Saturday, January 11

Journalism

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Journalism, SOCIAL JUSTICE

This Isn’t the First Time White Supremacists Have Tried to Cancel Birthright Citizenship

History shows that a broad coalition of civil rights activists is how to fight back. In the latest in a long string of attacks on immigration, this week Trump declared he would issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship. Established by the 14th amendment to grant citizenship to freed slaves, the idea that all people born in the United States are U.S. citizens, regardless of race or where their parents came from, has long been upheld by the courts and the Constitution. But this is not the first time White supremacists have tried to restrict the rights of citizenship along racial lines. In a little-known episode from World War II, nativist agitators who had led earlier efforts to exclude Asian immigrant communities—and paved the way for Japanese American incarcerati...
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Journalism

The Power of Sharing Stories

A growing body of evidence points to the mental health benefits of oral storytelling. As Joe Clemons was growing up, he used to listen to family members share stories. Some stories were imaginative and rousing, while others were more monotonous. Nevertheless, hearing accounts of how his elders experienced life before him was a form of bonding and had a large part in shaping his selfhood—especially the stories his father told him about coming of age as a Black man at the height of the civil rights movement. “A lot of those stories are tied to my identity,” Clemons said. Though his father wasn’t particularly fiery in his delivery, his career as a preacher meant oral storytelling was a natural element of his parenting. Clemons now attributes his own career as a poet and spoken word arti...
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Journalism

White Supremacy Thrives, Even in Progressive Places

As a Black woman, I know we were never living in a post-racial paradise. But I still have hope for a society that cares for us all. Native Bay Area Black folks like myself are all too familiar with a form of NIMBYism that lives in progressive places. This strand of parochialism is less about the ills of urban development (although that certainly exists), than the dogged belief that this region has somehow escaped the litany of “isms” that plague the rest of the country. Over the years, friends, colleagues, and even random strangers have earnestly assured me that prejudice and discrimination do not exist in _____, fill in the city or the organization or the industry; that my experiences of bias, unequal treatment, or disrespect were isolated events or misunderstandings—on my part; and ...
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Journalism

Charlottesville: Four white supremacists charged over 2017 rally

Four men linked to far-right Rise Above Movement accused of intent to incite a riot at deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally Hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, KKK and members of the 'alt-right' march in Charlottesville in 2017 [File: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/AFP] Four men linked to a white supremacist group were arrested on Tuesday in connection with the far-right rally that turned deadly in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year, authorities said. Benjamin Drake Daley, 25, Michael Paul Miselis, 29, Thomas Walter Gillen, 34, and Cole Evan White, 24, were arrested in California and were to be transported to Charlottesville after making initial appearances in federal courts in California on Tuesday, US Attorney Thomas Cullen said at a news conference. The...
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US civil rights icon Rosa Parks’ home is up for auction
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Journalism, VIDEO REELS

US civil rights icon Rosa Parks’ home is up for auction

Other rare historic African-American artefacts up for auction include Jackson 5's original recording contract, and several chapters of original typed manuscript for Malcolm X's biography. Guernsey's in New York is auctioning off "African American Historic & Cultural Treasures", and included in the auction will be civil rights activist Rosa Parks' Detroit home, along with dozens of other African American rarities. by Gabriel Elizondo Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo reports from New York.
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Memorial for Lynching Victims a First Step Toward Reconciliation
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Journalism

Memorial for Lynching Victims a First Step Toward Reconciliation

It offers a place of reckoning for generations of racial trauma. When she saw the name Ed Bracy on a placard in the The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, 68-year-old Sophia Bracy Harris felt goosebumps. “I just went frozen for a moment,” she recalls. This was the relative she remembers hearing about as a child growing up in Elmore County, just north of Montgomery, Alabama. The story goes, Ed Bracy was hanged for his work organizing tenant farmers in the mid-1930s. “In that moment, I was aware that this was a family member, that this was a direct connection to me,” she says. More than 4,000 African Americans were lynched from 1877 to 1950, giving rise to The Great Migration—as over 6 million African Americans left the South to resettle in the North and West. African America...
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How the Ultra-Rich Can Help Fix the Affordable Housing Crisis
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Journalism

How the Ultra-Rich Can Help Fix the Affordable Housing Crisis

A growing number of people invest in real estate they never intend to occupy and push up prices for the rest of us. Cities should make them pay. Down the street from my office, a luxury residential tower is rising, the fifth such project in Boston in the last decade. The 61-story “One Dalton Place” is being marketed as “New England’s tallest and most luxurious residential building.” Across the coastal cities of North America, cranes are rising to construct similar stunning new glass towers of both residential and commercial properties. Real estate in existing neighborhoods is being bid up by investors and wealthy buyers, pushing up the cost of land and housing for everyone else. A high percentage of these housing units will sit empty or rarely occupied. In Boston’s ...
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US reopens investigation into Emmett Till murder case from 1955
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Journalism

US reopens investigation into Emmett Till murder case from 1955

Two men, who later admitted to the civil rights-era murder that had become a symbol of racial oppression and violence, were found not guilty by an all-white jury in Mississippi. One of the most notorious cases of racial violence in US history will be reopened by federal investigators. The lynching of black teenage boy Emmett Till in 1955 shocked the nation and spurred the growing civil rights movement. by Rob Reynolds Al Jazeera's Rob Reynolds reports.
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Black Entrepreneurs Lead the Charge in Baltimore’s Economic Renewal
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Journalism

Black Entrepreneurs Lead the Charge in Baltimore’s Economic Renewal

Rasheed Aziz remembers visiting Baltimore in 2006. The empty, hollow buildings sprawled the entire block, he says. Buildings lacked roofs, doorways were boarded up, and tree limbs grew into missing windows. Aziz is the founder of CityWide Youth Development, which he began in central Florida to bring economic development to impoverished neighborhoods using manufacturing and entrepreneurship. In 2006, he decided to move himself—and his nonprofit—to Baltimore after his trip there. During that trip, he says, he saw a need for sustainable employment opportunities in underinvested areas in that city. “I’ve never looked through a window of a building and saw tree limbs before,” says Aziz, remembering his first visit and the “culture shock” he experienced. “That means there’s no roof. It’s a hol...
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After Centuries of Housing Racism, a Southern City Gets Innovative
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Journalism

After Centuries of Housing Racism, a Southern City Gets Innovative

Denise Fitzgerald’s property abuts the string of quiet, empty lots that line Ewing Street in Jackson, Mississippi. Recently she was leaf-blowing detritus shed by the enormous sycamore tree dominating the yard of her tidy Habitat for Humanity home. She says she’d cut the tree down herself but knows it’s big enough to take out both her house and the house beside her if she dare try it. Fitzgerald is familiar with the empty lots of Ewing Street, just a few blocks from Jackson State University. She’s lived here since 2008, and she remembers when Ewing was a series of derelict buildings smeared across the neighborhood. Only two empty houses remain. The rest is a collection of oak and hackberry trees, with some untamed vines. There is some human intervention, however. Every other week ...
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