{"id":2945,"date":"2020-07-21T17:42:57","date_gmt":"2020-07-21T22:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.datrockco.org\/?p=2945"},"modified":"2020-07-29T11:28:52","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T16:28:52","slug":"july-27th-530-pm-on-zoom-protesting-rioting-looting-and-militarization-of-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.datrockco.org\/july-27th-530-pm-on-zoom-protesting-rioting-looting-and-militarization-of-police\/","title":{"rendered":"Courageous Conversation: Protesting, rioting, looting and militarization of police."},"content":{"rendered":"

SEE THE RECORDING HERE:<\/b><\/p>\n

https:\/\/m.youtube.com\/watch?v=LZ8zWwWJLLA&feature=youtu.be<\/a><\/p>\n

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The topics are:\u00a0 1)\u00a0Protesting,\u00a0Rioting,\u00a0Looting;\u00a0and\u00a02) the Militarization of the Police<\/p>\n

The process will be as usual, two short video clips, each followed by discussion among the attendees, and a closing video clip.<\/p>\n

Disclaimers :\u00a0 1) The formal meeting will be recorded, 2) Media may be present and may use quotes from attendees on the air, 3) the language in the first video clip may be offensive to some people.<\/p>\n

Attached are a few “think pieces” including the link to Vicki Brown’s oped in the Gazette on July 20, 2020.<\/p>\n

Neil Deupree<\/p>\n

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Obituary: John Lewis, US civil rights champion<\/h1>\n
By Barrett Holmes Pitner<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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“Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

“Choose confrontation wisely, but when it is your time don’t be afraid to stand up, speak up, and speak out against injustice.”<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

John Lewis forged his legacy as a lifetime champion for civil rights and racial equality during the struggles of the 1960s as he preached a message of non-violence alongside Dr Martin Luther King Jr.<\/p>\n

It was in March 1965 that Lewis, aged only 25, stood with other civil rights leaders as they led peaceful protesters across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Their planned march would take them to Montgomery, the state capitol, to demand equal voting rights.<\/p>\n

As they crossed the bridge, armed Alabama police officers on horseback carrying tear gas, whips and bully clubs attacked them. At least 40 protesters required treatment, and Lewis suffered a fractured skull.<\/p>\n

Media outlets from across America captured the brutal attack on film, calling it Bloody Sunday. The event became a pivotal moment in the battle for civil rights for African-Americans, as Americans outside the South could now see the abuse inflicted upon the black community under “Jim Crow” segregation laws.<\/p>\n

Five months later, with Lewis among the collection of civil rights leaders at the White House, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law.<\/p>\n

\"Short<\/span><\/figure>\n

Lewis was born on 21 February, 1940, during the time of Jim Crow laws, to a family of sharecroppers in the small Southern town of Troy, Alabama.<\/p>\n

He was one of 10 children, and from an early age he expressed an obvious love of learning. Lewis would spend hours upon hours at his local library, and it was here where he could find African-American publications that would embolden his commitment to the struggle for civil rights.<\/p>\n

“I loved going to the library,” said Lewis. “It was the first time I ever saw black newspapers and magazines like JET, Ebony, the Baltimore Afro-American, or the Chicago Defender. And I’ll never forget my librarian.”<\/p>\n

\"ProtestImage copyright<\/span>GETTY IMAGES<\/span><\/span>
Image caption<\/span>Even though racial segregation was struck down in 1953, it was still practised in a number of states<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a young black man growing up in the American South, the battle for racial equality actively shaped his life long before he became an activist. In 1954, when Lewis was only 13, the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, ruled in favour of Brown vs Board of Education, striking down more than 50 years of legalised racial segregation.<\/p>\n

Alabama, along with many other states, fought the decision and delayed implementation of school desegregation. Lewis’ school remained segregated despite Brown, and Alabama’s commitment to segregation forced him to leave the state to attend college.<\/p>\n

Lewis aspired to attend the nearby, all-white Troy State University and study for the ministry, but the school’s segregationist stance meant it would never accept him.<\/p>\n

