Many Americans can see for their own eyes how people from low income areas speak, due to the overwhelming news coverage ( finally ) of police killings of unarmed blacks. When there are equally disturbing instances of murders within areas where low income whites and brown folks live, the public can get a view of how these folks speak. Unfortunately,[Read More…]

Reports by media including AP and CNN said: In Portland, Oregon, about 70 demonstrators assembled outside Portland Police Bureau’s East Precinct Saturday night. When the group pushed two dumpsters into the street at around 10:30 p.m., police declared an unlawful assembly and officers moved in. There were no arrests and no reported injuries. The police called the demonstrators a “hostile[Read More…]

With the ever-increasing businesses around the globe and increasing penetration of media, people are becoming aware of the pertinent problems of the disadvantaged groups more than before. It’s a modern-day dilemma for graduating students, who are standing at the cusp of their careers, to strike a balance between the two- between abiding by the employer and abiding by one’s conscience[Read More…]

After viewing the first US Presidential debate on September 29, one is left with no doubt about the degenerating political discourse among America’s ruling elites. Following the debate between US President, Donald Trump, and Democratic Presidential nominee, Joe Biden, most analyses focused mainly on the personal insults and name-calling, which, deservedly, earned the event the title ‘worst Presidential debate in[Read More…]

The sculpture “Stand Tall, Stand Loud”, conceived by the African American artist Aaron Bell, whose father once was a prominent jazz bassist with the Duke Ellington Band, was originally assigned a spot directly beneath a complex of apartment buildings in New York’s Manhattan Riverside Park that bear the name TRUMP. However, the sculpture was soon removed and silenced by New[Read More…]

Protesters attack businesses, burn flags and force motorists to pledge loyalty to BLM  Several hundred people smashed up storefronts, torched American flags and harassed motorists in Portland, Oregon, following a brief lull in nearly nightly riots due to wildfires tearing through the state. Around 200 demonstrators marched through the city on Saturday night, with some individuals smashing windows and applying[Read More…]

Peaceful protests were held in cities across Canada on Saturday as protesters urged governments to slash police funding and do more to tackle deep-rooted racism in this country. Rallies to defund the police were held in Calgary, Halifax, Fredericton, Toronto, Montreal and London, Ont., many of which were organized by the Coalition for Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC)[Read More…]

Thousands of protestors seeking criminal justice reform gathered at the National Mall in Washington D.C., the capital city of the U.S., on Friday under the rallying cry “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks,” a reference to the manner in which George Floyd was killed while in police custody in May and reminiscent of the 1963 March on Washington. Capping a[Read More…]

Like communalism, Brahmanism (casteism) and the gender, the Race, is also not an attribute of biology but an ideology that is constructed, reconstructed, nurtured and perpetuated in the day-to-day life experiences and intellectual discourses. A sense of superiority or supremacy is one of the key elements of the hegemony. In the colonial era, the European colonizers harbored the illusory sense[Read More…]

Co-Written by Alan Johnstone and Stephen Shenfield Dramatic news spreads among the slaves. Their masters are at war! They are told that their masters’ enemies are also theirs. But some doubt whether that is true. Might not their masters’ enemies be their friends? Soon it is rumored that any slave who crosses the lines into enemy-held territory goes free. A scene from the[Read More…]

The on-going Black Lives Matter protests are beyond incredible. Pandemic rages. And yet week after week people courageously persist. Duration unprecedented. Intensity amazing. The protests are inspiring. But what is the underlying logic? Where are the protests headed? Indeed, stepping back just a bit, what is the purpose of any activist protest? Set aside that tiny numbers engage for fun[Read More…]

“Of course it is … impossible until it is done.” Daniel K. Young, A House Divided, 139. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage. Peggy McIntosh, White[Read More…]

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has ordered National Guard troops to deploy in Atlanta, after rioters ransacked the state police headquarters. Shootings in the city have doubled in the wake of protests against police brutality. Some 1,000 soldiers will be deployed to protect the state Capitol, the governor’s mansion, and the Department of Public Safety building that was vandalized over the[Read More…]

 You know that feeling when you trip on the street and instantly sense that you’re about to crash hard and there’s no way to prevent it? As gravity has its way with you, all you can do is watch yourself going down. Yeah, that feeling. I had it the other day on my way to a Black Lives Matter demonstration when I[Read More…]

The uproar over the recent murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man, by Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old White Minneapolis police officer, has assumed centre-stage in the United States and other parts of the world, prodding countries to introspect and cleanse their own tainted societies. It is an opportune moment for us Indians to reflect too. The twin scourges[Read More…]

Current domestic developments in the Empire’s political-sphere are a re-exposure of an old fact – failure of the centuries-old bourgeois “republic”. The propagandists of the Empire engage all their skills to hide the fact, and sermonize to other countries: democracy, equal opportunity, rights. But, today, anyone from any peripheral country can ask: what about Minneapolis and the following developments, dear?[Read More…]

For almost a decade, I have been covering “Color Revolutions” in virtually all parts of the world. While making a film for TeleSur, I was facing Egyptian tanks, risking my life under sniper fire, getting roughed-up in the middle of clashes of the supporters of al-Sisi and Morsi. Together with Syrian commanders, I was also facing the terrorists in Idlib;[Read More…]

Death of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks due to the excessive force exhibited by the policemen raises two crucial constitutional points in the context of liberty as enshrined in the fifth amendment of the American Constitution. The preamble of United Nations constitution begins with the words, ‘we the people’. However till the 24th amendment the racial discrimination was not prohibited[Read More…]

‘You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.’ Letter from Birmingham Jail written by Martin Luther King Jr, in 1963 on the margins of a newspaper in an Alabama Jail was an answer to some ‘white’ clergymen who[Read More…]

Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers The current uprising against police violence and racism is just beginning. It is rapidly shifting public consciousness on issues of policing, violence against Black people and others, and systemic racism. The movement is deepening and becoming broader as well as putting forward solutions and making demands. The confluence of crises including recent police violence,[Read More…]

It is easy to forget how explicitly racist British society was within living memory. I’m not talking about unconscious prejudice, or social media tropes. I’m talking about openly celebrating racism in the public space, about major companies making racism integral to their brand, a selling-point. Roberston’s, Britain’s leading jam maker, made their orange marmalade sweeter to generations of (white) British[Read More…]

While the police have been dishing it out extensively for years to the black community, often with murderous effect, retaliation was bound to come. A movement scolded for being narky and lacking respect became a sounding board for some who felt that violence was merely logical, the last refuge for the desperate. This is hardly an excuse, but it constitutes some explanation. The motor of revenge tends to be a hungry, and not always rational one

Police officers carry out random acts of legalized murder against poor people of color not because they are racist, although they may be, or even because they are rogue cops, but because impoverished urban communities have evolved into miniature police states. Police can stop citizens at will, question and arrest them without probable cause, kick down doors in the middle[Read More…]

Five Dallas police officers were killed and six others were wounded by snipers on Thursday night during a demonstration protesting shootings by officers in Minnesota and Louisiana this week. The gunfire broke out around 8.45 pm on Thursday while hundreds of people were gathered to protest against fatal police shootings this week in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and suburban St. Paul, Minnesota. The[Read More…]