon, was Black.

And the verdict came down, and in the office everyone was talking about it, and I asked Sharon what she thought.

And Sharon thought different than anyone else, she was glad to see O.J. acquitted, and I asked her why, and she told me. Sharon was like that. I admired her. Sharon said that white people get away with murder all the time, and if O.J. was white and had a lawyer that good, and a prosecution that bad, he’d be sure to be acquitted, but he might have been convicted anyway, because he was Black and the victim was white.

Can I say I completely understood her feelings? No, I didn’t. I don’t now. But I damn well understood that Sharon saw things differently because she was Black, and that meant—this is the important thing here—that everyone else in the office saw things they way they saw them because they were white. By that time in life, I’d learned that when things come down that way, with all or most of the Black people seeing things one way and all or most of the white people seeing things differently, you need to look deeper at what’s really going on.

So then O.J. dies, and DK posts an AP story about it—an AP story because this is news that needs to be noted, but doesn’t warrant a staff story. It’s not really that important politically. Fine.

And then I read the comments, including the hidden comments. All of them.

And I’m saddened, and appalled.

mohistory2 is absolutely right in his first comment: This is where progressives risk accidentally betraying their true hearts. And many did, in that thread. Many more betrayed their true hearts by flagging mohistory2’s other comments. For their part, mohistory2 was very restrained.

Thirty years. I hope some of my white colleagues at that consulting firm know better by now.

We should all know better by now. But we don’t.

I don’t know what else to say.

Black Kos: The Little Rock Nine, Paul McCartney's 'Blackbird' & Beyoncé

Black Kos for Black Kos community

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday April 09, 2024 · 2:01 PM PDT

2024/04/09 · 14:01

Beyoncé sings Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” and draws attention to civil rights history

Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez

It’s been crazy enough in this country with certain white folks going into major freakout mode over Beyoncé Knowles Carter, known to the world as simply Beyoncé, for daring to release a country music album. This outrage happened, completely ignoring the fact that Beyoncé is from Houston, Texas and grew up with the genre, which I addressed here in a recent story about zydeco. Now there is now yet another offense being laid on her Black feet and vocal chords. She’s singing “Blackbird” written by former Beatle Paul McCartney, and taking the song back to its inspirational roots in the civil rights movement — specifically the history of “The Little Rock Nine.”

CBS News reported:

Beatles legend Paul McCartney's praised Beyoncé's cover of the band's song "Blackbird," saying that it reinforces the civil rights message that inspired him in the first place.

Last week, Beyoncé released "Cowboy Carter," a 27-track country album that bends the genre. In it she included "Blackbird," which was originally written by McCartney in 1969 and included in the band's double album "The Beatles."

"I think she does a magnificent version of it and it reinforces the civil rights message that inspired me to write the song in the first place," McCartney said in an Instagram post, on Thursday. "I think Beyoncé has done a fab version and would urge anyone who has not heard it yet to check it out. You are going to love it!"

The 81-year-old rocker went on to say that he spoke with Beyoncé, who thanked him for writing the song and letting her do it.

"I told her the pleasure was all mine and I thought she had done a killer version of the song," he added.

Black Kos for Black Kos community

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday April 05, 2024 · 2:02 PM PDT

2024/04/05 · 14:02

Anna M. Mangin made a major contribution to household needs in the 19th century. with her invention of the pastry fork. Anna was born Anna Matilda Barker in October 1844 in the state of Louisiana. On her 1877 marriage application, she listed her parents as Jacob Barker and one P. [Polly?] Shelton. Jacob Barker was a prosperous planter, merchant and politician who was in his late sixties at the time of Annie's birth. It is of note that Barker, a native of Maine, worked closely with Rhode Island merchant Rowland G. Hazard who, using Louisiana state laws, was able to free over one hundred Northern-born African-Americans who had been enslaved. It is possible that Annie arrived in Nantucket, Massachusetts through the ministrations of Barker, Hazard, and African-American minister, activist, orator and Underground Railroad conductor Charles Bennett Ray; it is known that Annie was taken in by Ray's sister, seamstress and business woman Elizabeth S. Ray and her husband, shoemaker and merchant Abraham M. Nahar, a native of Surinam. Annie was adopted by the childless couple and was known as Annie Mattie Nahar.

In 1870, Annie returned to New Orleans, where she took on the position of principal of the Coliseum School. By 1873, she had moved to lodgings at the corner of Napoleon avenue and Dryades street.

By 1877 Annie was the "principal of one of the McDonogh Schools that had been established from a bequest by a wealthy slave owner who left his estate for the support of free schools for children regardless of color" when she met Andrew Fitch Mangin, a thirty-four-year-old African-American native of Monroe, New York who was employed at various times as a coachman and a teamster. He was described as a man with "more than average natural shrewdness and intelligence."

On August 17, 1877, Andrew and Annie married in New Orleans and moved to New York City where Annie embarked on a new career as a cook and as a caterer while Andrew went into business with his brothers and operated a hauling and moving business from a yard on Gold Street in Manhattan On January 7, 1879, Annie gave birth to their only surviving child, a son she named for his father.

To hear Andrew Mangin tell it, his wife first came up with the concept of a simplified manner of making pastry by an improvement to the pastry fork, and "then and there described it to him. The description was so clear and minute that Mr. Mangin often says, when speaking of the incident, 'I saw that fork just as plain as I see you now.' " Andrew Mangin went out to his tool shed and whittled a prototype of the fork out of yellow pine. Once Anna approved the model, Andrew had a more substantive model of the fork made, first from iron, and then from white metal. Anna Mangin received the patent for the pastry fork on March 1, 1892.

The pastry fork had many uses, including beating eggs, thickening foods, making drawn butter, mashing potatoes, making salad dressings, and most importantly, kneading pastry dough. "The curved piece at the upper end of the handle is what Mrs. Mangin calls the cutter or trimmer for pie crust."The pastry fork improved the lives of many people, and eventually led to more electric mixing inventions that are used to this day. Kneading pastry dough by hand is a grueling process that can cause arm cramping and other pains. Also, the dough often does not get fully incorporated when mixed by hand. If the dough does not fully incorporate during the kneading process, then it will not rise, resulting in a dense, and in most cases, underbaked consistency.

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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor

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Four assistant coaches arrested in a 2017 FBI probe designed to clean up college basketball are Black. All are out of the sport, banned by the NCAA. Associated press: Black coaches were ‘low-hanging fruit’ in FBI college hoops case that wrecked careers, then fizzled

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Book Richardson doesn’t sleep much past 5:30 a.m. anymore.

That was around the time seven years ago that FBI agents pounded on his door, barged in, handcuffed him and dragged him away while his 16-year-old son, E.J., looked on helplessly.

“Ever since then, everyone looks at me differently,” the former University of Arizona assistant coach told The Associated Press about his arrest, part of a sting designed to clean up college basketball. “And I don’t fall back to sleep when I see that time come up on the clock.”

He is one of four assistant coaches — along with a group of six agents, their financial backers and shoe company representatives — who were arrested in the 2017 federal probe aimed at rooting out an entrenched system of off-the-books payments to players and their families that, at the time, was against NCAA rules.

All four assistants — Richardson, Lamont Evans, Tony Bland and Chuck Person — are Black. Of the 10 men arrested, only one was white.

“Low-hanging fruit,” the 51-year-old Richardson said when asked why Black men took the brunt of the punishment. “Who do you see all the time that’s out there? Black assistants. Who is forging the relationships? Black assistants.”

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Pale marble pavers crisscross the Terrazzo, the plaza at the heart of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado that cadets traverse daily, on the way to class, the library and meals. In their first year, cadets must run and keep to the narrow marble strips whenever they are on the 20-acre Terrazzo. Reuters: Two Black cadets and the struggle for diversity at an elite US military institution

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Pale marble pavers crisscross the Terrazzo, the plaza at the heart of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado that cadets traverse daily, on the way to class, the library and meals. In their first year, cadets must run and keep to the narrow marble strips whenever they are on the 20-acre Terrazzo.

Tusajigwe Owens doesn’t take short cuts. He is one of 112 Black cadets in the class of 1,071 freshmen that started at the academy in June 2022. Running the strips helps instill a sense of urgency and attention to detail that “absolutely matters for the success of yourself and the success of your team,” he said. Older cadets share coping strategies such as organizing schedules to minimize Terrazzo trips, or walking when the marble is slippery in wet weather. “They would rather see you succeed,” Owens said.

Not everyone will. The graduation rate for Black cadets has for the last decade averaged 66%, compared to an overall graduation rate of 80%.

That gap has frustrated the Air Force’s stated objective of increasing diversity in its officer corps. Only 6% of officers identify as Black, compared to about 17% among enlisted members of the Air Force, according to the Air Force Personnel Center. Those figures have changed very little in the last 20 years, according to an Air Force spokesperson.

By comparison, around 13% of America’s population is Black.

On June 29, days after Owens finished his first year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina in a case brought by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a group that argues that affirmative action policies discriminate against white and Asian American people. Chief Justice John Roberts exempted military training academies from the decision, citing the U.S. government argument that the legitimacy of the armed forces would be undermined by having an overwhelmingly white officer corps leading much more diverse enlisted ranks.