In 1957, Lewis finally decided on attending the predominantly African-American institution, the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, because it allowed students to work for the school in lieu of tuition. Yet during his first year in Nashville, as the fight against segregation continued, Lewis attempted to transfer to Troy State.<\/p>\n

He sent in an application, but never heard back from the school. It was common during this time for segregationist schools to ignore the applications of African-Americans instead of formally accepting or denying them.<\/p>\n

After growing frustrated by Troy State’s lack of response, Lewis wrote a letter to King describing his dilemma. King responded by sending Lewis a round-trip bus ticket to Montgomery so they could meet.<\/p>\n

This meeting would commence Lewis’ relationship with King and his lifelong leadership in the struggle for civil rights.<\/p>\n

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Lewis eventually decided to end his dream of entering Troy State University after consulting King. Lewis’ parents had also feared their son would be killed, and their land taken away, if he continued to challenge Jim Crow laws. Instead, Lewis returned to Nashville, graduated from the seminary, and went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in religion and philosophy.<\/p>\n

Throughout college, Lewis remained an important figure in the civil rights movement, organising sit-ins at segregated lunch counters. In 1961 he became one of the 13 original Freedom Riders, seeking to end the practice of segregation on public transport.<\/p>\n

At the time, several southern states had laws prohibiting African-Americans and white riders from sitting next to each other on public transportation or in bus terminals. The original 13 – seven white and six black – attempted to ride from Washington to New Orleans. In Virginia and North Carolina, the Freedom Riders evaded conflict, but all of that changed as they moved further south.<\/p>\n

\"AImage copyright<\/span>GETTY IMAGES<\/span><\/span>
Image caption<\/span>A young black Freedom Rider is told to leave a segregated “white” waiting room in 1961 Mississippi<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In May 1961, Lewis was attacked by a mob of white men at a bus station in Rock Hill, South Carolina, for attempting to enter a waiting room marked “Whites”. Lewis was beaten and bloodied on that day, but his commitment remained undeterred.<\/p>\n

In the Deep South, Lewis and other Freedom Riders were beaten by angry mobs, arrested, and jailed for sitting or standing next to white people on buses and in bus terminals. Some of the original riders left due to the violence and terror, but Lewis continued all the way to New Orleans.<\/p>\n

In 2009, Lewis was reunited with his Rock Hill attacker, only this time instead of a clenched fist he was shown an open hand and a request for forgiveness. Elwin Wilson, a former Klansman who attacked Lewis, said that the election of President Barack Obama had spurred him to admitting his hateful acts and to ask for forgiveness from Lewis.<\/p>\n

“I said if just one person comes forward and gets the hate out of their heart, it’s all worth it,” said Wilson. “I never dreamed that a man that I had assaulted, that he would ever be a congressman and that I’d ever see him again.<\/p>\n

“He was very, very sincere, and I think it takes a lot of raw courage to be willing to come forward the way he did,” said Lewis. “I think it will lead to a great deal of healing.”<\/p>\n

\"Short<\/span><\/figure>\n

In 1963, when aged only 23, Lewis became the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), making him one of the “Big Six” civil rights leaders of the era. These leaders would organise the 1963 March on Washington, where King would give his historic “I Have A Dream” speech. Lewis, at an age when most people had just begun their professional careers, also stood atop the Lincoln Memorial and gave a rousing oration about the importance of fighting for civil rights.<\/p>\n

“We are tired,” Lewis said in his speech. “We are tired of being beaten by policemen. We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jail over and over again. And then you holler, ‘Be patient’. How long can we be patient? We want our freedom and we want it now.”<\/p>\n

\"Dr.Image copyright<\/span>BETTMANN\/GETTY IMAGES<\/span><\/span>
Image caption<\/span>Lewis (third from left) and Dr Martin Luther King (centre) lead marchers from Selma in March 1965<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In March 1965, Lewis, King and other civil rights leaders organised the march from Selma to Montgomery that became a tipping point in the battle for civil rights and the eventual passage of the 1965 Voting Rights amendment.<\/p>\n

