Demand cops off campus.

Today is the first day of a series of actions organized by the Cops Off Campus Coalition, a network of students, educators, staff, and community members passionate about abolishing policing at all levels of education. I chatted with Alecia Harger (she/they), a sophomore at UC Berkeley and representative for both UC Berkeley Cops Off Campus and the transnational Cops Off Campus Coalition. We discussed today’s Day of Refusal, Abolition May, and the significance of getting cops off of campuses.

It's Monday and we're back with another issue of the Anti-Racism Daily! Thank you for being here, and staying committed to this work. I am so inspired by the campaign that the Cops Off Campus Coalition created for Abolition May, and excited to share their work below. Today is the Day of Refusal, and it's still early enough to join in! Learn more in the interview below.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Take the pledge to participate in the Transnational Day of Refusal. You can use this resource of sample messaging to share with students/faculty that might be interested.
Review the various actions you can take to support the Cops Off Campus campaign through the month of May.
Follow the campaign on social media on Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

Today is the first day of a series of actions organized by the Cops Off Campus Coalition, a network of students, educators, staff, and community members passionate about abolishing policing at all levels of education. I chatted with Alecia Harger (she/they), a sophomore at UC Berkeley and representative for both UC Berkeley Cops Off Campus and the transnational Cops Off Campus Coalition. We discussed today’s Day of Refusal, Abolition May, and the significance of getting cops off of campuses. This is a snippet of our conversation – the full story will be released in an upcoming podcast episode.

Thank you so much for being here. I know you just got out of class, and it's finals week. And you have a pretty big day of action coming up on May 3rd.

Yep. May 3rd, we are having a Transnational Day of Refusal. We are encouraging people to withhold their labor in whatever form that may take, whether that's paid labor, that's compensated by the university, academic labor, like turning in assignments and going to class, or the labor of graduate student instructors who are grading assignments. For one day this month, we’re encouraging everybody to withholds their labor in solidarity with activists and organizers who are trying to get cops off campus. And this is clearly connected to May Day; which was May 1st. It's just the first school day after May Day.

Can you explain May Day for people that might not be familiar?

Yeah. It's a day of solidarity between workers that often takes the form of labor refusals and strikes. In the Bay area, there are always a lot of protests. And I know that across the country, it's often used as the date to bring solidarity across many issues – labor issues, human rights issues, the issues of political prisoners, racial justice, environmental justice, etc. Learn more about May Day, or International Workers’ Day.

Yes, thank you. Refusing labor has been a powerful act of protest across social and political movements throughout history.

Absolutely. And by withholding our labor, we demonstrate how we hold universities up. It is our labor that maintains these universities – our sweat, our blood. They cannot function without the underpaid and exploited labor of graduate students and other underpaid staff.

Talk a little bit more about getting cops off campus. That's something that we had discussed at length here at the Anti-Racism Daily. It's certainly a small, substantial step towards abolition. Can you share a little bit more about how this is affecting your school?

I go to UC Berkeley and the UC schools has its own police department. It is a statewide police department with statewide jurisdiction. There are very few departments with statewide jurisdiction, except for, like, the California Highway Patrol. And on the UC Berkeley campus, there have been several instances of police brutality across the decades – like the fight to liberate People's Park in Berkeley in 1969, which was met with extreme amounts of police violence. We have seen this pattern of violence continue to the present. Our institution of higher education functions as a carceral branch of the state when our campuses are infested with police officers who brutalize and victimize marginalized students and community members.

Yeah. And by centering this directly into the academic environment, it acts as education that safety is correlated with law enforcement, right?

Absolutely. There's a 2019 survey of UC Berkeley students that showed the majority of Black and trans students do not trust the campus police department. And that's not a surprise. When we define safety on our campuses, we're defining safety based on the safety and comfort of privileged students, namely white students. We completely ignore what safety looks like for marginalized people. When we say get cops off campus, we mean re-imagining safety to being inclusive of everyone, and creating a space that's genuinely safe for even the most marginalized and victimized people.

I'd like to hear a bit more about how y'all organized this coalition. Y’all have created such a depth of resources that empower anyone to take action. What has that process been like?

So initially, our transnational coalition was two different groups. One was primarily students and one was primarily faculty. At some point, we decided to merge groups. We all came together under the charge of creating abolition. The coalition has grown organically, and rapidly.

How can parents, family members, or community members support?

I think that we all know college students. Simply spreading this information is incredibly helpful. Additionally, if you live in a town with a college, you are welcome at our actions. You don't just have to be a university student. We want to draw on community members because campus policing affects everyone in a campus community. It does not just affect students. I believe at UC Berkeley, Black and Latinx drivers are more likely to be stopped by UCPD. You don't have to be a student to get stopped by UCPD. These are issues that affect our entire community. And when we say Cops Off Campus, we don't just mean to limit it to institutions of higher education. We mean, we want cops off of high school campuses. We want cops off of elementary school campuses. We want cops off of diversion schools for youth who are considered to be wayward. We want cops out of our hearts and cops out of our minds. So this is not just a fight for college campuses. This is a full on abolitionist fight that just so happens to start in our institutions of higher learning.

Our goal is to see cops off of this earth and that's why that's our social media handle – @copsoffearth – because this abolition does not stop at our campuses. We know that abolition is the only thing that can keep us safe. Everything else just kicks the can down the road, and continues to endanger Black, Brown, Indigenous, disabled, and queer people. Abolition is the only path to our safety and we know that to be true. That is our goal.

Key Takeaways

This month, the Cops Off Campus Coalition has organized a month-long series of actions to advocate the removal of police from school campuses.
Today, May 3, is the Transnational Day of Refusal, a day for students, teachers and staff to withhold labor from their higher institutions in protest of policing.
This series of action is part of a broader call for abolition, urging institutions to adapt alternative practices that reimagine safety for those most marginalized.

7/2/2020 | Remove police from our public schools.

7/15/2020 | End racial bias in school discipline.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.

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Nicole Cardoza 4/30/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/30/21

Demilitarize local law enforcement.

If you’ve participated or watched protests unfold in cities across the country this past year, you may have noticed that law enforcement looked more like members of our military than neighborhood police. And that’s intentional, as, over the past decades, the U.S. has made it easier for law enforcement to access surplus military equipment for everyday use.

Happy Friday, and welcome back! Last week, Andrew's article on the role that militarism plays to reinforce racism and oppression seemed to resonate with readers. Today looks like one of the many ways our military directly influences our local law enforcement.

TAKE ACTION

Send a tweet to President Biden and White House Officials encouraging the end of the 1033 Program.
Email your Congressperson to get the Breathe Act introduced in Congress, which, in part, calls for the end of the 1033 Program.
Check to see what your local agency received from the Department of Defense. Note: This data is from 2014, but I found it to be interesting nonetheless.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

Law enforcement can gain access to military equipment in a few ways: they can buy it outright or apply for grants (The Marshall Project). But a more straightforward way is to request supplies directly from the military through a program called the 1033 Program. Through this, recipients can receive the equipment at no cost, minus the shipping/transportation fees, making it an easy way to snag high-budget items. Some of the qualifying equipment is harmless, like exercise equipment and musical instruments (The Marshall Project).

But it also includes high-grade weapons, machinery, and vehicles designed for combat, not community safety. Equipment has been granted to sheriffs, parks and recreation agencies, and even schools: as of 2014, at least 17 school districts have been given hundreds of weapons, including rifles, shotguns, and grenade launchers (The Marshall Project). It’s also been distributed to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, subjecting the southern border and its community to unnecessary, excessive police militarization.

Since its start in the 90s, over $7.4 billion worth of property has been transferred through the 1033 Program (Visual Capitalist). And according to the Institute for Transparent Policing, one in three local law enforcement agencies currently have military gear through the 1033 Program, ranging from machine guns to armored vehicles to robots (ITP).

Law enforcement often uses this equipment against its civilians during protests and demonstrations. In 2015, the militarized response to the protests of the death of Michael Brown brought this to the forefront: protestors were attacked with sniper rifles, armored vehicles, and tear gas used by law enforcement (ACLU). In 2015, President Obama signed an executive order restricting the militarization of police. But this was rescinded by the Trump administration in 2017 (EJI). Former President Trump publicly approved the use of military-grade weapons by law enforcement, encouraging them “don’t be too nice” to “these thugs.” Since then, over half a billion dollars of surplus military equipment has been obtained by local law enforcement (USA Today).

The protests from last summer only underlined how fatal militarized responses can be for our community (Axios). And just this past month, military-grade equipment was present at protests around Minnesota, both due to the death of Daunte Wright and the close of the Derek Chauvin trial (Vice). All of this is separate from *actual* military presence in cities across the country. Interested in learning more? Listen to this NPR Fresh Air podcast episode with Radley Balko, author of Rise Of The Warrior Cop.

Studies prove that this excessive use of weaponry doesn’t keep cops safe, nor do they deter violence (Nature). In fact, it makes law enforcement more dangerous. Another study found that, when equipped with military equipment, law enforcement would adopt more militaristic habits, like “using military language, creating elite units like SWAT teams, and becoming more likely to jump into high-risk situations” (Washington Post). Civilians are most likely at risk: the increased militarization of a law enforcement agency directly correlates with more civilians killed each year by police. In addition, civilians are more likely to be harmed during situations where military-grade equipment is utilized (NBC News).

Militarization makes every problem — even a car of teenagers driving away from a party — look like a nail that should be hit with an AR-15 hammer.

Ryan Welch and Jack Mewhirter in The Washington Post

Right now, the Black Lives Matter Global Network is calling for the Biden administration to end 1033 during its first 100 days in office (which ends today, April 30). But action needs to be taken, regardless of whether it’s today or tomorrow. The militarization of law enforcement and other state agencies only reinforces the military-industrial complex and makes policing more harmful to our communities.

Key Takeaways

Through the 1033 Program, law enforcement agencies can receive surplus military-grade equipment from the military for their everyday use
The 1033 Program has distributed $7.4 billion worth of military weapons to police forces around the country
Police militarization is proven to increase civilian fatalities and does not increase the effectiveness of law enforcement

11/2/2020 | Make an election safety plan.

7/26/2020 | Pay attention to the Portland protests.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/28/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/28/21

Demand the repatriation of human remains.

Last week, Abdul-Aliy Muhammad published an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer outlining some disturbing news: Penn Museum and Princeton University has been holding the remains of two children killed in the MOVE bombing of 1985 hostage for 36 years – without the consent or consideration of their family.