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The future of inclusion at elite B-schools may look a lot like the present at Berkeley’s Haas, where affirmative action has been off the table for almost 30 years. Bloomberg: Building Diversity When Affirmative Action Is Banned

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For top-flight American MBA programs hoping to enroll underrepresented minorities, last year was difficult, and nowhere more so than at the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Only about 6% of an incoming class of 244 identifies as Black or Hispanic, the lowest share in the past 10 years, according to figures the school made public in its latest class profile.

Berkeley, like most of its peers, is drawing fewer US students these days, and underrepresented minorities— Black, Hispanic, Native American and Pacific Islander students—have become even less represented on campus. This is true at most top MBA programs, according to data collected by Bloomberg Businessweek. Still, only the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business enrolled a share as low as Haas. (Because of the complexity—and ambiguity—in how schools collect and present racial demographic information, the figures reported here exclude the handful of multiracial people each year who identify as an underrepresented minority and may be a slight undercount.)

Haas has worked under a constraint that few of its peers have faced, until now. As a public university in California, Haas has been barred from considering race in admissions since 1996, when voters in the state passed Proposition 209. Within a few years, minority admissions to Haas plummeted, from 14% before the ban to just 5%. Over the past six years, the school has spent millions of dollars and built up an office of five people focused solely on becoming more inclusive.

With the US Supreme Court’s decision last June banning affirmative action nationwide, every other American business school has boarded the same boat. “When these classes come out, they’re going to be way out of whack,” says Eric Allen, a founder of Admit.me Access, a website that helps underrepresented minorities apply to B-school. Haas’s experience may well serve as a lesson for other schools hoping to attract more Black, Hispanic and Native American candidates in the face of changing rules.

The first thing other selective business schools can expect, after a drop in minority enrollment this fall, is constant monitoring by opponents of affirmative action, says Peter Johnson, who joined Haas’s admissions team in 1999 and eventually became director of the full-time MBA program before leaving in 2022. In the years after Proposition 209 passed, Johnson says he and his colleagues frequently fielded data requests from anti-affirmative-action activists. “I think they thought, ‘We know those people don’t agree with us, so they must be cheating somehow.’ We weren’t cheating. The data was pretty clear on that point.”

HaasSchoolofBusinesscampusattheUniversityofCaliforniaBerkele.png

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The decision will send ripples across Africa. The Economist: Ugandan judges uphold a draconian anti-gay law

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The men came for Kwagala at the beer joint she runs in eastern Uganda, shouting that she was teaching homosexuality to their children. They kicked and punched her. “I ran as fast as I could, thinking to myself, ‘This is my day, this is how I die’,” recalls Kwagala, a trans woman whose name we have changed for her safety. When the police arrived they locked her up for three days and charged her under Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, which became law last May. Her attackers went free; she faces life in prison if convicted.

On April 3rd the country’s constitutional court upheld the core provisions of the law. Those include long prison sentences for “promoting homosexuality” and the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”, including for anyone deemed a serial offender. The judges did strike down some sections, such as a duty to report gay people to the police. But they argued that the law reflects Uganda’s history, traditions and culture, likening their reasoning to that of America’s Supreme Court when it overturned abortion rights in 2022. The judges leant on “public sentiments and vague cultural-values arguments” rather than upholding human rights, says Nicholas Opiyo, lead counsel for the petitioners.

Ten years ago the same Ugandan court struck down an anti-gay law on procedural grounds. This time activists had challenged the act on both process and substance, and lost. The decision contrasts with court rulings in Botswana in 2019 and Mauritius in 2023, where judges decriminalised gay sex. It will send ripples across Africa, including in Ghana, where President Nana Akufo-Addo is under pressure to sign into law a recent anti-gay bill.

Africa’s anti-gay reforms are not driven by presidents, who are wary of the diplomatic fallout, but by ambitious lawmakers and religious leaders, sometimes with friends in right-wing American groups. Although Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, makes homophobic remarks in public and has done nothing to stop the law, allies of his have privately told Western diplomats of their reservations. That could be because America has imposed visa restrictions on Ugandan officials, warned business of the reputational risks of operating in Uganda, and removed duty-free access for its exports. The World Bank has suspended new loans.

For lgbt people in Uganda, where 94% of citizens say they would not want a gay neighbour, the law has made a bad situation worse. They have been evicted, sacked, outed, threatened, assaulted, arrested and subjected to forced anal examinations. Rights groups recorded 300-plus cases of abuse in the first eight months of last year alone. Much of the hostility comes from ordinary Ugandans who have been “radicalised into hatred”, says Frank Mugisha, a gay-rights activist who was a petitioner in the court case.

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Calvin Riley Sr.'s routine traffic stop becomes a legal nightmare. Video shows TPD Officer Oliver pouring out a sealed bottle of liquor and tossing it in Riley's passenger seat, before arresting him for a DUI. Our Tallahassee.: VIDEO SHOWS TALLAHASSEE POLICE OFFICER PLANTING EVIDENCE DURING DUI ARREST

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The police stop, initiated by a white 26-year-old recruit of the department, would zigzag several potential legal avenues for police to arrest Riley; ultimately, after planting evidence of an empty liquor bottle in Riley’s car, they would arrest him for driving under the influence and driving with a suspended license. Riley says He says the night ‘nearly ruined his life.’

After initially stopping Riley and getting his information, Oliver calls in backup and discusses the particulars with Officer Margaret Mueth who arrived at the scene. Oliver asks Mueth to contact Riley under the pretext of verifying his address to check if she thinks he is under the influence of something. “I feel like I’m getting some indications, I’m not really sure. I can’t really smell anything right now,” Oliver says to Mueth, indicating that her sense of smell was diminished.

Oliver, in comments captured by her body-worn camera, tells Riley that he smells like marijuana. Oliver, who says he doesn’t smoke weed, took offense to Oliver’s comments.

“You lie,” Riley says in the video.

At various moments in the forty-four-minute-long body camera footage, Officer Oliver seems to go from charge to charge, looking for a way to arrest Riley. In Florida, officers have discretion whether to ticket or arrest someone driving with a suspended license for the first offense. If an individual commits a second offense, it is mandatory for the officers to take them into custody and make an arrest. Riley received a suspended license notification just weeks before the stop on March 7th.

Officers Mueth and Oliver discussed the interaction in Oliver’s car before approaching Riley again. Mueth testified that they formulated a plan: ask Riley to submit to a voluntary field sobriety test, and if he refused, they would exercise their voluntary discretion to arrest him for a first-time offense of driving with a suspended license.

When officers asked Riley to perform a voluntary roadside sobriety test, Riley refused.

They didn’t tell him the consequences for refusing the then-optional test.

Despite initial claims that Riley smelt like marijuana, by the time they had placed Riley in the back of Oliver’s patrol car, officers began to claim that Riley smelled like alcohol.

YouTube Video

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Elsewhere in Focus: Sudan

AVeng

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday April 03, 2024 · 3:46 AM PDT

2024/04/03 · 03:46

Only one of the guys but since I got a picture rather than news...

Hello everyone! I have decided to start a new weekly series called Elsewhere in Focus. It will cover some of the stories and regions that do not usually feature in Daily Kos. I will post it every Wednesday at 4:00 PM Indian Standard Time, which would be 6:30 am EST.

Why?

Because I think it is important that we keep an eye on the people around the globe that are suffering or triumphing and build bridges with them. However, more importantly, I also think it is especially important for us to know when our own countries may be contributing to that oppression; or could do better with respect to policies be they that of immigration, trade, technology transfer, or regulation. Especially those of us who have disproportionate power in the world system.

Which Stories Will I Cover?

It’d be hubris to think that I can cover all the regions that are not covered in Daily Kos since Daily Kos, apart from Caribbean Matters and Black Kos, just covers Ukraine and US with an occasional foray into Canada or Europe when you have some disagreement. So, I don’t aim for that. I do plan to cover stories that have caught my attention and once caught, have stayed with me. I’d limit my focus to Africa and Asia.

I plan to start with Sudan, and then move onto Tigray, Syria, and Congo for now. Occasionally, if something from other areas caught my attention, I will add them too. I already cover South Asia on Friday, so this series will not include stories from South Asia.

What Structure Will I Follow?

I plan to include a standard intro text, and then, if it is a new topic, introduction to the subject that I am covering, followed by updates. I will end each post with latest tweet updates (one or two/country or region) on Sudan, Tigray, Syria so that you don’t have to wait weeks for the latest stories. Or perhaps, I will just post them in the comments. I have not decided yet.

All right then, let us go.

The first post will be on Sudan.

Sudan

What Is Going on in Sudan?

Sudan is in the midst of what is ostentatiously called a civil war though multiple regional and at least one global power are involved on different sides, using the warring factions as proxy. That makes it almost a regional war with global importance (as is any war where millions are affected, may I suggest?).

The latest iteration of the story starts in 2019 when the dictator of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir was overthrown by civilian protests. No doubt, the threads go back decades or a century by some measures. The war itself started mid April last year.

At its simplest, the war is between two generals: Abdel Fattah al-Burhan who leads Sudan’s army (Sudanese Armed Forces aka SAF) and Mohamed Hamdan Degalo (Hemedti or Hemeti) who leads the paramilitary forces called Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

As Sumeda explains for the Hindu (23 April 2023):

At the centre of Sudan’s crisis are two powerful generals — Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), who heads the ruling council, and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo of the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group (RSF). Dagalo, commonly known as Hemeti, is the council’s deputy head.