Throughout his early civil rights career, King remained Lewis’ mentor, the man Lewis said “was like a big brother to me”.<\/p>\n

“[He] inspired me to get in trouble – what I call good trouble, necessary trouble,” Lewis later told the Washington Post. “And I’ve been getting in trouble ever since.”<\/p>\n

Lewis was in Indianapolis in April 1968, campaigning with Democratic presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy, when Kennedy announced that King had been assassinated.<\/p>\n

“It was such an unbelievable feeling,” Lewis said. “I cried. I just felt like something had died in all of us when we heard that Dr Martin Luther King Jr had been assassinated. But I said to myself, well, we still have Bobby. And a short time later, he was gone.”<\/p>\n

After leaving the SNCC in 1966, Lewis remained active in civil rights in Atlanta, working on voter registration programmes and on helping people rise out of poverty.<\/p>\n

When Jimmy Carter won the successful presidential bid, Lewis took a position with the federal domestic volunteer agency and in 1981, after Carter lost the White House to Republican Ronald Reagan, Lewis returned to Atlanta and was elected to the City Council.<\/p>\n

Five years later he ran successfully for Georgia’s fifth congressional district, and held his seat until his passing.<\/p>\n

\"Short<\/span><\/figure>\n

To help acquaint a new generation of Americans with the fight for civil rights in the 1960s, Lewis co-created the three-part graphic novel March, a vivid memoir of his lifetime of civil rights advocacy that went on to be a bestseller and award-winner.<\/p>\n

As a young activist, Lewis had himself been inspired by the 1958 comic book Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story. Through his own graphic novel, he hoped to inspire another generation of civil rights leaders.<\/p>\n

“We are involved now in a serious revolution,” it says in March: Book Two, published in 2015. “This nation is still a place of cheap political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation.<\/p>\n

“What political leader here can stand up and say, ‘My party is the party of principles?'”<\/p>\n

In 2014, the film Selma depicted the events of Lewis’ historic march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and was released to wide acclaim. It further cemented Lewis’ legacy as a civil rights icon.<\/p>\n

He recreated the journey across the bridge in March 2015, but this time with Barack Obama, America’s first black president.<\/p>\n

“It is a rare honour in this life to follow one of your heroes, and John Lewis is one of my heroes,” Obama said at the 50th anniversary celebration.<\/p>\n

\"BarackImage copyright<\/span>AFP\/GETTY IMAGES<\/span><\/span>
Image caption<\/span>Obama and Lewis near the Edmund Pettus Bridge<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During Donald Trump’s presidency, Lewis fiercely opposed the policies and statements made by the president and his fellow Republicans. Lewis boycotted Trump’s inauguration, saying he did not believe he was a “legitimate president” because of Russian interference in the 2016 election.<\/p>\n

He went on to repeat concerns about the direction he felt the US was taking in 2017, after the white supremacist rally and attack in Charlottesville, Virginia.<\/p>\n

“I am very troubled,” he said. “I cannot believe in my heart what I am witnessing today in America. I wanted to think not only as an elected official, but as a human being that we had made more progress. It troubles me a great deal.”<\/p>\n

Despite this Lewis remained an undeterred and committed champion for the fight for civil rights and racial equality until his last breath.<\/p>\n

“When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something” – John Lewis.<\/p>\n

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George Yancy: To Be Black in the US Is to Have a Knee Against Your Neck Each Day<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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A woman prays outside Scott Food Mart at a makeshift memorial and a mural for George Floyd in the 3rd Ward on June 9, 2020, in Houston, Texas.<\/figcaption>
JOSHUA LOTT FOR THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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BY<\/dt>\n
Woojin Lim<\/dd>\n
Truthout<\/a><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
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PUBLISHED<\/dt>\n
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What drives the current rift between white and Black America, and how as individuals can we effectively contribute to the fight against the worldmaking of whiteness?<\/p>\n