Happy Thursday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily! Today's story still haunts me since I first read it last week. But it's a dialogue we must continue to have – not just for the remains of our ancestors long gone, but establishing a precedent for the sanctity of our remains today and in the future. The desecration of our remains after death mirror the same violence we experience as marginalized communities in life.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Sign the petition to demand the immediate return of the remains of Delisha Africa and Tree Africa to The MOVE Family.
Watch the press conference, held by the family of the victims, hosted on April 26th.
Support the global movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, a journalist, and former Black Panther.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

The MOVE bombing occurred in 1985 when the Philadelphia Police Department bombed a residential home belonging to a member of MOVE, a Black radical group. The attack started with an armed standoff, where police officers spent over ten thousand rounds of ammunition. When the residents did not exit the home, police dropped a bomb on the premises. The resulting fire killed six MOVE members and five of their children and destroyed 65 houses in the neighborhood - fires that were left to spread intentionally by law enforcement (Blackpast).

The sheer lack of respect for the victims of this bombing was evident 36 years ago. Abdul-Aliy Muhammad notes that many of the bodies decomposed in a city morgue for six months after the incident, instead of being returned to family members. And Penn Museum and Princeton University are both guilty of the same carelessness and lack of accountability. The remains that passed between the two institutions are of Tree Africa and Delisha Africa, who were 14 and 13 years old, respectively, when they died. These remains were even featured in a Princeton University’s online course, where a professor can be seen handling and examining a badly burned femur and pelvic bone.

In a public press conference held by the victims’ families, the pain and heartbreak that they’ve experienced is visceral. They discuss not just the state-sanctioned violence they’ve experienced since the bombing in 1985, but the horror of learning about their remains.

“

Those remains are not my sister, Tree Tree. My sister Tree Tree was flesh and blood. I’ll never have her back...They can’t give me back my sisters, my brothers. They can’t repair what they have done. There are no demands that they can meet to rectify this situation. Nothing.

Janine Africa, at the MOVE Family Press Conference

This wasn’t even the first time that Penn has been careless with remains. In 2020, the museum announced that it would remove its Morton Cranial Collection from view (Penn Museum). The collection included hundreds of skulls, many proven to be from enslaved Africans, Native Americans, and Cubans (The Daily Pennsylvanian). The skulls were collected by Samuel George Morton, a 19th-century, University of Pennsylvania-educated man who believed in the pseudoscience of phrenology – that some races are inferior to others based on the size of their brains (Hyperallergic). Phrenology is not just scientifically inaccurate. It offered a “scientific” rationale for the systemic oppression of people from marginalized races and ethnicities (Vassar) and laid the foundation for 20th-century eugenics.

Advocates demand that Penn Museum begin the process of repatriation of all its contents. Although a committee has been created, these steps have yet to be taken as of April 2021 (Penn Museum). But when you read much of the press surrounding the latest allegations, many articles center their apology and intentions rather than the demands of the family harmed.

These issues aren’t unique to Penn, though. Museums worldwide hold human remains, including skulls, skeletons, bone fragments, and even preserved heads – both on display and in storage. The practice is rooted in colonization; throughout the 19th century, European settlers would “collect” body parts of non-European communities, either as keepsakes or for “scientific purposes,” akin to the phrenological purposes noted above. These remains were often taken forcefully, without consent, and disregarding the cultural and spiritual practices of honoring the remains of the dead. The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa estimates that the preserved tattooed heads of at least 600 known Māori and Moriori ancestors are located in European museums. Over the past decade, they’ve been able to repatriate at least 500 other remains back – a time-intensive and costly process that the source communities are responsible for (Artnet).

Although museums in the U.S. have human remains of Indigenous communities from around the world, they hold far more remains of Indigenous communities who stewarded the lands now referred to as North America. They also host remains of enslaved African American people. Earlier this year, Harvard University announced that amidst its collection of 22,000 human remains, at least 15 were the remains of enslaved African people. They issued an apology and committed to creating a committee for properly addressing these remains (Harvard). The Smithsonian Institution houses the nation’s most extensive collection of human remains, many of which are located at the National Museum of Natural History. They, too, are expected to make a statement on their role of holding African American remains (NYTimes).

Although repatriation is a clear path to address these wrongdoings, it’s not straightforward for African American remains. Many remains were collected without information about where they came from and who those people were. In addition, it can be challenging to trace lineage to present-day descendants. Beyond that – where do the remains belong? Laid to rest here in the United States or sent back to their country of origin? And who has the power to make that decision if no descendants can be identified? But practices can follow the process of The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Enacted in 1990, the law requires institutions that receive federal funding to consult with the Indigenous communities where the remains are from to repatriate them publicly (NPS). No similar law exists for African American enslaved people – yet.

But there is a clear and direct way to address the harm inflicted on the Africa family. Today, take a moment to complete the action items above. And, more broadly, stay engaged in the unfolding conversations on remains housed in public institutions. Notice how artifacts were gathered and whether or not they’re displayed in partnership with the Indigenous communities they represent. And rally for the repatriation of those remains whenever called for by their families.

Key Takeaways

Penn Museum and Princeton University has been holding the remains of two children killed in the MOVE bombing of 1985 hostage for 36 years – without the consent or consideration of their family.
Across the world, museums hold the remains of marginalized communities, often without the consent or consideration of the communities they come from.
Public institutions deserve to be held responsible for the harm they inflict with storing and/or displaying the remains of people without consent.

9/4/2020 | Tell museums to replace stolen artifacts.

8/25/2020 | Rally against racism in America’s art museums.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/26/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/26/21

Dismantle anti-fatness.

Happy Monday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily! Today we're diving into the history of anti-fatness and its role in state-sanctioned violence. Note that we use the terms "anti-fatness" and "anti-fat bias" rather than "fatphobia" throughout this piece, details here.

Our Earth Week series, "This is our home," is almost over. Subscribe to learn from youth environmental justice leaders addressing the biggest climate threats of our time. thisisourho.me.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Follow the work of organizations like The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), which a non-profit, all volunteer, fat-rights organization dedicated to protecting the rights and improving the quality of life for fat people.
If you identify as fat, join Fat Rose, which organizes fat radicals to embed fat politics on the left, contributing to building an intersectional fat liberation movement.
Support the #NoBodyIsDisposable movement to resist the triage discrimination fat, and disabled people experience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

Last week, Ma’Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old Black girl, was shot four times by a police officer in Columbus, Ohio (NYTimes). As we’ve written previously, adultification bias influences how young Black girls are seen as older and more threatening than they are. But it’s also important to understand how anti-fat bias magnifies violence against Black communities and that anti-fat sentiment is just as ingrained in Western culture as other forms of oppression.

Fatphobia is rooted in racism and white supremacy. As the transatlantic slave trade grew in the early 1800s, colonies were introduced to African people of all sizes and body types. Race scientists started to create false correlations between curvier body sizes of African people – particularly African women – and their characteristics, suggesting that they were promiscuous, greedy, and aggressive. These stereotypes placed people that demonstrated them at the bottom of the social hierarchy, and used them to justify the enslavement and discrimination against those villainized for it. These perceived behaviors were also discouraged in Protestantism, a form of Christianity popular during this time that celebrated moderation, not excessive consumption. So both religion and slavery greatly influenced the weaponization of fatness against Black people. Sabrina Strings’ book, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, is a comprehensive resource on this issue. Her 12-minute interview with NPR offers a full overview. Anti-fatness in the slave trade institutionalized that oppression in the same way that it institutionalized racism, ableism, and colonialism.

“If you abolish anti-fatness today, and not anti-Blackness, you don't abolish anti-fatness. They exist, and they come online into a coherent ideology through the exact same mechanisms.”
Da’Shaun Harrison, in dialogue with Virgie Toval for Rebel Eaters Club Podcast

Our healthcare system has reinforced systemic anti-fat bias by discriminating against fat people in policy and practice. One way is through the use of the body mass index, or BMI. A mathematician designed the formula as a quick hack to determine the degree of obesity in teh general population, based on the body proportions of a white man. It doesn’t consider the wide genetic predispositions of different bodies, and it was explicitly not designed to gauge individual fatness. You can read a bunch of other reasons it doesn’t work in this NPR article.

Nevertheless, it’s been adopted as the standard metric of what a healthy body looks like (The Guardian), which harms everyone, particularly people of color. Studies show that the BMI overestimates health risks for Black people and underestimates health risks for Asian people. It also completely ignores the physical, sex-based differences of human bodies (Elemental).

And consequently, a war has been launched against the “obesity epidemic,” which equates fatness to disease, placing individual responsibility on the perceived adverse health effects of being fat that is often a result of a biased, oppressive system. This translates into interpersonal oppression that only exacerbates the harm of the whole. Many physicians will be quick to tell a fat person to “lose weight” instead of investigating the true cause of an ailment (illustrated by Jess Sims in her article for Well+Good). What’s worse: 24% of physicians admitted they were uncomfortable having friends in larger bodies, and 18% said they felt disgusted when treating a patient with a high BMI (Scientific American). This leaves many genuine medical concerns undiagnosed; in fact, fat people are 1.65x more likely to have significant undiagnosed medical conditions than the general population (APA). Consequently, fat people are more likely to avoid medical care when they believe they won’t be treated appropriately, which increases the likelihood that a health condition can go longer untreated.

Anti-fat bias also exacerbates the state-sanctioned violence that Black people experience. Police often try to justify violence against Black victims based on their size. The officer that killed Michael Brown in 2014 referred to him as a “demon” and said restraining him felt like “ a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan” (Slate). After Eric Garner died after being put in a chokehold by police officers in July 2014, the coroner referenced his weight as a contributing factor to his death. U.S. Congressman Peter King stated that a chokehold was necessary to restrain Garner because of his size, and if he didn’t have “asthma and a heart condition and was so obese,” he “almost definitely” would not have died from it (Huffington Post). Both insinuate that Eric Garner’s death because of his weight, shielding the system of police brutality from accountability. This sentiment certainly influenced the case; federal charges against the officer responsible were ultimately dropped (NYTimes).