The two Generals jointly led a military coup in October 2021, halting a plan to transition to elections which were part of an agreement after autocrat Omar al-Bashir was ousted by a popular uprising in 2019. The coup worsened the economic crisis and triggered mass demonstrations against the military. The two main demands of protesters were bringing the military under civilian government and integrating the RSF with the army.

The military finalised a preliminary deal with pro-democracy groups in December last year to relaunch the political transition. As per the agreed framework, the military, in charge since the coup, agreed to step back from politics. The pact, however, failed to address critical issues like security sector reform (SSR) and internal conflict in Darfur and other regions. The deal also provided no guarantee that military leaders would cede real power, analysts said.

Negotiations hit a roadblock before the final agreement could be inked.

Disagreements emerged over security reform, which proposed to bring the 1,00,000-strong paramilitary force under the control of the army. While the army preferred a two-year timetable for integration, the RSF proposed a slower transition of 10 years. The paramilitary also called for reforms within the army.

This piece from journalist Mat Nashed for New Lines Magazine will give you more context (17 April 2023, no paywall).

The most contested issue between the two forces was the RSF’s integration into the army. Hemedti called for his forces to integrate in 10 years, yet Burhan wanted the RSF to integrate in two.

The dispute distracted attention from equally important issues such as when and how the security forces would be subjected to civilian command and whether security sector reform would be a civilian or military-led process. FFC-CC officials, for their part, appeared to exacerbate divisions by siding with the RSF in hopes that the group could thwart the revival of NCP loyalists in the army.

Despite the sensitivity of the matter, the FFC-CC and the global community announced in March that a new political agreement would be signed on April 1 and a new government would be formed shortly after.

The timelines were pushed back a few days after the army walked out of the first workshop on security sector reform on March 29. Tensions mounted in the days that followed, with the RSF relocating hundreds of fighters to the capital. Arab activists in Darfur also reported that the army was recruiting a new force from their tribes to undercut Hemedti’s support base.

A number of Western diplomats believed that a new political deal would stabilize the situation rather than accelerate an armed confrontation between the RSF and the military, according to one Western diplomat who was not authorized to speak on the record.

“This [current] crisis is the making of the international community with all their stupid [calls] that a ‘swift deal is needed,’” the diplomat said.

High-level Western diplomats didn’t see the war coming since several were on vacation for Easter. Curiously, few, if any, rushed back to Sudan after the RSF deployed near an airport that houses Sudanese and Egyptian fighter planes. The military viewed the move as a preemptive attack to neutralize its aerial advantage and warned that all security could collapse unless the RSF withdrew. War erupted two days later.

Now, fighting could turn into a protracted conflict, with many fearing that the war could drag in regional patrons and neighbors such as Chad, Egypt, Eritrea and Ethiopia. In the end, nobody knows if the RSF or army will vanquish the other, but their quest could upend the region.

The international actors facilitating the transition were somewhat to blame for appeasing the military and making them part of the transitional council, rather than listening to grassroots resistance committees who overthrew Bashir. The committees will be the focus of a future segment. It is beyond this piece.

Who Are the International Players?

The Al-Jazeera guide provides a list of the international players (18 April 2023).

Western powers, including the US, had swung behind a transition towards democratic elections following al-Bashir’s overthrow. They suspended financial support following the coup, then backed the plan for the new transition and a civilian government.

Energy-rich powers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also sought to shape events in Sudan, seeing the transition away from al-Bashir’s rule as a way to roll back his influence and bolster stability in the region.

Gulf states have pursued investments in sectors, including agriculture, where Sudan holds vast potential, and ports on Sudan’s Red Sea coast.

Russia has been seeking to build a naval base on the Red Sea, while several UAE companies have been signing up to invest.

Al-Burhan and Hemedti developed close ties with Saudi Arabia after sending troops to participate in the Saudi-led operation in Yemen. Hemedti has struck up relations with other foreign powers, including the UAE and Russia.

Egypt has deep ties to al-Burhan and the army and recently promoted a parallel track of political negotiations through parties with stronger links to the army and to al-Bashir’s former government.

The US does not seem to have been directly involved beyond forcing an agreement between military and civilians after Bashir’s overthrow. The US/international involvement has been criticised for that and for other missteps. The countries directly involved in the fighting and atrocities however are UAE and Russia, with some of Sudan’s neighbours dabbling.

Mohamed Suliman’s article for the Politics Today contains details about UAE (18 January 2024).

This war has its investors and beneficiaries; for years, the UAE has pursued its narrow interests by providing the RSF with a lifeline of money and weapons to carry out its genocide in Darfur. It’s time for the world to put pressure on the UAE to stop perpetuating this vicious cycle of violence. [...]

The UAE’s support for the militia comes in various forms, from direct funding to logistics and military equipment. In December 2019, an investigative report revealed that the militia received vehicles from the UAE that could be easily modified and equipped with machine guns. The report also revealed how UAE-based front companies, such as Tradive, were used to channel the funds to the militia.

During the ongoing war, and in flagrant violation of the UN arms embargo resolution, the UAE escalated its military support to the militias through Chad, where, under the guise of a humanitarian operation, it established an airport and a hospital to transfer weapons and ammunition to the militias and to treat militia fighters. The national army reportedly destroyed a UAE military shipment to the militia in Nyala, South Darfur.

According to military sources, the shipment included drones, ammunition, advanced rocket launchers, and sophisticated communications systems. At the beginning of the war, the RSF militia received military aid from the Wagner Group through the al-Khadim airbase in eastern Libya, which was controlled by General Haftar, the notorious UAE-backed warlord. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the Wagner Group also supplied the RSF with surface-to-air missiles.

The UAE is also the hub for the RSF militia’s social media team, which the militia brothers run to disinform the world about their ongoing genocides and violations. Previously, an investigative report revealed that a Dubai-based private equity firm was helping the militia lobby British parliamentarians and influence their opinions about the RSF militia’s crimes in the ongoing war.

An earlier article by Catrina Doxsee for Centre for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) tells you about Russian interests (20 April 2023). Interestingly both seem to be supporting RSF in Sudan though their interests diverge in other conflicts.

Most of all, Wagner (and by extension, Russia) has prioritized its two main interests in Sudan:

Gold mining: Building from the initial negotiations between Moscow and Khartoum, Meroe Gold—a subsidiary of M-Invest that operates locally as the Sudanese front company al-Solag—has built a network of gold mining and smuggling operations in Sudan. In addition to funding Wagner operations and generating profit, this gold smuggling has also helped to soften the blow of international sanctions against key Russian actors, particularly in the aftermath of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s primary interest in Sudan is to preserve these operations and network.

A Red Sea naval base: Russia has long desired basing access on the Red Sea. In late 2020, Moscow and Khartoum reached an agreement to establish a Russian naval base at Port Sudan. Per the agreement, the prospective base would host a naval logistics center and repair yard, up to 300 personnel, and four naval ships, including nuclear-powered vessels. The Sudanese transitional government paused plans to establish the naval base in April 2021, in part due to U.S. pressure. Even after the 2021 coup, the military government remained reluctant to revive the deal. Russia remains interested in establishing Red Sea access and likely hopes for a political outcome in which the ruling faction may allow basing plans to proceed.

The outcome of the ongoing power struggle in Sudan will impact the future of both of these key interests, and as a result, Wagner will likely try to shape the outcome in its own favor. Wagner maintains disinformation and security capabilities in Sudan that could be called into action, and further logistical support is likely to come from—or at least transit through—its other regional strongholds, notably its bases in Libya and the Central African Republic. Already, reports indicate that Khalifa Haftar—Wagner’s Libyan partner—has provided support to the RSF, amid rumors that Hemedti has called on Wagner for assistance. Pairing Wagner logistical support for the RSF with Haftar’s aid is an option that could allow Wagner to put a thumb on the scale while maintaining a layer of deniability.

The author says that Western actors should not take Wagner’s (or Russian) involvement as being in favour of one party or ideology. Forcing African nations to choose between them or Russia would most likely be seen as impinging on their sovereignty (or disrespect) and have adverse outcomes.

Foreign fighters, from neighbouring countries such as Chad are also involved in the fighting. This article is from Alexandra Bish for War On the Rocks (25 May 2023).

In 2010, Chad and Sudan struck a peace deal that created a joint border force to eliminate rebels from the area. Both countries also agreed to stop funding rebels fighting each other’s governments, which meant that Chadian rebel groups lost their safe haven and funding streams in Sudan. Conveniently, the 2011 Libyan revolution broke out the following year, and the ensuing war in Libya offered these groups opportunities to fight as mercenaries in that conflict. Over the past decade, Chadian rebel groups have made Libya their new home.

Libya, however, has begun to lose its appeal for these fighters just as the conflict and chaos in Sudan have created the possibility for them to relocate their operations there. Chadian rebels have had reduced incentives to stay in Libya since the October 2020 Libyan cease-fire agreement, which ultimately lowered opportunities for mercenary work. One of the key features of the peace agreement was — in the words of the then-acting head of the UN mission in Libya — “the departure of all mercenaries and foreign fighters from Libyan territory, air, land, and seas.” [..]