Philosopher\u00a0George Yancy\u00a0a leading public intellectual in the critical study of race who received backlash for\u00a0pointing out the U.S.\u2019s yoke of whiteness\u00a0argues that white supremacy breathes at the site of Black asphyxiation.<\/p>\n

In this exclusive\u00a0Truthout<\/em>\u00a0interview, Yancy discusses the racialized dimensions of COVID-19 vulnerabilities, Donald Trump\u2019s displays of white nationalist aspirations, the un-sutured pain of living as a Black person in the United States, and the much-required insurrection against white ontology itself.<\/p>\n

Woojin Lim: A lot has changed since you published your series of interviews on\u00a0The Stone<\/em>\u00a0and penned your provocative letter, \u201c<\/strong>Dear White\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>America,\u201d in 2015. How have these changes impacted your views, and which parts of your column would you revise, if at all?<\/strong><\/p>\n

George Yancy:\u00a0<\/strong>One might think that I would revise my view within the context of the recent massive protests that are both local to the U.S. and global. One might surmise that given the multiracial composition of the protests that I might change how I addressed white people in that letter. The protests, however, only reveal what I had in mind back in 2015: whiteness is the problem, not Blackness. Moreover, once we reach a \u201cpost-George Floyd\u201d moment, those same whites who protested will continue to reap benefits from being white in a country that will continue to be based upon white supremacy. That is the recursive magic of white supremacy. It is able to accommodate or to consume what we throw at it. It is able to make a space for protests and even reform while precisely sustaining itself through the power of its consumptive logics. So, in retrospect, I would not change anything in terms of the argument delineated within \u201cDear White America.\u201d<\/p>\n

How do you understand \u201cthe more\u201d that is necessary as the world bears witness to these protests within the U.S. and abroad?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let me first acknowledge that the protests in the U.S. and abroad have ignited an important anti-racism awakening that has been long overdue but requires far more work. There have been some meaningful outcomes, such as confederate statues toppled, the ban of chokeholds, discussions and commitments regarding the defunding of police, school districts across the U.S. committing to removing police from schools, and millions of dollars have been donated to racial justice groups. However, we need to do more. We are\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>disrupting whiteness in ways that will fundamentally make a difference in terms of how it continues to operate through various white gazes, white forms of inhabiting space, white forms of maintaining \u201cinnocence,\u201d white forms of deep structural power and normativity. What we need is an insurrection, as Judith Butler might say, at the level of white ontology itself.<\/p>\n

I often return to James Baldwin\u2019s powerful and passionate\u00a0letter to his nephew<\/a> where the former says that it is the innocence which constitutes the crime. Baldwin\u2019s point is that the very process of attempting to secure one\u2019s \u201cwhite innocence\u201d in the face of so much Black existential pain and suffering caused by white supremacy is a crime. The self-deception is criminal, or perhaps the effort itself is criminal. The history of white supremacy is there for all to see; North America\u2019s 400 years of anti-Black racism reveals its mythical standing as a \u201cbeacon of hope\u201d; American exceptionalism is, for Black people, a site of un-exceptionalism when it comes to its ideals of democracy vis-\u00e0-vis its reality as a white\u00a0Herrenvolk<\/em>\u00a0or \u201cmaster race\u201d polity.<\/p>\n

Baldwin also reminds us that those who shut their eyes to reality or those who insist upon their innocence long after it is gone only create monsters. Donald J. Trump is a monster. Just consider his neofascist tendencies, his racist comments, his unabashed white nationalist aspirations, his attempts at demonizing the press, his draconian desires to silence dissent. Henry Giroux is right to call out Trump for both his \u201cpedagogies of repression\u201d and his \u201cdis-imagination machine.\u201d Keep in mind that in 2017, Trump stated that there were \u201cvery fine people on both sides\u201d in Charlottesville, Virginia. The other side to which he was referring consisted of neo-Nazis, the \u201calt-right\u201d and white supremacists. This is the same man who degradingly referred to a number of African nations as \u201cshithole countries.\u201d<\/p>\n