“Officers unable to restrain an obese person without killing him are not fit to be serving in a country in which more than one-third of all adults are obese, particularly since these rates are going to be higher in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas that are disproportionately likely to attract police attention.”
Rebecca Kukla and Sarah S. Richardson, “Eric Garner and the Value of Black Obese Bodies” for Huffington Post

Through all this and more, anti-fatness shapes nearly every aspect of our society, including how clothing is sized (Vogue Business), public spaces are designed (Teen Vogue), and health insurance is designed (National Institute of Health). Fat people are discriminated against in the workplace, earning $1.25 less per hour than other employees, which can lead to a loss of $100,000 throughout a career (Yes! Magazine). Even movies and TV shows about fat people are more likely to cast a non-fat actor than a fat one (GEN). In late 2019, TikTok admitted to hiding content created by fat users and other marginalized communities to prevent cyberbullying – a shameful way for a social network to eschew responsibility for toxic behavior (Slate).

Addressing anti-fatness will take more than just changing individual behavior – but that’s a necessary first step. We must stay in inquiry about how we reinforce systemic narratives through body shaming and holding conversations about weight – with each other, but especially within ourselves. And as you continue along on your anti-racism journey, know that dismantling anti-fat bias is part of the work.

Key Takeaways

Anti-fatness outlines the systemic and interpersonal oppression that fat people experience
Anti-fatness has roots in slavery, and exacerbates racial violence
Fat people experience discrimination in the workplace, the healthcare system, the criminal justice system and other aspects of everyday life

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/25/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/25/21

Jana Jandal Alrifai on Intersectional Change

Welcome to Day Four of our Earth Week series!

For today's analysis of environmental justice, I interviewed Jana Jandal Alrifai, an 18-year-old Arab-Canadian youth organizer with Climate Strike Canada and a co-founder of Fridays For Future Windsor-Essex. Her work inspired me for its clarity – that the only way we get through this is together.

This is a free, educational newsletter powered by our community. Support our work: share the series this with a friend or donate $8 to keep our work sustainable.

Nicole and Sydney

Take Action

Sign the petition advocating for No More Empty Summits, urging the Biden administration to take more action to address climate change. Learn more about the campaign here.

In Conversation

What’s the earliest memory that you have of getting into this work?

I started doing this work around March of last year. It would go to calls and whatnot before then, but I feel like I haven't accomplished anything until September this past year, which is when we hosted a teach-in about just recovery with Climate Strike Canada.

Tell me a little bit about putting that together. What was the process, and what were some of the biggest challenges that you experienced?

Oh, so many challenges. A big one is that we are all such busy people with such limited capacity. You have to make sure that you're taking care of yourself, but you also have other people taking care of themselves. Then, try to match the output that you said that you would give. When I started our local group, I had to be sure that it sustained itself, which meant I had to leave some responsibilities to other people. That’s kind of what makes a community a community, because you all learn to juggle the same things together. So capacity is a challenge, and making sure that we all have capacity, which doesn't often happen.

It doesn't often happen. I love that you say that because I think people tend to sacrifice their well-being for this work.

Yeah. Giving all of yourself actually isn't productive or impactful. In fact, they want you to not do good and not be caring of yourself. It’s an act of resistance to do so.

Absolutely. When I was preparing for this conversation, I came across an article where you talked about the relationship between sustainability and faith. I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about that.

To me, the idea of sustainability comes from taking care of something that will take care of you. I'm a Muslim, and I'm also Arab. We have this general understanding that things are finite. Life is finite. So you have to make sure that you use it well. Not just in terms of, like, “I'm going to use this one chair until I really can't.” It’s also “I'm going to take care of myself, and I'm going to use my finite time wisely”. That is both self-care and doing something worthwhile with your life. And that could look like anything: not just action, but anything that is worthwhile to you.

How has your idea of advocacy changed over time? How has your idea about showing up as a leader in the space evolved since you started last year?

For a very long time, I believed in being nice, diplomacy, and talking to people. But sometimes, talking just isn't going to cut it because it can go in one ear and right out the other. The belief that there’s a “middle ground” is not accurate and doesn’t accomplish anything. So I’ve moved away from that idea into more tangible actions with concrete demands that go with it.

Love it. What are your plans for Earth Day this year?

Well, my local group is planning a little action for our municipality. Generally, a lot of people associate Earth Day with just individual action like, “I am going to take a walk instead of getting in the car,” which shouldn’t be what we focus on. We should recognize that the Earth is beautiful and that we should keep it that way, but we also need to protect it.

Individual action over time will not solve the crisis in any way, shape, or form. So I want to push the idea that this Earth day, what you will be doing is demanding action from your representatives and lawmakers. Because at the end of the day, we shouldn't just celebrate. We should also fight.

Absolutely. What do you wish more people knew about the scope of the climate crisis?

Recovery and climate justice can’t just be practiced from a sustainability point of view, but by rebuilding the systems that have caused climate change to happen. We don't just need to reverse climate change and the climate crisis. We need to make sure that it doesn't happen again. We have to tackle environmental racism, that everyone is not equally impacted by climate change, and that BIPOC communities often have factories and machinery located in their neighborhoods, affecting their health. Their neighborhoods are more likely to flood. Economically, when things get more expensive, which they will because we are running out of the finite sources we’ve placed our economy upon, they will be the people most affected.

So climate justice is the most essential thing that we can do to help the climate and the climate crisis. This is not just an Earth issue. This is a systemic issue. This is an everything issue. In the global North, where I am located, we use a lot of carbon for our GDP, and we're not people who are affected by it. That’s the Global South. Here, we are pushing for a just transition and a just recovery, which is an idea that originally came from labor unions but has been adapted into a framework that we could use to fix the climate crisis.

And in a similar vein, what do you hope Earth Day looks like for the next generation, you know, for the next group of people that are – you're 18, right?

I am, yeah. *Laughs*.

So 18 years from now.

Well, let's see if that happens. Let's see if there are other 18-year-olds because by the rate things are going right now, I doubt that they will have an Earth – at least a beautiful one like we see today and that people before us have seen. I hope that whatever that day looks like, they’re talking about climate action but also realizing “look what we have saved.” I hope they have the chance to be more appreciative rather than feeling forced to go on the defense.

What advice do you have for people interested in getting involved in climate justice work?

I think there are two things that you need to think about. First: what you can do, what your talent is, what you have the ability to do. Are you an artist? Use your art! Are you a writer? Use your words. Are you a good speaker? Use that. Also, what organizations do you want to be involved in, and at what capacity? Because there are, you know, climate organizations that I wouldn't be a part of because our values don't match up. Not because their values are bad or my values are bad. They're just not the same. So think about how your values fit in with organizations you want to get involved in.

It's totally okay to show up to a strike instead of organizing the strike. It is okay to be a supporter rather than an organizer. But if you really want to get started, just do it. You can search for “climate justice” or “environmental justice” organizations in your city, like “climate justice Toronto”.

If there isn’t one nearby, message one group that you think is great and state that you want to help them. They’re all nice people and they’re willing to help you. I think it just takes the leap of faith. Trust that you have the ability to do what you want to do, and trust that there will be people that will help you.

I think a lot of people are afraid of doing the wrong thing, so they do nothing.

Yeah. To be fair, the world isn't black and white, it's, like, grey *laughs*. There are a lot of different spectrums, and you will never be a hundred percent, right. You will never do something a hundred percent wrong, either. There's always that spot in between. Just keep that constant desire to change and be better. None of us started with infinite knowledge, and none of us will ever die with infinite knowledge. We just have to continue pursuing it. You did something wrong. Great. Go make it better.

Hmm. I love that. Thank you. What have you learned most on this journey?

I really like this idea of community and what it means. For a very long time, I associated the word community with things I'm born into, like my Muslim community, my Arab community, and the people I live around, but community is much more than that. When you say community building and Grassroots community organizers, it means that we will all help each other out because we all have something to gain out of this.

I’ve learned tactical things, too, like how to talk to the media, how to make an image ID, schedule meetings, make agendas, things like that. But it’s brought me more affinity and passion with the human experience and fighting for it to continue to survive. That’s the community. We’re in this together in different ways, but, at the end of the day, we find a way to work together with each other as organizers and as people, you know?

What is bringing you joy right now?

The community and mobilization that I have seen in many areas that are demanding justice, especially climate justice, has been giving me a lot of joy and hope. Looking at how much we have been able to accomplish and the community and friendships we have built while doing so have given me a lot of joy. Resistance is joy and joy is resistance.

About Jana

Jana Jandal Alrifai is an 18-year-old Arab-Canadian youth organizer with Climate Strike Canada and a co-founder of Fridays For Future Windsor-Essex.

Reflection Questions

What does the word "community" mean to you?
How has the fear of "doing the wrong thing" influenced how you support the social justice movements you care about? What may be a more helpful emotion to lead from?

Nicole Cardoza 4/24/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/24/21

Alexis Saenz and Community Care

Welcome to Day Three of our Earth Week series!

It was such a gift to spend time with Alexis and learn more about her work. She reminded me how important it is to live this work – not just see it as a list of action items to check off of a list. She is intentional with how she nurtures the work of youth in her community, and how she centers her elders in everything she does.

This is a free, educational newsletter powered by our community. Support our work: share the series this with a friend or donate $8 to keep our work sustainable.

Nicole and Sydney

Take Action

Donate to Protect Puvungna, a sacred site of the Acjachemen and Tongva people where dirt and debris from a construction site was dumped carelessly.
Learn more about the International Indigenous Youth Council and research to see if there's a chapter near you.

In Conversation

My name is Alexis Saenz. I go by Lex, she/they pronouns. I'm originally from the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute territory of Denver, Colorado, and now reside in Tongva territory of Los Angeles. I am a community organizer, activist, professional dancer, actress, artist, filmmaker. I'm also a dance teacher and a Pilates instructor. I'm 29 years old.

I’m really inspired by the work of IIYC in Los Angeles. Can you tell me a bit more about how it started and what you’re working on now?

I started organizing the International Indigenous Youth Council Los Angeles chapter back in 2017. IIYC began during the Standing Rock movement to protect the Cannonball and Missouri rivers in North Dakota. My sibling was one of the founding members and lived there for a few months. The first action for IIYC LA was a Round Dance, a traditional Native American dance for unity. We did that to raise awareness of DAPL. In 2019, for Native American Heritage Month, I did an event, and we ended up getting a lot of youth interested in being a part of the council, which was amazing.