Meanwhile, Darfur is becoming ever more attractive for these groups. In Sudan, they could gain a potential new alliance and funding stream, similar to the one that rebels had with former Sudanese president Bashir. Ethnically Goran and Arab Chadian rebels, including those within the Front for Change and Concord in Chad, are likely to align themselves with General Hemeti’s Arab-dominated Rapid Support Forces, one of the two main belligerents in Sudan’s ongoing power struggle. Rebels from the Front for Change and Concord in Chad also have experience fighting alongside Darfurian fighters in Libya, which could also facilitate their relocation. Alliances, however, are never set in stone. In Libya, Chadian fighters crossed battle lines, aligning with rival factions for the right price.

A report from Mohammed Amin for the Middle East Eye from 17th May 2023 reports on Russian, Chadian and other regional actor (Libya, Central African Republic, Egypt) involvement in Sudan.

Chadian forces, including those government troops that have participated in joint Sudanese-Chadian forces on the border, support the SAF, leading the RSF to bring in more reinforcements from neighbouring countries.

Hemeti, whose family’s origins lie in Chad, has a cousin who is a Chadian general. But the RSF leader is feared by the Chadian government of Mahamat Idriss Deby, which does not want to see the Sudanese paramilitary leader extend his influence across the border and help enact regime change.

The deadly fighting in El Geneina, which is less than 30km from Sudan’s border with Chad, has seen Chadian fighters who are part of Arab militias taking arms against the Sudanese army.

A reason for so much regional/global involvement is the presence of gold. Gold is being looted at Sudanese expense (the story of many African countries really).

What Is the Humanitarian Situation?

Terrible.

There is of course displacement and hunger due to the war. There is also targeted attacks on non-Arab tribes leading to ethnic cleansing and genocide by Arab militias allied with the RSF who also engage in raping women and looting civilians in whatever area they are in. On the other side, the SAF conducts air raids and bombing without much care for civilian casualties, especially civilians among the non-Arab tribes (Mat Nashed for Al Jazeera—10 Nov 2023).

Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) besieged a camp for displaced people on November 2 after attacking a nearby army base in West Darfur. Over the next three days, the paramilitary group committed what may amount to the single largest mass killing since the civil war erupted in April.

Local monitors told Al Jazeera that about 1,300 people were killed, 2,000 injured and 310 remain missing.

“They went house to house to search for men and killed each one they found,” said Montesser Saddam*, who barely escaped the killing and arrived in Chad on Sunday. “There were so many corpses in the streets.”

The latest atrocities are part of a wider campaign by the RSF and its allied militias to eradicate the non-Arab Masalit tribe from West Darfur, according to activists and survivors.

Since the start of Sudan’s civil war, the United Nations and Western governments have condemned the systematic killing and displacement of the Masalit from their land. But the criticism and concern have not deterred the RSF from carrying out more atrocities.

Note: Many of the Arabs in Sudan would be racialised as Black in the US. They are Afro Arabs who became Arabicised following the Mahdian revolution of the nineteenth century. Tribes such as Masalit that refused to follow have been targeted. Both SAF and RSF have targeted them in the past; in fact, RSF’s origins is in the Janjaweed militia that Bashir strengthened to put down rebellions in Darfur (as the Al Jazeera guide and Nashed’s article above note).

The warring generals have also cracked down on resistance committees (mentioned above)—grass roots democratic networks that form the main infrastructure for aid, support and democracy in Sudan (Mat Nashed reports for Al Jazeera—9 Jan 2024).

When the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces captured Sudan’s second-largest city, Wad Madani, tens of thousands of people fled and sought safety in regions still under the army’s control.

Mohamad Osman* was among them, but military intelligence arrested him as he was trying to flee on December 27.

He was taken to a secret detention centre – commonly referred to as a “ghost house” in Sudan – where the army quickly found out that he was a member of the Kalakla resistance committee, one of many neighbourhood groups that spearheaded the pro-democracy movement before the war.

For five days, Osman was electrocuted and forced to look at seven corpses rotting on the cold concrete floor. He was going to be number eight.

Luckily, a friend in the military bailed him out.

Osman is one of dozens of Sudanese activists who have been arrested and tortured in ghost houses by military intelligence in recent weeks, even as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) threatens to defeat the army and capture all of Sudan.

“The first thing they asked him was if he was a member of the resistance committees,” said Fatma Noon*, a spokesperson for the Kalakla resistance committee. “We know they’re targeting us.”

Many of those being detained are members of the resistance committees, which played an instrumental role in organising mass protests to bring down Sudan’s autocratic former President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

Worst of all, there is hunger. El Pais article from a few days back notes the humanitarian situation.

Approximately five million Sudanese, 10.4% of a population of 48 million, are in emergency or Phase 4 of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the tool that measures food security worldwide. This is the level that precedes the declaration of famine, or Phase 5. In addition, almost 13 million are in Phase 3 or emergency, which means that close to 18 million people (about 37%) are experiencing hunger in Sudan. The WFP executive director, Cindy McCain, warned earlier this month that the war in the country could spark “the world’s largest hunger crisis.” [...]

According to UNICEF’s estimates, nearly 3.7 million children are projected to be “acutely malnourished this year” in Sudan. “At a hospital we visited, we saw malnourished children and their caregivers in total darkness because of electricity outages,” explains Jill Lawler, after her visit to Sudan. [...]

More than eight million people have been forced to flee their homes in Sudan since the civil war broke out on April 15, 2023, according to U.N. data. Of these, some two million Sudanese have sought refuge in bordering countries. The six million who have been displaced within the country join another three million from previous conflicts, who have been unable to return owing to the continued deteriorating security situation. “One in eight of the world’s internally displaced persons is Sudanese,” says the U.N., which means the country has the “world’s largest displacement crisis.”

Meanwhile, the aid is barely trickling in. Whatever aid there is, both RSF and SAF have been trying to block it as Virginia Pietromarchi reports for Al Jazeera (29th March 2024).

A UN source, who asked that their name be withheld due to the subject’s sensitivity, said both warring sides are posing obstacles, trying to prevent food from getting to areas controlled by their rival.

The army has imposed bureaucratic hurdles: An aid convoy in Port Sudan, under the control of the army, needs five different stamps before being able to move to reach civilians in need – a process that can take from days to weeks, the source said. In January, more than 70 trucks were left waiting for clearance for more than two weeks.

Al Jazeera reached out to an army representative to ask whether it prevented aid from reaching areas under RSF’s control. By the time of publication, the army had not replied.

Where the paramilitaries hold sway, the RSF’s command and control structures make it challenging to facilitate access on the ground, due to a lack of communication between those on the ground and higher-up officials within the RSF.

More than 70 aid trucks have been stuck in North Kordofan state since October, the source said, in an area the army controls but surrounded by RSF. The convoy cannot leave unless their safe passage is guaranteed through some form of taxation, be it money, goods or fuel.

RSF spokesperson, Abdel Rahman al-Jaali, did not respond to written questions about whether his forces are profiteering from aid convoys as alleged.

The UNOCHA page on Sudan says that only 5.39% of the requirement in Sudan has been funded (click the Funding Update tab for details). That we can say is a failure of the international community.

Beyond that, you might look at the relaxation or lack thereof of rules of immigration for refugees to see both neglect and discrimination (a topic for another diary in the series).

That is the basic overview. It was getting long, so I will stop here but I hope did give you some intro.

If you want to keep up with Sudan, apart from Al Jazeera, Sky News, and Guardian have had some reporting. But Al Jazeera has been the only one that has had regular updates. In addition, you could also check out Sudan Tribune. I will share some of the people that you could follow in comments along with updates from Tigray, Syria etc.

All right then. Until, next Wednesday, everyone. Stay safe. Be well. Let me know if you are Sudanese or an expert and find something erroneous here.

May we always have space in our hearts for people from other lands and places and their well being.

Nonfiction Views: A Black-owned bookstore closing after threats, and this week's new nonfiction

DebtorsPrison for Readers and Book Lovers

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday April 03, 2024 · 3:17 AM PDT

2024/04/03 · 03:17

BOOK NEWS

Liberation Station, a Black-owned children’s bookstore in Raleigh, North Carolina, is closing less than a year after it opened to to continuing threats. It is hoping to relocate.

Black-owned children's bookstore in Raleigh moving after threats, owner says

Liberation Station opened on Juneteenth 2023 at 208 Fayetteville St. on the second floor of the Efird's building. The bright, intimate space hosts events and sells children’s books written and illustrated by Black and underrepresented authors and illustrators.

"Unfortunately, we live in a country that has given permission to the nameless and faceless people to make threats and cause harm, emotional harm," owner Victoria Scott-Miller said.

On Monday, Scott-Miller posted on Instagram that the bookstore will leave its space on April 30 after receiving "numerous threats." Scott-Miller is a mother of two boys and said one concerning phone call mentioned her eldest son.

"Since September, we’ve faced numerous threats following the opening of our store," Scott-Miller wrote. "Some we brushed off, while others included a disturbing phone call detailing what our son Langston wore when he was at the shop alone."

My new monthly themed 20% off promo is up, featuring environmental books for all ages in this Earth Day month of April. The books will be discounted all month.

THIS WEEK’S NOTABLE NEW NONFICTION

All book links in this diary are to my online bookstore The Literate Lizard. If you already have a favorite indie bookstore, please keep supporting them, but If you’re able to throw a little business my way, that would be truly appreciated. I would love to be considered ‘The Official Bookstore of Daily Kos.’ Use the coupon code DAILYKOS for 15% off your order, in gratitude for your support (an ever-changing smattering of new releases are already discounted 20% each week). I’m busily adding new content every day, and will have lots more dedicated subject pages and curated booklists as it grows. I want it to be full of book-lined rabbit holes to lose yourself in (and maybe throw some of those books into a shopping cart as well.)

We also partner Libro.fm for audiobooks. Libro.fm is similar to Amazon’s Audible, with a la carte audiobooks, or a $14.99 monthly membership which includes the audiobook of your choice and 20% off subsequent purchases during the month. Note that the DAILYKOS coupon code is only for the bookstore, not for the audiobook affiliate.

READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE

DAY	TIME EST/EDT	SERIES	EDITOR(S)
SUNDAY	4:00 PM	Let’s Talk BOOKS	Angela Marx
	6:00 PM	Young People’s Pavilion	The Book Bear
(LAST SUN OF THE MONTH)	7:30 PM	LGBTQ Literature	Chrislove
MONDAY	8:00 PM	The Language of the Night	DrLori
TUESDAY	8:00 PM	Contemporary Fiction Views	bookgirl
	10:00 PM	Nonfiction Views	DebtorsPrison
WEDNESDAY	8:00 PM	Bookchat	cfk et al.
THURSDAY	8:00 PM	Write On!	SensibleShoes
(FIRST THURS OF MONTH)	2:00 PM	Monthly Bookpost	AdmiralNaismith
FRIDAY	7:30 AM	WAYR?	Chitown Kev
(OCCASIONALLY)	8:00 PM	Books Go Boom!	Brecht
	9:30 PM	Classic Poetry Group	Angmar
SATURDAY	Noon	You Can't Read That! or Paul's Book Reviews	pwoodford
	9:00 PM	Books So Bad They’re Good*	Ellid (*on temporary hiatus)

If you’re not already following Readers and Book Lovers, please go to our homepage (link), find the top button in the left margin, and click it to FOLLOW GROUP. Thank You and Welcome, to the most followed group on Daily Kos. Now you’ll get all our R&BLers diaries in your stream.

Black Kos Tuesday: The gold-plated calf

Black Kos for Black Kos community

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday April 02, 2024 · 2:00 PM PDT

2024/04/02 · 14:00

"The Israelites Dancing around the Golden Calf" by Sébastien Bourdon (~1645)

A comment about golden calves by Chitown Kev

I wanted to do something else for this space today but I also need to digest the material just a bit more. My “backup plan” is also covered, I see.

I will say this:

I’m not a religious person at all but I will always acknowledge that Black culture and my own biography is stitched through and through with religious themes. So I find it really offensive that the shoe salesman would hawk bibles for $59.99 on any day and during any week, much less Holy Week.

Though to be honest, I am neither surprised nor shocked that The Grifter would grift.

I’m not even angry about that. Now.

I’m angry at the (mostly) white Christian people that condemn nearly everything about modern society (including the person that I am for daring to be proud for who I am) but yet feel free to participate in old sin: the worship at the feet of a golden calf.

Heck, it’s not even a gold calf. It’s a gold-plated calf as if it were bought off of a man selling them The Deuce.

I was taught better. I remember better. I know better.

Not that these people didn’t always show themselves, but I can see them clearer than ever before.

And I am disgusted.

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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor

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A century of history of Black country music, explained by Alice Randall. VOX: Beyoncé’s country roots

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If you somehow haven’t heard: Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, her eighth studio album and the much-anticipated sequel to Renaissance, drops on Friday. Its lead single “Texas Hold ‘Em” made history when it debuted at the top of the country charts last month.

“I feel honored to be the first Black woman with the number one single on the Hot Country Songs chart,” Beyoncé wrote in an Instagram post last week.

With this album, she’s not just racking up downloads and inspiring TikTok dances, she’s also drawing attention to the whitewashing of a genre that has long silenced its Black voices — and, predictably, drawing backlash from country music gatekeepers.

For over a century, Black artists have been central to country music — and for just as long, their work has been overlooked or under-compensated by the predominantly white country music establishment.

Just ask songwriter, educator, and New York Times bestselling novelist Alice Randall. She’s the first Black woman to co-write a No. 1 country song, with Trisha Yearwood’s 1995 hit “XXX’s and OOO’s,” and has written many other country hits ... all of which were performed by white artists.

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Between January 2023 and mid-March, more than 14,300 Black kidney transplant candidates have had their wait times modified, by an average of two years, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. The grio: A biased test kept thousands of Black people from getting a kidney transplant. It’s finally changing

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Jazmin Evans had been waiting for a new kidney for four years when her hospital revealed shocking news: She should have been put on the transplant list in 2015 instead of 2019 — and a racially biased organ test was to blame.

As upsetting as that notification was, it also was part of an unprecedented move to mitigate the racial inequity. Evans is among more than 14,000 Black kidney transplant candidates so far given credit for lost waiting time, moving them up the priority list for their transplant.

“I remember just reading that letter over and over again,” said Evans, 29, of Philadelphia, who shared the notice in a TikTok video to educate other patients. “How could this happen?”

At issue is a once widely used test that overestimated how well Black people’s kidneys were functioning, making them look healthier than they really were — all because of an automated formula that calculated results for Black and non-Black patients differently. That race-based equation could delay diagnosis of organ failure and evaluation for a transplant, exacerbating other disparities that already make Black patients more at risk of needing a new kidney but less likely to get one.

A few years ago, the National Kidney Foundation and American Society of Nephrology prodded laboratories to switch to race-free equations in calculating kidney function. Then the U.S. organ transplant network ordered hospitals to use only race-neutral test results in adding new patients to the kidney waiting list.

LEONARDTOWN, MARYLAND - MAY 01: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY) A member of the dialysis prepares to treat a patient with coronavirus in the intensive care unit at a hospital on May 1, 2020 in Leonardtown, Maryland. The coronavirus death toll in D.C., Virginia and Maryland surpassed 2,000 people on Friday as the District recorded its largest number of daily infections thus far. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

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The town of Newbern saw white officials deny its first Black mayor, Patrick Braxton, from exercising his duties for three years. The Guardian: Alabama town that hasn’t held elections in decades sued to allow voting

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The town of Newbern, Alabama, has not had a political election in the last several decades. But that could all change this November if a new motion is successful.

The Legal Defense Fund (LDF), an organization that focuses on racial and civil rights, along with an Alabama-based private law firm, filed a preliminary injunction to force Newbern, a town of about 133 people, to hold elections and allow its citizens to vote for the first time in years.

The town, about an hour and a half away from Montgomery, captured national attention last summer, after white officials had refused for three years to allow Patrick Braxton, the first Black mayor in Newbern’s history, to exercise his mayoral duties.

Newbern is about 80% Black and 20% white, but the town’s leadership, with the exception of Braxton and his town council, has been majority white for years. The defendants in the lawsuit, including the previous mayor and council, have refused to hold elections.

“[They’re] so stuck in their ways and don’t want nothing else for the town. They just want it to stay the same,” Braxton said last year. “I hope they break and just go ahead and release everything to me. If not, we’ll just go to court.”

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After 25 years, Angélica Sorrosa Alvarado is the last staff member left at Museo de las Culturas Afromestizas. She fears that soon it will be forced to close its doors. The Guardian: ‘There are children here who do not want to be black’: one woman’s bid to save Mexico’s first Afro-Mexican museum

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Angélica Sorrosa Alvarado is the curator, manager, tour guide, administrator, caretaker and cleaner at the Museo de las Culturas Afromestizas (Museum of Afro-Mexican Culture) in Cuajinicuilapa. “I am alone,” she says, gesturing at the cavernous halls of the museum, which she describes as “one of my proudest achievements”.

In the Costa Chica region, which is home to Mexico’s largest population of African-Mexicans, the museum is unique in the country. When it opened 25 years ago, it was heralded as recognition of the more than 2.5 million Afro-Mexicans in a country that had long overlooked them.

Now, however, the museum is now facing closure. Unpaid for 15 years and deserted by the founding committee who helped her create the space in 1999, Alvarado, 62, is fearful that she will soon have to retire. “They all left and now I am old and alone here,” she says.

Inside, painstakingly detailed dioramas depict white men flogging naked black figures, enslaved people who were brought to Mexico from Africa by the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century. Etchings show hundreds of black people labouring in silver mines and plantations, and drawings show bodies hanging from wooden gallows.

As the exhibits move through the years towards the present day, a powerful and resistant identity emerges. Brightly coloured murals show Afro-Mexican cowboys on horseback next to flamboyant masks of devil-dancers, which symbolise slave resistance. There are paintings of Vincente Guerrero, Mexico’s second president. Guerrero, who was of African descent, abolished slavery in 1829 – 36 years before the US.

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A new drought has left millions facing hunger in southern Africa as they experience the effects of extreme weather that scientists say is becoming more frequent and more damaging. Associated Press: Extreme drought in southern Africa leaves millions hungry

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Delicately and with intense concentration, Zanyiwe Ncube poured her small share of precious golden cooking oil into a plastic bottle at a food aid distribution site deep in rural Zimbabwe.

“I don’t want to lose a single drop,” she said.

Her relief at the handout — paid for by the United States government as her southern African country deals with a severe drought — was tempered when aid workers gently broke the news that this would be their last visit.