Our mission is to protect land and water, and to help Indigenous youth become leaders of their communities. We are the International Indigenous Youth Council, which means we include Indigenous people from everywhere, from Mexico, from Panama, from Guatemala, all over. And the goal is to eventually have IIYC chapters across Unči Maka, Mother Earth. Initially, we were focused on frontline non-violent direct action. That's how we started at Standing Rock. Civic engagement is definitely a part of our roots.

In 2019, we got a lot of opportunities to speak and talk at marches and all this stuff, but it felt very tokenizing. We wanted to do something ourselves and demonstrate how important it is to include the first stewards of the land.

We started 2020 with a Four Directions Climate Strike with our Tongva relatives because this is their territory, and we are guests on their land. We also wanted to introduce ourselves to the four directions and let Unči Maka, Mother Earth know what we're doing here and how we want to help. We referenced which climate crisis is happening in each direction because it's different, depending on which area you’re in. If you're in West Los Angeles, you're close to the ocean. That’s very different from East Los Angeles, and South Central, and North Hollywood. We did a month of action and strikes every Friday. We presented demands that were specific to each direction. We also invited other BIPOC organizations to join us and speak from those areas.

For the 50th anniversary of Earth Week last year, we collaborated with a bunch of different organizations across Los Angeles to do an entire Earth Week led by Indigenous folks. Each day had some sort of ceremony tied to it. The entire event had to be moved online because of the pandemic. And then the racial reckoning started. We really wanted to be there for our community and our Black relatives, so we teamed up with Black Lives Matter Youth Vanguard Los Angeles and Students Deserve, who have been doing amazing work around policies with schools and the police. We also did an artivism event, blending art and activism, creating a community gathering for people to create art and connect with each other. A few months later, we did it again with Black Unity, a 24-hour action camp in front of city hall that got raided. We raised funds for the encampment and the folks that got raided. We also did a few smaller actions, like standing in solidarity with Wetʼsuwetʼen, a tribe up in Canada, by hosting an action at the Canadian consulate here in Los Angeles.

This year we’re focused on our foundation and our programming. We want to do more things for the community because what we've realized from last year, and even what's still happening today, is that we need more spaces to come together as a community and heal. We've been doing traditional talking circles, which in Indigenous beliefs is a way to foster healthy ways of communication and healing together. We do those once a month for different groups. We do a femme circle, a masculine circle, and a two-spirit, non-binary circle. We’re hoping to do more in the future – maybe a mixed-race circle, because lots of us are mixed, including me.

We're supporting the LA community fridge group by doing drop-offs and deliveries to different community fridges for our houseless relatives. We also launched our California Native Plant Program with our Chumash relative Nicholas Hummingbird to help people reconnect to the earth. One of my favorite Indigenous wellness advocates, Thosh Collins, always says that “the health of the people reflects the health of the earth and vice versa.” So if we're not healthy ourselves, the earth isn't healthy. We have to cultivate that reciprocal relationship.

I feel like the youngest generations are carrying a lot of the stress and anxiety of today. How else do you see healing become a part of how you organize?

We really want youth to understand that rest is resistance and that taking care of ourselves is taking care of each other. Because we are all related, everything is a relationship. Our relationship with ourselves is reflected in everything else. We want to remind youth that it starts with ourselves, and hopefully, they can work on their individual healing, which in turn heals the planet.

You can't be a leader if you're not leading by example. That's what we really try to practice. We’re practicing transparency and honesty, and conflict resolution in our spaces so everyone feels safe and included. All that work starts with us, and we want to make sure our youth have that understanding. Some of them do because they grew up in this way, but some are now reconnecting to their roots. We also invite our Black relatives, other POC relatives, and our white allies, even if it's not their cultural way or practice, to join in, too.

How has your idea of advocacy or activism changed over time?

I don't look at myself as a leader, even though people look at me that way. I've been taught that you don't decide that you’re a leader. Your community decides you’re a leader. What I've come to realize is that there's always work to be done, and we’re going to mess up at some point on this journey. I used to be so hard on myself, like, “Oh my God, I can't believe I said this.” But the biggest thing that I've learned that I hope folks take away is to hold ourselves accountable and give ourselves grace. That way, we can move forward.

I have so many more things that I need to work on and things that I need to continue to unlearn and relearn. Even when I think I've unlearned it, there's something that comes up that I need to unlearn again. And that's okay. Having that mindset of knowing that there's always space and room to grow is key because everything is constantly evolving and changing. We have to have the flexibility to move and change with it.

The biggest thing that I've learned is intention versus impact. I remember a few years ago, I was like, “it's all about intention.” As things have evolved for me, I'm like, “Oh, no, it is all about impact – and how you hold yourself accountable and move forward.”

What do you hope to leave behind for future generations?

I hope to leave an Earth that is healthy and can help future generations in whatever they want to do. We need to go back to that healing, reciprocal relationship with ourselves, the Earth, and the people around us. Everything we need is provided by Mother Earth. We don’t need to create new things and look outside of her for resources.

What do you recommend to other people interested in approaching climate justice in their community?

Look into making connections with Indigenous folks in your territories. Those are the first caretakers of this land. They should be at the forefront of the climate justice movement. Permission should be asked for, and there are certain protocols for different tribes. Do your research and understand whose land you’re on, and build a relationship with those people. Show up for them, because a lot of times they are forgotten about.

There are so many horrible things happening throughout California and throughout the entire Turtle Island, the so-called United States. People don't even know that lands are being taken from Indigenous folks to this day, sacred sites being dug up, all kinds of things. Help protect and save these sacred sites because it's all that some of our Indigenous relatives have left. It’s really hard for those tribes to continue without these sacred places that they grew up in.

I think that an insidious form of white supremacy is disconnecting ourselves from our elders.

Yeah. That's been lost for sure. People will ask us to speak at actions, and I always ask whether they’ve even talked to an Indigenous elder to see if they could hold that action on their territory. A lot of people do these grand initiatives without even consulting them. We make sure to center elders and youth. It doesn’t mean anyone in between doesn’t have the right to speak their minds. But we believe in the seven generations behind us and the seven generations in front of us, and we move in that way. We were once youth, and one day we’ll be elders.

There are four phases of life: infant, youth, young adult, and then an elder. Respecting those phases and where you are within them is really important. Elders and youth are more connected to the Creator. The elders have lived a long life, and they're growing closer to the Creator. And the youth, they just came from the Creator. Somewhere along the way, we get a little bit lost. Looking at those two phases of our life is going to help us remember. Before we are born, we know who our Creator is, where we come from, who we are, and what our medicine is. Once we're born into this life, we forget all of that. Our entire process of life is remembering what we’ve forgotten. That’s why it’s so critical to work with youth and the elders to guide us as we’re remembering.

That's powerful. Last question for you, what is bringing you joy right now?

What's bringing me joy right now is taking pauses and seeking silence, giving space for myself. I think that when we're a part of these movements, we forget just to pause. I have to remind myself to do that. And when I finally sit and pause, I'm just so grateful. It helps me center myself to figure out where do I move from here? Where do I go from here? What do I want to do? I don't get those moments a lot, but when I do get a moment, that's what brings me joy.

About Alexis

Alexis Saenz is a mixed raced womxn originally from the Cheyenne, Ute, Arapaho and Sioux Territories, known as Denver, Colorado and resides in Tongva, Chumash and Tataviam Territories, known as so called Los Angeles, CA. Saenz is Latinx, Indigenous and European, although she is not sure of her direct tribal nations, her great grandpa was from Juarez, Mexico and Grandma from New Mexico. Lex has been adopted into the Indigenous communities in the Diné and Oglala Lakota Sioux nations. She also organizes with the International Indigenous Youth Council LA Chapter as the chapter representative and volunteers for the EmBrase Foundation. Saenz, graduated from California Institute of the Arts with her Bachelor's of Fine Arts in Dance and Choreography. Alexis is Project Manager for March On Foundation. When she's not fighting for the Environmental, Racial and Social Justice movements, you can catch her teaching dance and pilates and pursuing a career in the entertainment industry as a dancer, filmmaker and actress. Alexis is very passionate about helping her community and people around the globe and hopes to continue this work to make the world a better place for us all. @lexxsaenz on Instagram.

Reflection Questions

What are your self-care practices? How do they help you be a better activist?
Who are the elders in your community that are advocating for environmental justice? How can you help amplify their voices?
Why is it so important to learn from our elders, and the youth? How may their perspectives differ from yours?

Nicole Cardoza 4/23/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/23/21

Daphne Frias and Disability Justice

Welcome to Day Two of our Earth Week series!

I absolutely loved chatting with Daphne, and was so inspired by her leadership. In today's discussion, you'll learn more about how necessary it is to center disabled voices in the climate justice movement, the harm of ableist environmental justice initiatives, and the power in trusting your voice.

This is a free, educational newsletter powered by our community. Support our work: share the series this with a friend or donate $8 to keep our work sustainable.

Nicole and Sydney

Take Action

Donate to Open Doors NYC, a network of artists, activists and advocates motivated by community building, gun violence prevention and disability rights.
Read more about the intersection of disability and environmental justice.

In Conversation

What was like the earliest time in your life that you remember getting involved in this work, your first memory, your first step in?

My first memory is from when I was in high school. I was becoming increasingly more ill and my disability was progressing. Each winter I would get pneumonia and eventually I was diagnosed with reactive airway disease. So, the pollution and the air quality around me impacted my health. During that time, I was part of a pre-professional program for young people interested in working in the healthcare field. That was the first time that I learned about public health. That program was centered in Washington Heights, New York City, which is a predominantly Hispanic, Black, and Brown community that has one of the highest levels of asthma amongst young people per capita. I actually did a research project about why this community has some of the highest rates of childhood asthma. And that's when I realized, wait, this is a climate crisis.

How did you gain the confidence of stepping into this and becoming a speaker and an organizer? What was that process like for you?

The beginning years of my work definitely stemmed from a lot of anger where I was like, “why doesn’t anyone care about the issues that are impacting us?” So I sent that anger into action. I was like, “I'm not going to wait anymore for someone to listen. I'm not going to beg our elected officials to listen. I'm going to make them listen to us”. So I started organizing within my community. It was hard, because many people in my community have that immigrant mentality, which is like, “you don't want to get noticed, you should just be grateful for what you have. Even though there are things that are impacting you, you don't really do anything about it.” So I had to convince my community that their voices matter and that it's okay to speak up and be heard.