Ncube and her 7-month-old son she carried on her back were among 2,000 people who received rations of cooking oil, sorghum, peas and other supplies in the Mangwe district in southwestern Zimbabwe. The food distribution is part of a program funded by American aid agency USAID and rolled out by the United Nations’ World Food Programme.

They’re aiming to help some of the 2.7 million people in rural Zimbabwe threatened with hunger because of the drought that has enveloped large parts of southern Africa since late 2023. It has scorched the crops that tens of millions of people grow themselves and rely on to survive, helped by what should be the rainy season.

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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH

IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF.

Black Kos, Week In Review ~ Baltimore's mayor is a young Black man. Cue the hatred...

Black Kos for Black Kos community

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday March 29, 2024 · 2:01 PM PDT

2024/03/29 · 14:01

Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar

Racists, especially emboldened MAGA racists, will never pass up on an opportunity to show and share their racism. It’s just what they do and who they are.

Tuesday morning, we woke up to the news that the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Maryland had collapsed overnight after it was hit by a container ship. While transportation officers were able to close the bridge before the impact, and thus save lives, workers on site were not that lucky. Six of them died that early morning. As often happens when tragedy strikes, the officials of federal, state, and local governments will hold press conferences and do their part to calm, reassure, and inform the public. And so it was that the country at large was introduced to the mayor of Baltimore, Brandon Maurice Scott.

The 39-year-old mayor was elected in 2020 during the height of the COVID pandemic.

Brandon Maurice Scott is an American politician serving as the mayor of Baltimore, Maryland, since 2020. The city of Baltimore uses a strong mayor-council structure for their government, meaning Scott holds strong mayoral powers. He is the former president of the Baltimore City Council and was a candidate for lieutenant governor of Maryland in 2018, as well as a representative for Baltimore's second district.^[3] On May 6, 2019, Scott was elected to replace Jack Young as council president after Young succeeded Mayor Catherine Pugh.^[4] In September 2019, Scott announced his candidacy for mayor^[5] and won the June 2020 Democratic primary.^[6] Scott won the November 3 general election and took office on December 8, 2020…

… as expected, he won the November 3, 2020, general election in a landslide, with a nearly 3-to-1 margin over his nearest opponent

He has drawn some high praise for his command of the issues and the masterful way he’s handled the reporters at the press conferences:

In a video shared by the Daily Mail, the 39-year-old mayor was answering questions about the bridge collapse when he was asked: "How long is it going to take to rebuild [the bridge]?"

Immediately, Mayor Scott responds: "We shouldn't even be having that discussion right now. The discussion right now should be about the people, the souls, the lives that we're trying to save."

"There will be a time to discuss about a bridge and how we get a bridge back up, but right now there are people in the water that we have to get out. And that's the only thing that we should be talking about," he concluded.

And he's received nothing but praise online.

That last statement, I wish that were true. The, “He’s received nothing but praise online,” that is. It didn’t take long for racists to notice him and to take to social media to share their uninformed, malicious, bigoted, and idiotic opinions. “DEI hire” was the most oft-used phrase, which, in less tense times, would be laughable in its idiocy. For those who don’t know, Elon “Apartheid Man” Musk has been waging a fierce battle against DEI & “woke” on the fully functioning platform he bought, renamed, rebranded, and is now claiming credit for. He’s made it fashionable for users of that site to indulge in their most hateful fantasies. Thus, the ghouls were out in full frothing force over the last few days.

The DEI-Klan is so mad that Maryland has a Black Governor, a Black Mayor of Baltimore City. Just wait until they find out we have a Black Speaker of the House of Delegates, 2 Black County Execs and a Black Attorney General.

All Elected by the people. Stay mad! pic.twitter.com/MWNTeHKKdr
— Candidly Tiff (@tify330) March 26, 2024

Nothing scrambles the hateful mess in racists’ craniums like the notion that Black people have money or power. Nothing is guaranteed to send them into an apoplectic frenzy quicker than successful Black folks. Racists really do believe the lies they’ve told themselves for some five centuries. And who can blame them, really? Centuries of brainwashing: of claiming inventions you know you borrowed, of discovering places that weren’t lost, of claiming you built things you inherited, of claiming you scaled heights to which you were carried… Damn, if I were you, I’d start to think that I’m all that, too, and everybody else is a whole lot less.

MAGA is labeling DEI and Black people as; we didn't earn it? Who's going to tell them? 👇🏾 pic.twitter.com/mfRFkBFhAr
— Kenny Akers (@KeneAkers) March 28, 2024

In the wake of the accident, we see a young Black governor and a young Black mayor masterfully doing their jobs competently, professionally, and with empathy. They proved that they are equal to the task, and racists are mad. They can stay mad.

Mayor Brandon Scott with a strong clap back…… Bravo sir’ 👏🏾👇🏾 pic.twitter.com/5mIFGGafyS
— Kenny Akers (@KeneAkers) March 28, 2024

A word about those who died: As far as we know, the people who lost their lives as a result of the accident on Tuesday morning, were all workers. Some of them, we are told, may even have been undocumented. Workers who were out there fixing potholes in the middle of the night so that citizens—Republicans, Democrats, and Independents—could drive safely over that bridge. They do not deserve the hate and contempt that grotesque right wing trolls are so gleefully dumping on them. They deserve our thanks. We call their names: Maynor, Miguel, Dorlian, José, Alejandro, and the unnamed sixth man. We honor them. May they all rest in peace. Sending fortifying energy for their loved ones.

A call to action:

Fight back against the racist attacks on Mayor Scott. Donate to his re-election campaignhttps://t.co/Wh8jd6bncE https://t.co/FakocCYYEV
— Denise Oliver-Velez 💛 (@Deoliver47) March 28, 2024

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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor

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failed Republican presidential CANDIDATE DeSantis, no longer in the spotlight has threatened TO send more REFUGEES TO MARTHA’S VINEYARD, only this time Haitian refugees are his target. NPR: DeSantis is prepping for a wave of Haitian migrants. Advocates say he's grandstanding

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More than a half million Haitians live in Florida. For decades, the state has been a primary destination for people fleeing political turmoil and economic hardship on the island. Florida's large Haitian-American community is closely monitoring the crisis. Tessa Petit. who was born and raised in Haiti now directs the Florida Immigrant Coalition, an advocacy group. She's been in touch with people on the island and says, "Folks in Haiti are living in complete panic. Supermarkets don't have food. People are running out of food. There's no electricity. Communication is very difficult. And people are living in fear."

DeSantis says the Guard troops he's sending, along with state law enforcement officers will help intercept any migrants who attempt to come from Haiti to the U.S. by boat and then turn them over to the Coast Guard. "Given the situation that's happening in Haiti," he says, "some brutal reports that are happening, we want to make sure we're protecting Floridians."

DeSantis was speaking at a news conference where he signed measures to crack down on undocumented immigrants in Florida. Later that day, in an interview on Fox News, he again spoke of the potential threat to Florida posed by any surge of migrants from Haiti. "We want to be prepared," he said. "I was asked today at our press conference, 'Why are you doing this when there has not actually yet been a massive influx?' I said, 'What are you supposed to do, wait for it to happen?' So, we're putting our assets in place to be able to defend the state."

The Coast Guard says it has intercepted and returned about 130 migrants to Haiti since October. And it has not seen a rise in interdictions since the recent violence began there.

Petit says she's been disappointed by the way DeSantis and other Republicans are framing a humanitarian crisis for one of the U.S.'s closest neighbors.

Republican U.S. presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis prepares meals, as he campaigns at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S. August 12, 2023. REUTERS/Scott Morgan REFILE - QUALITY UPDATE TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

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Instagram follower counts indicate Bachelor Nation doesn’t care as much about leads and contestants of color. VOX: The Bachelor has a notorious influencer pipeline — but only for white contestants

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Previous Bachelorettes and contestants have been able to unlock high follower counts and opportunities. JoJo Fletcher, a contestant on the 20th season of The Bachelor in 2016 and the lead on the 12th season of The Bachelorette that same year, has 2.6 million followers on Instagram and hosts regular product giveaways through partnerships with home furniture brand Abbyson Home and others. She’s also founded a spirits company, launched home decor and clothing lines, hosted a reality TV show for the USA Network, and partnered with brands such as recipe platform Yummly and Walmart. Season 23 contestant and former 2019 bachelorette Hannah Brown boasts 2.7 million followers on Instagram, and has erected an empire with a Dancing with the Stars season win, New York Times bestselling books, a podcast, and recent sponsorship deals with beverage company Flying Embers, cheese brand Athenos, and pharma giant AstraZeneca.

Follower count is directly correlated to a contestant’s screen time and the nature of the screen time they receive. More screen time means a greater chance of being known to viewers, although a negative storyline usually hurts follower count (but can sometimes help). Ultimately, though, follower counts reveal who the fan base is excited about. “We fall in love with these contestants when they’re on the show. And when we follow them, we want insights into their lives. We want to live with them,” said Somers. “This is the purpose of reality TV, for us to live in somebody else’s life and experience their stories and find a way to relate.”

“Instagram follower counts aren’t everything, but they give us a sense of whose stories we are invested in and whose stories we want to continue to follow,” said Tabron.