And I knew that I had the ability to change that dynamic. During elementary and middle school, I went to school with my peers. But for high school, I went to a predominantly white institution with a lot of access to resources. And I noticed that for the students there, speaking up was a very natural thing. They didn't even think twice about it. When something was wrong, they went to the principal and administration and did something about it. I realized, “if they’re doing that, I can do that too. And I can do that in my community. “

So in the summer of 2019, I ran to be part of the county committee of Assembly District 70, Election District 80 in West Harlem. We're the community advocates that bridge the gap between citizens and representatives. I won my election. I won my election through the power of community. I was the first disabled Latina person to ever hold this position. It showed me that community is unstoppable.

That’s incredible. Congratulations! Tell me more about the intersection of disability and environmental justice. How did we get to a place where environmental justice is so rooted in ableism?

In essence, I think it’s because society tries to teach us that the voices of disabled people don’t matter. I also think that ignoring the voices of disabled people makes it easy to create solutions for the climate crisis that society can say benefits everyone and makes people feel like heroes. But in reality, they ignore a large part of the population.

We face a two-fold challenge in creating equitable voices of disabled people in the climate movement. First, we have to let people know that we exist. Once we get past that hurdle, then we can express that we’re also facing some of the biggest impacts of the climate crisis. This complexity makes it incredibly difficult for our voices to be heard. There’s so much that gets missed: like how natural disasters disproportionately affect us, and how we’re forgotten about in evacuation planning.

The climate crisis also exacerbates disability. We have communities that face issues like heat intolerance and communities that face weakened respiratory systems like myself. The changes in the seasons and air quality can aggravate disabilities and even cause more, growing the disability community.

Also, there's a habit of villainizing disability within the climate movement when we look at things like the movement to ban plastic straws.

*Groan*

First of all, if you think that the fate of our earth rests on using straws or not, you're missing the whole thing. You're missing everything. Secondly, to villainize people with disabilities is to completely erase the accommodations and the needs that we require to survive. The things that we're asking for aren’t luxuries. They’re essential for our survival.

Also, when we talk about villainizing people with disabilities for how much plastic we use. Well, we didn't create the healthcare system. When people require feeding tubes and ports, we need those things to be sterile. And unfortunately, that means that those things are going to be single-use items. We don't control that. We’re literally just trying to survive. So villainizing those things is incredibly ableist and it misses the entire point of environmental justice.

Exactly: if we’re trying to save the planet and its people but villainize part of the population in the process, we’re doing the opposite of environmental justice work.

Yeah. It fosters otherness. But by othering people, we create a polarization because, at the end of the day, we are all one human race, living on one planet. We all have to work together to make sure that this one home we have survives.

The systems that be, and the systems of oppression that have led us to experience ableism are the same systems of oppression that created the climate crisis. So if you're trying to look at those issues in silos, you're doing something wrong because those issues are correlated. Disability justice is all justice, and all justice is disability justice.

I imagine this work can be draining. How do you resource yourself as you hold this space?

It's definitely hard because some of the conversations require me to bear the truth of my experience in order to get people to listen to me. That can be very emotionally tolling and exhausting. But I think it's incredibly important for expanding equity and justice within the disabled community. Also, the way I hold space is simply by demanding that space. I will be at these tables where these pivotal, global conversations are happening. I'm constantly seeing campaigns and things that don't include disabled voices. And I'm not afraid to call those people out. I think that we live in this weird society where we see things that are wrong, but we don't say anything because that's the status quo, and we're afraid of the backlash. But look, what does any of that backlash matter when, like, you don't have a planet? It literally makes no sense.

Thank you for that. What do you hope Earth Day looks like in 20 years?

I hope that in 20 years, Earth Day is a sort of birthday celebration for how clean and prosperous our Earth is, instead of how the Earth is dying. In 20 years if we don't do something, there will probably only be one-half of the Earth left, so I hope it’s a celebration of life. I hope that everyone has learned how to create a more symbiotic relationship with the earth instead of only taking from it.

Can you tell me a bit more about the organization you want us to support and why you chose it?

Yes! The organization is called Open Doors NYC. It’s an amazing nursing home nonprofit based on Roosevelt Island. Many of its inhabitants are people with disabilities, but specifically survivors of gun violence. They use spoken word to talk about their experience and to dismantle the notion that just because you're disabled doesn't mean that your voice isn’t powerful. They're working on a film right now to talk about their experience of what it was like to be in a nursing home during the pandemic.

One of their members created the online hashtag #nursinghomelivesmater, which became a huge movement. And I think it encompasses so much of what I said, subverting the norms of systems of oppression and saying, “nope, we're here, we're loud, we're proud, and our stories matter.” They need as much support and help as possible.

Many people are going to be looking at this world and looking for ways to change it. What would be your advice?

First, you're never too young to get started. The status quo tells us many things about young people – that you have to wait to be a certain age to do X, Y, Z. That's completely irrelevant and completely false. You're ready when your spirit and your soul say that you're ready.

The best way to get started is by asking a question: what makes you tick? What makes you upset about the systems that be? What makes you upset about your community? Are there things you see in your community and your ecosystem that you can say to yourself “this could be better” or “it doesn't have to be this way”.

I promise that even if other people aren't speaking about it, they're feeling the same things that you're feeling. They're just waiting on one person to ask them how they feel – and that one person can be you. You can start a revolution. Words are the building blocks for revolutions. Words can make anything happen. I believe in the power of conversation and community to empower you to do that. And I believe in you. I don't have to know you to know that you have power. So I believe in you. I believe in your cause. And I believe in the power of your voice to get things done and make the change.

Please let me know when you decide to write a book! Last question: what is bringing you joy right now?

This weekend is my first weekend off in eight weeks! I'm carving out a self-care weekend, and I'm super excited about it. I’m going to brunch with my family! I'm also really excited because I've been working on my branding, and it looks so pretty. I'm so excited to share with the world. The people on the team I have been working with are some of the most amazing people, and that brings me immense joy.

About Daphne

Daphne Frias is a 23-year-old youth activist. She is unapologetically Latina. Having Cerebral Palsy, and using a wheelchair she is fiercely proud to be a loud champion for the disabled community. She got her start shortly after the Parkland shooting by busing 100+ students from her college campus to the nearest March For Our Lives (MFOL) event. In August of 2019, she was appointed as the NY State Director for March For Our Lives. Learn more on her website and follow her on Instagram @frias_daphne.

Reflection Questions

What current environmental justice initiatives are happening in your community right now? How many of them are ableist?
How can you ensure your work is inclusive to people with and without disabilities?

Nicole Cardoza 4/22/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/22/21

Mohammad Ahmadi on Environmental Activism

Welcome to Day One of our Earth Week series!

I had the pleasure of interviewing Mohammad Ahmadi, a 17-year-old climate justice activist based in Chicago, IL. He is the co-founder and Communications Coordinator of Earth Uprising International, and co-founder and team member of Hinsdale for Black Lives Matter.

This is a free, educational newsletter powered by our community. Support our work: share the series this with a friend or donate $8 to keep our work sustainable.

Nicole and Sydney

Take Action

Donate to Earth Uprising, a nonprofit organization providing resources and opportunities to support the youth climate movement.
Join Earth Uprising as an organizer by filling out this form.
Identify three youth-organized environmental justices initiative in your city.

In Conversation

What is your earliest memory of getting involved in environmental justice?

I've been passionate about the environment, specifically since I was a kid. But my primary motivation was from when I visited Iran in 2014 and 2015. I saw lots of pollution, and I saw dust storms, droughts, desertification, and deforestation. I started to realize how the climate crisis will impact Iran and many other countries.

After that, I saw an opportunity on Instagram to become an ambassador for Illinois Youth Climate Strike. After that, I realized that the climate crisis isn't just an environmental issue but intersects with all other issues: migration, human rights, agriculture, and everything. Climate justice and racial justice are interlinked. Before that, I just thought that the crisis was about saving the polar bears and recycling, which is important, but there’s a much larger problem.

That's powerful. I think a lot of us when we were younger – maybe not your generation, but mine certainly – got that one-sided view of environmental justice. Every Earth Week, we would hear stuff about cutting the plastic around the six-packs of soda to save the sea turtles and, like, raking leaves.

Right. This is a human issue; we’re fighting for human life. Hundreds of millions of people are going to become climate refugees. And the most affected areas – the islands, developing countries, low-income communities – are going to be impacted the hardest. This is a fight for them.

How does this influence your activism now?

With Earth Uprising, I first got involved locally in the summer of 2019. Now, after being a part of the Illinois Youth Climate Strike, I started Earth Uprising Chicago. The first thing we did was organize strikes in front of the Chicago City Hall. We had different themes targeting different groups (the media, fossil fuel, etc). Our focus was to try to get Chicago to declare a climate emergency. We dropped off letters, hosted digital campaigns, partnered with other groups. And we were successful; in February 2020, the Chicago city council declared a climate emergency.

We thought that was important because, although the declaration is symbolic, it shows that you recognize that this is an emergency and that action is needed. Then, we met with politicians, and we talked about the national climate emergency declaration. That's a lot of my local work with Earth Uprising. Internationally, I'm on the Earth Uprising team as Communications Coordinator, where our main job is to support our local organizers.

We have chapters all around the world - I think in about 20 countries. All of our chapters are focused on promoting climate education, bringing climate education into schools, and getting youth involved. We believe that when you're educated about the climate crisis and its intersections with all these different issues, it will motivate you to take action. That’s how it happened for me. I was passionate about the environment first, but once I learned about the humanity at stake, I was motivated to get even more involved.

For the first presidential debates, we wanted to see a climate question, so we partnered with Move On and many other environmental groups to petition for it. Our petition got over 130,000 signatures – 200,000 total across all groups, and there was a climate question at the first presidential debate. So that was a success in our eyes.

Right now, we’re doing a partnership with Ecosia, the search engine, and we're giving micro-grants to youth organizers who are starting climate projects in the U.S.

Very cool. You mentioned your work with Hinsdale for Black Lives Matter. Where do you see racial justice and environmental justice intersecting?

My work with Hinsdale for Black Lives Matter started last June after the death of George Floyd. I had gone to a protest in Chicago and, when I returned, felt the need to create something in my town. My town is 90% white and conservative, and I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. We started to plan our first local protest and got a ton of pushback from people worried that we’d spark looting and violence. Over 500 people showed up, and it sparked a conversation about racism in our community.

We partnered with local Black Lives Matter groups and organized a strike against environmental racism on September 25th, the global day of climate action. We had several demands, including comprehensive and intersectional climate education for our school districts and climate emergency declarations by our town, Hinsdale, and other local townships. State-wide, we demanded the Illinois Clean Energy Jobs Act be passed, and nationally we demanded the passing of the Green New Deal and the Climate Equity Act.

What does Earth Day look like for your work this year?

This year we’re hosting our summit called Youth Speaks 2021. We're partnering with Earth Day Network and two other groups: Education International and Hip Hop caucus. We're doing three days of climate action on April 20th, 21st, and 22nd, which is Earth Day. The first day is the summit: we have eight sessions on freedom of protest migration, environmental justice, and education, etc. We were going to have youth from all around the world discussing those issues. We are also going to release a set of demands for the Biden administration to address.

So what have you learned most on this journey? Like what did you know stepping into this, as it seems like a very public role? There’s a lot of leadership involved. Maybe even a lot of management is involved. What have you learned that you didn't know before through this work?

It takes a lot of effort to educate people and get them involved. In my area, it's been extremely, extremely difficult to get more people involved. It takes a lot of effort and strategic collaboration to make it possible. You need to work together. You can’t just be one organization trying to do everything on your own. We’re constantly collaborating with other activists and organizations. We try to use each other’s strengths to amplify our messages and educate people together.

Yeah. What world are you hoping to leave behind for the generations that follow?

Well, I'm hoping to leave behind a world that is not ravaged by the climate crisis. So we avoid 1.5 degrees Celsius or two degrees of warming each year. I’m just trying to leave behind a more educated population. The youth is the next generation, so if we can educate them, they will demand change from the government faster when they’re older – whether it’s climate justice, racial justice, or anything else.

What is bringing you joy right now?

I think seeing all these activists using their skills and passions to make a change. And when you see that, it motivates me even more, to continue taking action. It also brings me joy when I see success, whether it's a small achievement or a big achievement. That’s inspiring.

Yes! I know this work can be really draining on individuals. So how do you practice self-care?

It is, especially for youth activists. We’re also balancing school and other activities. So it's very difficult. Both the mental stress and strain and just doing the work takes a lot of time. I try to balance things pretty well. There’s always so much more work to do, though. I wish I had more time to spend on local activism, especially with Hinsdale for Black Lives Matter.

One way of self-care is to cut back on something so you have time to focus on specific things. If I have ten different commitments, I can't spend time on each of them. If I spend time on one thing, that's probably more beneficial.

Taking breaks is important, too. We have to have good mental health; it’s necessary to keep our movements going. If we’re all burn out, then who’s going to do the work?

Reflection Questions

What does activism look like for you? How can you take a stand in your community?
Who are some of the inspiring leaders in your community? How can you help their work sustain?
How has your relationship to the Earth inspired your environmental justice work?

Nicole Cardoza 4/21/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/21/21

Unpack the Derek Chauvin trial.

For the past month, Derek Chauvin has been on trial for the murder of George Floyd. Finally, the verdict is out. Chauvin faced three charges: second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. To convict Chauvin, the prosecution needed to show each charge beyond a reasonable doubt. The prosecution did not need to prove that Chauvin intended to kill George Floyd to convict him of the charges.

Happy Wednesday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. After a tense month, the Derek Chauvin trial has finally come to an end. For the first time in Minnesota state history, a white police officer has been held accountable for killing a Black man. It shouldn’t have had to take a video recorded by a 17-year-old girl, a summer of national protests, and months of intense pressure by the family and organizers for this trial to occur. Remember that true justice would mean George Floyd is still alive. Brutality like this cannot be reformed. Today, The George Floyd Memorial Foundation joins us to review the details of the trial and its impact. The details below indicate how so many other charges against law enforcement in the past have been dismissed or discredited.

Our Earth Week series, "This is our home," starts tomorrow! Subscribe to learn from youth environmental justice leaders addressing the biggest climate threats of our time. thisisourho.me.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Support The George Floyd Memorial Foundation’s current initiatives by donating to the organization or purchasing a Justice for George “Be the Change” T-Shirt.
Follow @justiceforgeorge on Instagram for updates on the upcoming trial for other officers responsible for the murder of George Floyd.
Learn about The George Floyd Memorial Foundation’s current initiatives, including providing scholarships to diverse youth and internship opportunities to college-aged Black men.

GET EDUCATED

By The George Floyd Family Foundation

For the past month, Derek Chauvin has been on trial for the murder of George Floyd. Finally, the verdict is out.

Chauvin faced three charges: second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. To convict Chauvin, the prosecution needed to show each charge beyond a reasonable doubt. The prosecution did not need to prove that Chauvin intended to kill George Floyd to convict him of the charges.

Throughout the trial, groundbreaking developments came to light, such as confirmation that Chauvin pinned Floyd down for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, not the well-known 8 minutes and 46 seconds, and confirmation that George Floyd did not attempt to flee the scene before the incident.

Cause of Death Confirmed: The official autopsy for George Floyd declares his death a HOMICIDE, caused by cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression. Drug use and heart disease were "contributing conditions" but "not direct causes" (The New York Times 1). Dr. Martin Tobin, a medical expert testifying in the trial, confirmed, "A healthy person subjected to what Mr. Floyd was subjected to would have died” (The New York Times 2).

While the prosecution provided significant evidence proving that George Floyd died from homicide, the defense continued to spread misinformation, blaming George and his health conditions for his death, blatantly ignoring and undermining evidence and witness/expert testimony.

In light of the defense’s strategy to confuse and mislead the jury and the public, let’s review Fact vs. Fiction regarding the trial of Derek Chauvin:

FICTION: George Floyd died from a drug overdose.

FACT: Dr. Martin Tobin, a pulmonologist who took the stand, confirmed that George Floyd could not have died from a drug overdose, telling the jury, “Mr. Floyd appeared to be breathing at a normal rate before he became unconscious… Had he been overdosing on fentanyl, his rate of breathing would have slowed” (The New York Times 2).

FICTION: If George Floyd was able to speak, he must have had enough oxygen.
FACT: Dr. Tobin clarified to the jury that while George Floyd could speak, that does not mean that he had enough oxygen. “During the arrest, a police officer told Mr. Floyd that he seemed to have enough oxygen because he was able to tell officers that he couldn’t breathe. Dr. Tobin said that a person might be taking in enough oxygen to speak, but not enough to survive. They can be alive and talking one moment, and dead just seconds later, he said” (The New York Times 2).

FICTION: George Floyd suffered from “excited delirium.”

FACT: Dr. Bill Smock, an expert witness of the prosecution and Louisville Metro Police Department surgeon, confirmed that George Floyd did not die of excited delirium, “a term used to describe someone who has become aggressive or distressed from a mental illness or drug use (The New York Times 2). Dr. Smock explained to the jury, “The term has been disproportionately applied to Black people and has been used by law enforcement to justify police brutality.”

During the trial, numerous members of law enforcement testified against the actions of Derek Chauvin, confirming his actions were “uncalled for” and not in line with policy or training. Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo even testified that Chauvin violated policy. Use-of-force expert Sgt. Jody Stiger testified that Chauvin used “deadly force” when “no force should have been used” (The New York Times 3). The willingness for active members of law enforcement to come forward and speak out against a fellow officer led some, including Minneapolis Civil Rights Attorney and former NAACP Chapter President Nekima Levy Armstrong, to believe that the “Blue Wall of Silence,” also known as the “‘no snitching’ code for cops,” collapsed during the trial (NowThis News). Others believe this to be an isolated distancing from one cop rather than a systemic shift in norms amongst law enforcement.

In Closing Arguments, the prosecution reminded the jury that George Floyd is “not on trial here,” after weeks of the defense attempting to put George and his past on trial for the scrutiny of the jury and the world (The Hill). In this, we are reminded that George Floyd, his health, and his past are, in fact, not of concern here. What is on trial is Derek Chauvin’s decision to apply deadly force to George Floyd for 9 minutes and 29 seconds.

The Verdict: Derek Chauvin has officially been found guilty for the murder of George Floyd and has been convicted of all three of the charges. Chauvin’s bond has been revoked and he will remain in custody until sentencing in eight weeks. He faces up to 40 years in prison for second-degree murder, up to 25 years for third-degree murder, and up to 10 years for second-degree manslaughter.

While nothing can erase the pain that the Floyd family has incurred as a result of this tragedy, this conviction represents a major milestone in holding this system accountable.

Key Takeaways

Derek Chauvin was found guilty for the murder of George Floyd and was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter.
Derek Chauvin is in custody and will face sentencing in eight weeks.
As confirmed in the official autopsy report, George Floyd died due to cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression from HOMICIDE. Compounding factors include heart disease and drug use, meaning that neither heart disease NOR drug use caused his death.
The three other ex-officers responsible for the murder of George Floyd will go on trial in August 2021.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/19/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/19/21

Reimagine Earth Week.

This Thursday, April 22, is the 51st anniversary of Earth Day, one of the most significant secular movements observed worldwide. Modeled after the anti-war and civil rights movements that preceded it, the first Earth Day, held on April 19, 1970, was a massive demonstration where millions of people took to the streets to rally for environmental justice. The event supported the advancement of a series of legislation in the years to come: an amended Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Endangered Species Act; the Marine Mammal Protection Act; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (Time).

Hi folks! Real talk – I wrote this because I honestly couldn’t wait to share my excitement about our upcoming Earth Week series. Over the past few weeks, I’ve enjoyed working alongside Sydney, the series’ managing editor, to learn about youth leaders tackling the impact of climate change in their communities. Unlike me in my younger days, each of them is informed and intent on making a difference. I’m honored we’ll be able to celebrate and amplify their work.

In the meantime, today’s email highlights the results of our Earth Week survey (many thanks to the grownups who shared this with youth in their lives). This information helped shape the series. Like our 28 Days of Black History series, this week-long initiative will run alongside the Anti-Racism Daily, and you’ll have to sign up separately to receive it. The series starts Thursday, April 22. You can sign up here: thisisourho.me.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

If you’re an educator, take the pledge to #TeachClimateJustice at your school (via Zinn Education Project).
Explore environmental justice books for kids and grownups on our Bookshop page.
Follow these steps to address the misinformation you find online.
Join a local chapter of a youth-driven organization addressing climate change, including Sunrise Movement, Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

Fifty-one years later, the environmental threats we face are no less severe, and Earth Day has lost its teeth (Teen Vogue). But a new generation is leading the charge in addressing them through advocacy and activism. We surveyed over 1,000 of our readers under 18 about Earth Day, this climate crisis, and where we go from here.