Data across seasons, collected in real time by Somers, supports the idea that Bachelor Nation is not as interested in following contestants of color online.

Somers noticed the racial trend when she first began collecting data during Colton Underwood’s 2019 season of The Bachelor. Contestant Tayshia Adams, who is Black and would go on to become the franchise’s second Black lead in 2020 after Rachel Lindsay in 2017, did not gain the kind of following that white contestants on the season did.

“The trend was that if you got a one-on-one date, that would translate to more followers. But that didn’t hold with Tayshia,” Somers said. “Even with someone as beautiful and amazing as Tayshia, if you are white, you are going to get more followers than if you are not white.”

Though Tayshia has now built her Instagram following to 1.4 million (the only Black lead to have more than 1 million followers), it’s important to view her growth in comparison to her white counterparts in real time. During Colton’s season, the final four women were Cassie Randolph, Hannah Godwin, Caelynn Miller-Keyes, and Tayshia; all three white women had follower counts that fell between about 500,000 and 700,000, while Tayshia had less than 100,000.

“You will not find a season where a person of color contestant is ahead of all the other white contestants, even if they’re [finalists],” said Somers.

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Scott shared his thoughts on Wednesday with MSNBC’s Joy Reid. The Root: Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott Says Black Men Are The 'Bogeyman' To Racists Following DEI Attacks

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Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott is speaking out against the racists who called him the “DEI mayor” after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed earlier this week. The tragedy happened early Tuesday morning when a cargo ship lost power and crashed into the bridge.

There were six people presumed deceased, but the focus for certain conservative social media users—including Utah Rep. Phil Lyman and Florida congressional candidate Anthony Sabatini—was finding a way to blame diversity, equity and inclusion for the catastrophe.

On Wednesday, Scott sat down with MSNBC’s Joy Reid to discuss the online attacks. “I know, and we know, and you know very well that Black men—and young Black men in particular—have been the bogeyman for those who are racist and think that only straight, wealthy white men should have a say in anything,” he stated.

Scott also explained that he didn’t receive a special appointment to his position because of his race—he was literally elected to office. In fact, the 39-year-old politician served on the city council before becoming mayor in 2020. Scott won more than 70 percent of the vote.

“We’ve been the bogeyman for [racists] since the first day they brought us to this country, and what they mean by DEI in my opinion is duly elected incumbent,” he said.

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The force police used wasn’t considered lethal, but more than 1,000 people died and a third of them were Black. Associated Press: Why did more than 1,000 people die after police subdued them with force that isn’t meant to kill?

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Carl Grant, a Vietnam veteran with dementia, wandered out of a hospital room to charge a cellphone he imagined he had. When he wouldn’t sit still, the police officer escorting Grant body-slammed him, ricocheting the patient’s head off the floor.

Taylor Ware, a former Marine and aspiring college student, walked the grassy grounds of an interstate rest stop trying to shake the voices in his head. After Ware ran from an officer, he was attacked by a police dog, jolted by a stun gun, pinned on the ground and injected with a sedative.

And Donald Ivy Jr., a former three-sport athlete, left an ATM alone one night when officers sized him up as suspicious and tried to detain him. Ivy took off, and police tackled and shocked him with a stun gun, belted him with batons and held him facedown.

Each man was unarmed. Each was not a threat to public safety. And despite that, each died after police used a kind of force that is not supposed to be deadly — and can be much easier to hide than the blast of an officer’s gun.

Every day, police rely on common tactics that, unlike guns, are meant to stop people without killing them, such as physical holds, Tasers and body blows. But when misused, these tactics can still end in death — as happened with George Floyd in 2020, sparking a national reckoning over policing. And while that encounter was caught on video, capturing Floyd’s last words of “I can’t breathe,” many others throughout the United States have escaped notice.

Over a decade, more than 1,000 people died after police subdued them through means not intended to be lethal, an investigation led by The Associated Press found. In hundreds of cases, officers weren’t taught or didn’t follow best safety practices for physical force and weapons, creating a recipe for death.

Protesters hold signs and flags during a demonstration against police brutality in front of the Fraternal Order of Police in Columbus, Ohio on December 28, 2020. - A white police officer who shot dead a Black man in Columbus, Ohio, last week was fired on December 28, city officials said..The death of Andre Maurice Hill triggered outrage in a country that has been racked by protests against police brutality and systemic racism since the spring. (Photo by STEPHEN ZENNER / AFP) (Photo by STEPHEN ZENNER/AFP via Getty Images)

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Slow walking cases is another consequence of 2016. Associated Press: South Carolina to hold 2024 congressional elections with map previously ruled unconstitutional

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A federal court on Thursday ruled that this year’s congressional elections in South Carolina will be held under a map that it had already deemed unconstitutional and discriminatory against Black voters, with time running out ahead of voting deadlines and a lack of a decision on the case by the Supreme Court.

In an order, a panel of three federal judges from South Carolina wrote that “with the primary election procedures rapidly approaching, the appeal before the Supreme Court still pending, and no remedial plan in place, the ideal must bend to the practical.”

South Carolina’s primary elections are June 11, and early voting starts May 28. The deadline for overseas absentee ballots is April 27, ahead of which the judges wrote that it’s “plainly impractical” to make changes to the maps.

The case hinges on South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, currently held by Republican Rep. Nancy Mace. Last year, the same three-judge panel ordered South Carolina to redraw the district, which runs from Charleston to Hilton Head Island, after finding that the state used race as a proxy for partisan affiliation in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

When Mace first won her election in 2020, she edged out Democratic incumbent Rep. Joe Cunningham — who two years earlier had been the first Democrat to flip a House seat in South Carolina in 30 years — by 1%, under 5,400 votes. In 2022, following redistricting driven by the 2020 census results, Mace won reelection by 14%.

After South Carolina’s Legislature, which Republicans lead, redrew the district, civil rights groups swiftly filed a lawsuit, charging state lawmakers with choosing “perhaps the worst option of the available maps” for Black voters, arguing they had removed Black voters and made it a safer seat for Republicans.

Map of South Carolina's congressional districts that were enacted by Republicans following the 2020 census.

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Ministers condemn allegedly racist remarks and say they knew about them only after signing deal. The Guardian: Jamaica condemns Frank Hester’s Diane Abbott comments amid concern over contract

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The Jamaican government has joined widespread condemnation of comments by the Conservative’s party’s biggest donor, Frank Hester, amid concerns about a contract it signed with his digital health company.

Earlier in March, the Guardian revealed that during a meeting in 2019 Hester had said Diane Abbott, Britain’s first black female MP, made you “want to hate all black women” and that she “should be shot”, remarks that are now subject of an investigation by West Yorkshire police.

After the publication of the remarks, Jamaica’s health ministry has faced calls to cancel a deal, worth a reported $5m (£4m), for Hester’s healthcare technology company, TPP, to manage the country’s digital medical records.

In its first comments on the issue, Jamaica’s ministry of health and wellness (MOHW) said in a statement that it “condemns any form of discriminatory behaviour, including racism and sexism”, the Jamaica Gleaner reported.

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Students and staff snatched by gunmen from school in Kaduna state freed days before ransom deadline. The Guardian: Nigerian army rescues students abducted earlier this month

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The Nigerian army has rescued students and staff who were abducted by gunmen from a school in the country’s north earlier this month, the military said, days before the deadline for a ransom payment.

School officials and residents had said 287 students were taken on 7 March in the town of Kuriga, in the north-western state of Kaduna. A military spokesperson said 137 hostages – 76 female and 61 male – were rescued in the early hours of Sunday in the neighbouring state of Zamfara.

“In the early hours of 24 March 2024, the military, working with local authorities and government agencies across the country in a coordinated search and rescue operation, rescued the hostages,” Maj Gen Edward Buba said in a statement.

A security source said the students had been freed in a forest and were being escorted to Kaduna’s capital for medical tests before being reunited with their families.

The governor of Kaduna, Uba Sani, earlier put the number of people kidnapped at more than 200. Given the discrepancies in numbers reported, it was unclear whether any hostages remained in the kidnappers’ hands. Some Kuriga elders said Sani had told them all hostages had been freed.

Jibrin Aminu, a spokesperson for the Kuriga parents, said he would clarify numbers on Monday, when families had been given the chance to “take account of their kidnapped children”.

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VP Kamala Harris Roundup - "We are ambitious. Yes, we are impatient."

lpeacock

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday March 26, 2024 · 5:42 AM PDT

2024/03/26 · 05:42

Vice President Kamala Harris’ week, featured a variety of issues, starting Mon. Mar 18, honoring women at the Women's History Month Reception at the White House, speaking to climate change and environmental issues in a moderated conversation with Senator Cory Booker at the League of Conservation Voters Capital Dinner ( Wed. Mar 20), visiting Puerto Rico (Fri. Mar. 22) to address the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to support the island’s recovery and renewal, ending in Parkland, Florida (Sat. Mar 23) to address gun safety and work to reduce gun violence. Throughout her speeches, there was a common theme of progress made, more work to do, an urgency to do so and an appeal to not go backward.

From VP Harris’ remarks at the Women’s History Month Reception at the White House, after listing a number of achievements (cancelling student loan debt for millions of women, investing in women entrepreneurs and small business owners & lowering the cost of healthcare, including the cost of insulin for seniors):

But even as we lift up the women and all people of our nation, there are those who are intent on dragging us backward.