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I wish I knew how wide[spread] it was. You always learn about turtles and the beaches with plastic but never the island forming in the Pacific or the rivers full of it bc of the factories on their edges.”

Anonymous response to “What do you wish you knew about climate change when you were younger?” from our Earth Week Survey.

A clear and consistent point of feedback was the lack of education on environmental justice provided in school. Part of this was intentional: corporations seeded misinformation about climate change to schools. A prominent example of this happened in 2017, when the Heartland Institute, a conservative advocacy organization, mailed climate science curriculum with false information to thousands of teachers across the country (Inside Climate News). The content argued that most scientists disagree that humans contributed to global warming or that climate change is such a big deal (which is false). It encourages teachers to educate their students on this “vibrant debate” and tell “all sides” of the story. Read perspectives from science teachers.

But influencing school curriculum is just part of how corporations intentionally skewed the dialogue around climate change to protect their bottom line. The fossil fuel industry would create fake grassroots organizations that would “stand in solidarity” with their organizations. They created misinformation campaigns to vilify other organizations to protect their own. And, they wielded public, philanthropic campaigns to double down on the benefits of their work (Grist). The NAACP notes how these campaigns would specifically aim to discredit the concerns of poor communities and communities of color, chastising them for not taking more personal responsibility or dismissing their demands as impossible (NAACP). An investigation revealed that ExxonMobil gave nearly $31 million between 1998 and 2014 to 69 groups that spread climate misinformation. Similarly, the Koch brothers have given over $100 million to 84 groups since 1997 (Inside Climate News).

Other corporations weren’t as deliberate but also contributed to misconstruing environmental activism. Recognizing that consumers were increasingly eco-conscious but wary of the costs to meet those demands, corporations invested in greenwashing, campaigns that hinted at eco-friendly initiatives that are often anything but. In this way, corporations signaled that consumers could make earth-friendly choices by shopping with them, using phrases like “upcycled,” “sustainable,” “natural,” and “ethical.” This Innisfree “Hello, I’m Paper Bottle” controversy is a blatant example. As of November 2020, roughly 63% percent of U.S. adults said they believed “purchasing sustainable brands or products makes a difference for our environment” (Ipsos).

Social media has made it easier for misinformation to take root, which only complicates the issue. Earlier this year, Facebook committed to addressing inaccurate information on climate change, including and information labels to posts about climate change that direct people to a climate change information hub and updating that hub with facts from trusted institutions (Market Watch). Last week, the organization announced that it now uses 100% renewable energy and reached net-zero emissions. Skeptics quickly noted that this announcement sounds hollow if they don’t live up to their word (Market Watch).

Screen Shot 2021-04-18 at 8.26.46 PM.png

40% of our survey respondents learned about the urgency of climate change on social media, more than any other source (and compared to 24% in school). Ensuring that information is accurate and trusted is critical for empowering the next generation with the right tools to take action.

All of this contributes to why many of us may believe that personal responsibility was a critical component of environmental justice. This isn’t inherently dangerous; it’s essential to raise awareness and make kids feel empowered to change the world early. But it’s a half-truth, one that shields corporations and government from accountability. More damaging, it draws an unhealthy correlation that individual actions improve the conditions for individual people. It also ignores the intersection of environmental justice and systemic oppression,

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I wish I knew that the climate crisis is not just about the environment but is connected to all our systems of oppression.

In response to “What do you wish you knew about climate change when you were younger?” from our Earth Week Survey.

Saving the Earth isn’t a single-focus issue. Progress lies at the intersection of nearly every human rights issue. Incarceration, immigration, disability justice, global security, landback initiatives – we can’t address any of these until we are willing to analyze how climate change encourages and exacerbates each. In addition, we must understand that the brunt of the adverse impact of climate change will be felt by those most marginalized – not necessarily those that forget to recycle – creating a never-ending cycle of cause and effect. The voices most impacted are often left out of the conversation, developing policies and practices that don’t center those most harmed.

Screen Shot 2021-04-18 at 8.26.57 PM.png

92% of youth under the age of 18 are not learning about environmental racism in school.

But today, some of the most inspiring environmental justice initiatives of the past few years have been led by youth, most notably, the climate strikes of 2019 (Verge). You’ll hear more about these initiatives later this week. Despite this, an overwhelming 56.8% of our youth respondents feel hopeless or very hopeless about the future of this planet. This Earth Week, consider: how can you raise your voice to support more accurate and inclusive environmental justice initiatives? Where can you move in to lead or move back to follow? And most importantly, how do you plan on joining the fight?

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/16/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/16/21

Unpack superheroes and the American Dream.

Last week, actor Ray Fisher shared the racism and inappropriate conduct he experienced while working onset for several superhero movies (The Hollywood Reporter). One of his allegations references discrimination that he heard happened on the set Krypton, a Syfy series that focuses on Seg-El, Superman’s grandfather. Actor Regé-Jean Page, the star of Netflix phenomenon Bridgerton, had auditioned for the role. But the producer rescinded, stating that Superman could not have a Black grandfather.

Happy Friday, yall. I spent too much time on this email, mainly because it felt more manageable than processing the slew of police brutality news from this week. When I saw the news referenced below, it reminded me how society gravitates to escapism in times of social and economic turmoil. And even these fantasy worlds are often limited to the scope of the white gaze. There’s something particularly damning about robbing people – kids – of color of their right to be heroes when their livelihood is constantly at risk.

Are you under the age of 18? We want to hear from you. Take a moment to complete our anonymous survey on climate change.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Support Chicago:

Read about the shooting of Adam Toledo via Block Club Chicago (no video in story)
Donate to organizations supporting on-the-ground: Chicago Freedom School, GoodKidsMadCity-Englewood
Sign the petition to demand defunding the Chicago Police Department
Review why we don't share videos of violence by the police.

Superheroes:

Consider: how does your notion of superheroes shape your perception of truth and justice? Who is narrating those stories? What virtues do they center?

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

This particular bit of the story circulated widely on social media, perhaps because of the new fandom Page has accumulated since Bridgerton. It only emphasized a long-standing frustration with the superhero canon, that its characters are overwhelmingly white, male, and heterosexual. Characters of color, like The Avengers’ Nick Fury, Man of Steel’s Perry White, and Captain America: Winter Soldier’s Sam Wilson, are all secondary characters, never the lead (Harvard Political Review). And many of the few non-white superheroes have been played by white actors, only exacerbating the erasure (Quartz).

But the controversy was also accelerated by the absurdity of it. People were quick to note that both Superman and his grandfather aren’t actually white men, but a fictional alien species where race and genetics don’t have to work within the lens of human evolution. There’s no reason why Superman or his grandfather, or any Kryptonian, have to be depicted as Caucasian.

However, in today’s day and age, Superman doesn’t just look like a white man. He represents whiteness – and the carefully constructed ideals and values that come with it. Superman was an essential symbol of the American dream, and as he grew as a cultural icon, helped to protect it.

Ironically, Superman wasn’t initially built in this image. The character was created by two Jewish teens from Cleveland, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster. Both children of Jewish immigrants, the duo created a superhero that wasn’t afraid of his differences and unafraid to stand against injustice. Superman particularly stood against antisemitism, even confronting Hitler on the atrocities inflicted on the Jewish people of Europe (Ohio History).

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Superman! Champion of the oppressed. The physical marvel who had sworn to devote his existence to helping those in need.

Jerry Siegel, Action Comics issue #1 (Ohio History)

Superman became an influential figure during World War II. Comics during that time didn’t place him directly on the battlefield, but he was still fighting against supervillains that bore a significant resemblance to Nazis. The creators worked closely with the U.S. government to handle these topics and ensured they were aligned with their goals and objectives in the war. These comics became essential forms of wartime propaganda; one in four magazines shipped to troops overseas was a comic. Superman wasn’t alone. Captain America, Batman, and Robin all appeared in solidarity with the U.S. war efforts (liveaboutdotcom).

But Superman’s narrative didn’t back down from home-grown threats, either. In the summer of 1946, the radio serial Adventures of Superman played a 16-part series called “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” which depicted Superman taking down a racist, bigoted group of terrorists based on the real-life Ku Klux Klan. The series used real intel collected by activist Stetson Kennedy, who had infiltrated the KKK. He provided real Klan rituals and secret code words to the show producers, who exposed them live on-air through the narrative. The show significantly damaged the group’s reputation and led to a steep decline in membership (Inverse). “Superman Smashes the Klan,” by Chinese American cartoonist Gene Luen Yang, revisits this narrative from a modern-day perspective (DC Comics).

But in the 1950s, Superman’s focus went from fighting against external threats to fighting for America. This was accelerated by the paranoia of the Cold War era and the rise of anti-war sentiment after the end of World War II. It was also prompted by his introduction to a new channel, television, in 1952, which meant that he needed a more family-friendly appeal. His mainstream identity evolved to become more accessible, friendly, and gentle (he stopped killing his villains, and sometimes they even knocked themselves out, so he didn’t have to be violent). His tagline changed to “...a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way!” (McGill Tribune).

Instead of focusing on systemic issues like he had before, Superman was now focused on protecting his city from one isolated “bad guy” at a time. Many of these were caricatures of villains to minimize causing fear in young viewers. Some perpetuated stereotypes of communities of color (Gizmodo). But the prominent narratives looked at isolated acts of threat instead of systemic or coordinated attacks.

It also doubled-down on the main narrative of Superman, reinforcing the story of the American dream: A young, orphaned boy from a small town who makes it to the big city and achieves greatness. An “immigrant” from another planet who was able to assimilate to a foreign society and take on the responsibility of protecting it. And, above all, a “man” who loves his wife, his family, and his community. In essence, the embodiment of the American dream: that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their own version of success in society. Superheroes included. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the American dream, of course. But we know that the U.S. doesn’t allow that dream to become a reality for everyone (The Atlantic) and leverages that dream to perpetuate racism and systemic oppression (Time).