Because my mother never asked anyone permission to pursue her dreams, within one generation, I stand before you as the first woman Vice President of the United States. pic.twitter.com/yVSeC22JGM
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) March 21, 2024

YouTube Video

From VP Harris’ remarks at the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) Capital Dinner:

President Biden and I have taken historic action to combat the climate crisis.

I joined @SenBooker and @LCVoters tonight to discuss the work we have done to enact the largest climate investment in history. pic.twitter.com/SOES5Idh6R
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) March 21, 2024

VP: So, yes, we have achieved a lot. [In an aside — it’s like a CVS receipt.]

But I will say what everyone here knows: I do believe strongly that this is a very decisive decade that we’re in. And the moment now is to be bold, unapologetic, ambitious —

Senator Booker: Yes. Yes.

VP: — and have a sense of optimism, knowing what is possible.

Vice President Kamala Harris addresses League of Conservation Voters’ Dinner. (video)

Excited to join @VP Harris this week and all the great people working to protect our environment, address climate change and advance environmental justice at the League of Conservation Voters. President Biden and VP Harris have done more than any other administration in history… pic.twitter.com/P3ryV441Up
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) March 24, 2024

In Puerto Rico:

Secretary Jennifer Granholm introducing VP Harris: We are so grateful that you are here to inspect the work. I hope that it meets with your satisfaction. You want to see it go faster, I know, because she’s impatient; she wants results!

VP Harris in her concluding remarks: “I see we are making a difference. There is still more work to do.” “We are ambitious. Yes, we are impatient.”

While in Puerto Rico, I visited María’s new home that was rebuilt with federal dollars and upgraded to include solar and water storage technology.

These new features are critical to building climate resilience and achieving Puerto Rico’s goal of 100% clean energy. pic.twitter.com/ig9I8wDhq3
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) March 23, 2024

YouTube Video

VP Kamala Harris’ remarks start at 7:37 minutes.

After her remarks, VP Harris visited La Goyco Community Center at the old Pedro G. Goyco School in Santurce, Puerto Rico.

While at La Goyco Community Center, I met with some of Puerto Rico's brightest artists and community leaders.

It was an honor to visit as Vice President, and I thank you for sharing the art and culture of the island with me. pic.twitter.com/nX0v41ICVX
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) March 23, 2024

Organizations made recommendations on how the federal government can better support community-led initiatives such as advancing LGBTQ+ and gender equity protections, promoting reproductive rights, preventing community displacement, and eliminating barriers to federal funding. pic.twitter.com/c5ueT4mVsr
— Hispanic Federation (@HispanicFed) March 23, 2024

We must take advantage of every chance we have to speak directly to decision-makers about the complex challenges facing PR and uplift community-led solutions.

Thank you @VP Harris for taking the time to listen and to be sensitive to the issues that matter to the community. pic.twitter.com/3HInGWD7YW
— Hispanic Federation (@HispanicFed) March 23, 2024

There were also protests to VP Kamala Harris’ visit to Puerto Rico by people who want independence, independentistas. For a great review of politics in Puerto Rico, see Denise Oliver-Velez's Caribbean Matters: The winds of political change are blowing in Puerto Rico. VP Harris’ visit fell on the same day that Puerto Rico marks the abolition of slavery and just after members of the newly formed, La Alianza (see Denise’s diary) were kicked off the ballot. Here’s a good article by AP correspondent, Danica Coto: Kamala Harris marks first visit to Puerto Rico as vice president, riling some in the US territory. There will be more in the comments I will be posting.

At Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida:

And, we must be willing to have the courage to say that on every level, whether you talk about changing laws, or changing practices and protocols, that we must do better.

You know, there are only about 21 states that have passed red flag laws. So, part of why I am here today is to challenge every state. Pass a red flag law. Of the states, that have passed red flag laws, approximately 21, only 6, have taken up the offer we have made, through our administration, of federal resources to help them with the training and the implementation of these red flag laws. Of the 21, that have passed red flag laws, I challenge the others: Come on over. We’ve got some resources for you to help you implement the work you have done, which has been the work of a leader on this tragic issue.

The memory of what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas will never be erased.

Inspired by the community's courage, let us find it within ourselves to do more.

We know what works: Universal background checks. Red flag laws. An assault weapons ban. Now, legislators must act. pic.twitter.com/ofeQLoMS3x
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) March 24, 2024

YouTube Video

Through advocacy born of tragedy, the Parkland community organized to enact a red flag law in Florida.@POTUS and I have made resources available to help every state implement this commonsense solution. I challenge the 29 states without a red flag law to step up and save lives. pic.twitter.com/GFJm9xhmsc
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) March 25, 2024

Reminder: VP Kamala Harris Roundup is a weekly series, published on Tuesdays at 8 AM ET. Please share widely. For daily updates, see my MVP Kamala Harris comments in the Abbreviated Pundit Roundup.

VOTE and GOTV! “When we fight, we win!” — VP Kamala Harris

Dear Black America

40ford

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday March 23, 2024 · 11:37 PM PDT

2024/03/23 · 23:37

I did not comment on Black History month this year. I celebrated instead by reading “The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story” created by Nikole Hannah-Jones. Practically none of what I read was taught in several high schools and the few colleges I attended culminating in a degree from The College of William and Mary. All that education varied little from the Nikki Haley version of an American Civil War not caused by slavery.

Apologies

Iam a 76-year-old white man born and raised in Kentucky, the last state to ratify the 14^thamendment... in 1976. At age 36 having been married and divorced, served in the Navy, and gotten a degree from the second oldest institution of higher education in America without looking back, I sold my meager possessions, climbed into my friend’s1961 Chevelle with him, his brother, and his brother’s girlfriend headed to California. I was moving out of the South for the first time in my life. Everything I owned was in that car.

Unbeknownst to me the trunk, the invisible cartop carrier, and every crevice of our metallic pickle colored conveyance was filled to overflowing with racial baggage, mine and theirs. Since then, I have worked to unpack and jettison the contents of those invisible bags. Along the way, just when I thought I had finally rid myself of my last valise of bigotry, I would whiff that familiar musty rancor of intolerance my family, without knowing it, so lovingly passed along to me. Again, it would be time to disconnect those prejudicial feelings from the reality where I lived. I would like to apologize to African Americans everywhere for not making more progress in erasing my bigotry.

Thank you for your service!

It has become a fashionable way to acknowledge people like me who have been in the military. My belated response to Black History month 2024, then, is to thank Black America for their service to this country and to the lofty ideals I was taught in every American history class I attended.

To our country

I learned Crispus Attucks, a Black man, was the first to die in the American Revolution. Many more African Americans would die before Independence was won. You have served in every armed conflict in American history. You even served in five major American wars before being declared citizens by the 14^thAmendment ratification in 1868. You have taken up arms and died in every campaign since then even when white military personnel on the same side refused to serve with you.

To our ideals

When white soldiers, sailors, marines, and aviators returned to their families after warfare, they came home to a peacetime America filled with promise. You returned to a different America where some of you were murdered by white Americans for daring to wear our uniform.

In slavery, you were denied ‘humanity,’ then, in freedom, citizenship and the right to vote. The First and Second Amendments did not apply to you in the presence of white America. Yet you continued to believe in the promise.

When African Americans were better educated and more qualified than any white person in the room, the only jobs available to you were cleaning homes, washing clothes, and mopping floors. You were redlined into ghetto neighborhoods with inadequate schools and denied credit to make improvements on those conditions. Still, you pressed toward the freedom and equality touted in our founding documents.

You were mistreated, marginalized, and suppressed. Your homes were destroyed. Your communities and churches were bombed. You have been beaten, mutilated, dismembered, and burned alive. You, African Americans, have been lynched and left hanging from anything that could, conceivably, hold your weight. Yet, you marched on in pursuit of what our founders proclaimed for its citizens.

Without your constant striving, there would be no Constitutional Amendments 13, 14, or 15, no Civil Rights Acts of 1964, ‘72, ‘87, or ‘91. Your efforts have driven America forward toward all our ideals. Without you, the soaring words of Jefferson and Madison would be little more than propaganda for rich white men like them. By standing in lines at too few polling stations, by navigating myriad voter restriction laws, by wielding your right to vote you kept a wannabe dictator from being reelected in 2020. Amid Women’s History Month, let me be specifically clear. It was Black Women voters that preserved democracy in 2020 and it is they who will save it again in November 2024.

You, Black America, are the primary reason the world sees us as the beacon of democracy, freedom, and equality. For enduring the brutality of our past, for your present sacrifice and ongoing anguish and distress in this righteous quest, for the freedoms I enjoy today, tomorrow, and beyond, I, and all Americans, owe you a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid. Please accept my deep felt thank you for your service.

Let us celebrate with action!

White America, it is time to stand up, shoulder-to-shoulder, arm-in-arm with Black America to demand financial Reparations for the horrific crime of slavery and the appalling treatment unto this day. Let us narrow and close the discriminatory wealth gap between us, ferret out and demolish all remnants of systemic racism pervading our daily lives.

We must secure commitments from those who represent us locally and nationally to act on our behalf rectifying these injustices for all time. We must return President Biden to the White House in November and elect Democrat majorities at local, state, and national levels so we all have the power and control needed to dispatch the sins of our past, to proudly declare, “Promises delivered at last!”

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