Perhaps that’s partially why interest in the hero waned in the late 80s. By then, Superman had a long-standing cartoon series Super Friends for years and was depicted in three feature-length movies by Christopher Reeves as a romantic, thoughtful leader (Rolling Stone). Meanwhile, a new narrative of superheroes was emerging, led by Alan Moore's Watchmen and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. These stories, in contrast, were dark and gritty, both set in alternative realities that were far grimmer than the bright, idealized world Superman protected. The heroes these stories centered were far more complex and flawed than Superman’s simplistic narrative. In 1992, DC Comics decided to kill off Superman, which felt equal parts narrative and publicity stunt (Polygon). He was, of course, resurrected shortly after.

Since the early 2000s, few Superman stories have reached critical acclaim. The show Smallville, which hones in on Superman’s upbringing, was a commercial success. But major motion pictures depicting Superman have faltered, especially in comparison to blockbuster superhero films like The Avengers, Black Panther, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier – stories reshaping the definition of what superheroes look like in today’s age. I really enjoyed this interview on the role of Black superheroes in today’s time.

What does it mean to fight for “truth, justice, and the American way” in today’s time? What role, if any, does Superman play in the future we’re envisioning? Is it possible for Superman to rise to this challenge, and is what he represents the future we need? I don’t have the answers to these questions. However, I am excited to see that author Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose work analyzes the fallacies of the American Dream, is writing a reboot of Superman for 2023.

But we also need to answer the questions and make these decisions for ourselves. We don’t need to be super to be the heroes our community deserves. And we can choose what kinds of heroes we emulate in our lives, protect in our communities, and allow us to shape our identities. After all, unlike the comics, no one is coming to save us.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/14/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/14/21

Abolish qualified immunity.

The death has been referred to as an “accidental discharge.” But there is nothing accidental about the death of an unarmed Black man by law enforcement. Our system is designed to maximize interactions between Black and brown people and police officers, which all but ensures that harm will happen. This is enforced through the practice of over-policing, initiatives that have justified increased levels of policing for the sake of the greater good, but often with adverse consequences (Scientific American).

Happy Wednesday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. Our previous two newsletters both depict the atrocities of our criminal justice system, emphasizing that abolition is the only way forward. Qualified immunity is part of that narrative, too, and garnering more attention this month. Today I thought it would be wise to revisit its history and context in current events.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Encourage your local Congresspeople to sponsor the BREATHE Act, which includes the support of ending qualified immunity in alignment with the Ending Qualified Immunity Act.
Send a letter to your Senators to support the “Ending Qualified Immunity Act”.
Research to see what the latest efforts are to ending qualified immunity in your state.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

The latest series of body camera videos released in conjunction to police brutality have reignited conversations about the role of qualified immunity in holding law enforcement accountable.

Some members of law enforcement act like the law don’t apply to them. And because of qualified immunity, they're kind of right. Qualified immunity means that government officials are shielded from charges that violate constitutional and civil rights – unless the victims can prove that these rights were “clearly established law.” This means that in order to charge the perpetrator, the victim must first find an exact same example of the case that's already been ruled illegal or unconstitutional to establish its legitimacy (USA Today).

Still confused? Here's a TikTok video that demonstrates it more simply. Bless TikTok creators.

Here's a real-life example. In February 2020, the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that a prison guard in Texas who pepper-sprayed an inmate in his locked cell “for no reason” did not violate clearly established law because similar cited cases involved guards who had hit and tased inmates "for no reason,” rather than pepper-spraying them (USA Today). The full report notes that if the victim was punched or hit by a baton "for no reason" the assault would violate clearly established law (PDF).

Another example is the story of Malaika Brooks, a Black woman who was seven months pregnant and pulled over for speeding while dropping her 11-year-old off at school. She refused to sign the speeding ticket (mistakenly thinking it was an acknowledgment of guilt). She was then tased three times, dragged into the street, pressed facedown into the ground, and cuffed (NYTimes). Although the judges saw that her constitutional rights were violated, they dismissed the case, arguing that "no precedent had 'clearly established' that tasing a woman in Ms. Brooks’s circumstances was unconstitutional at the time" (NYTimes).

This creates a paradoxical situation: how can we starting holding law enforcement accountable if their specific violations haven't been held accountable in the past? Justices are allowed to interpret "clearly established law" as specifically as they choose. And what's worse – the more egregious the violation, the more likely it doesn't fit neatly into a previous case. It's no surprise that, according to George F. Will, the Supreme Court, applying its “clearly established law” doctrine, has denied immunity only twice in its past 30 cases (Washington Post). There are dozens and dozens of examples just like the ones above, preventing citizens from holding police accountable for harm.

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Important constitutional questions go unanswered precisely because those questions are yet unanswered. Courts then rely on that judicial silence to conclude there’s no equivalent case on the books. No precedent = no clearly established law = no liability. An Escherian Stairwell. Heads defendants win, tails plaintiffs lose.

Judge Don Willett, U.S. Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in The New Republic

So, how did we get here? Qualified immunity is buried in Section 1983 (named for its number in U.S. code, not the year), a provision from the Civil Rights Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. After the Civil War, the federal government was focused on re-integrating the South. But they faced violent resistance from the Klan, who waged a war of domestic terrorism by "killing Black Americans and white Republicans, burning down their homes and churches, and intimidating local communities into accepting white-supremacist rule" (The New Republic).

The government had to act, so it passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, granting it more power to intervene against violations of the 14th Amendment (house.gov). Within it, Section 1983 gave private citizens the ability to sue state and local officials who were violating federal constitutional rights – building more personal accountability into the work (The New Republic). Although the Supreme Court removed power granted by the Ku Klux Klan Act after the Reconstruction Act, Section 1983 remained, dormant until 1961.

This was when James Monroe, a Black man, and his family were pulled from their beds late one night and assaulted by thirteen police officers with no warrant (sound familiar)? Monroe was then held for interrogation without being charged a crime, or access to a lawyer, for 10 hours. In the case Monroe v. Pape, the Supreme Court ruled that they had the right to hold the police officers accountable, using the terms of Section 1983 as reference. This grounded the provision as a part of holding law enforcement accountable in today's rhetoric (The New Republic).

But a shift in terminology has made this more challenging to execute. In 1982, the Supreme Court revised Section 1983 to ensure that government officials were entitled to “qualified immunity” from such lawsuits unless their actions violated a “clearly established law” (The New Republic).

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Qualified immunity shields police from accountability, impedes true justice, and undermines the constitutional rights of every person in this country. There can be no justice without healing and accountability, and there can be no true accountability with qualified immunity. It’s past time to end qualified immunity, and that’s exactly what this bill does.

Ayanna Pressley, U.S. Representative for Massachusetts's 7th Congressional District, on her website.

A wide range of organizations advocate for ending qualified immunity, including the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Movement for Black Lives and the Institute for Justice. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which recently passed in the House, includes ending qualified immunity for law enforcement (although many Black-led organizations oppose most of the other aspects of this legislation). To bolster it, the bill entitled “Ending Qualified Immunity Act” was re-introduced to the House of Representatives, which would end qualified immunity not just for law enforcement, but all government officials (Congresswoman Pressley). And Some states are also ending laws that act similarly to qualified immunity on the state level (The New Republic). Ending qualified immunity is a necessary step towards abolition.

RELATED ISSUES

12/15/2020 | Repeal stand your ground laws.

9/3/2020 | Support mental health response services.

8/26/2020 | Be an active bystander.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/13/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/13/21

Stop over-policing.

Happy Tuesday, yall. I’m tired of writing emails like these. I want our safety – our survival – to never be up for debate. I don’t know how many more times this needs to happen until we take abolition more seriously. Today's action items center on supporting the family of Daunte Wright and its community, but consider how you can proactively make similar investments for those impacted by the criminal justice system where you live.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Donate to the verified GoFundMe for the family of Daunte Wright. You can support his son and girlfriend with diapers and other in-kind supplies on this list.
Donate either in-kind or financial support to the Brooklyn Center community, which expects major businesses to be boarded up in advance of protests in the coming days.
Follow the work of Black Visions as they reimagine safety in MN.
Review the community-based alternatives to calling the police in your city to help offset the impact of over-policing.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

On Sunday afternoon, 20-year-old Daunte Wright was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minneapolis (NPR). The shooting sparked tensions in the area as the community anticipates the outcome of the Derek Chauvin trial (NYTimes). At a press conference Monday morning, Brooklyn Center police chief Tim Gannon expressed that the police officer fired her gun instead of her Taser. This is a dubious claim, and it’s been used as an excuse before. You can learn more about those cases, and the difference between a Taser and a gun, here.

It’s also important to note that Tasers, too, can be deadly. In 2019, Reuters identified at least 1,081 U.S. deaths following the use of Tasers by law enforcement since they became commonly used in the early 2000s. Many of these are exacerbated by other uses of force like hand strikes or restraint holds. During their investigation, they found that police officers often aren’t trained to use Tasers properly, which increases the propensity for harm (Reuters).

A controversial example of this is “stop and frisk” initiatives, which allow police to stop and detain someone if they have “reasonable belief” that the person is, has been, or is about to be involved in a crime (NYTimes). After taking office in 2002, Mayor Bloomberg dramatically extended this program across NYC. Data indicated that crime decreased because of it, but that was later noted as an indirect correlation after the program was reduced. During that time, Black and Latino people were nine times as likely as white people to be stopped by the police but were no more likely to warrant an arrest (NYTimes). Another study found that only 6% of stops from 2009 to 2012 had resulted in an arrest, and 0.1% in a conviction for a violent crime. The majority of those stops caused undue stress and anxiety in the community. The practice was deemed unconstitutional in 2012 (The Guardian).

Predominantly Black neighborhoods are simultaneously over-policed when it comes to surveillance and social control, and under-policed when it comes to emergency services.

Daanika Gordon, an assistant professor of sociology in the School of Arts and Sciences, for Tufts

A report by the Prison Policy Initiative found that Black residents were more likely to be stopped by police than white or Hispanic residents, both in traffic stops and street stops. And over 1 in 6 of Black respondents stated that they had similar interactions with police multiple times over the course of the year. During these interactions, police were twice as likely to use force against Black or Hispanic residents than white residents (Prison Policy).

And there are countless examples of these stops resulting in death. Philando Castile was murdered in 2016 at a routine traffic stop – and had been stopped at least 46 times before in his lifetime (Reason). Army Lt. Caron Nazario, who identifies as Black and Latino, was recently stopped, pepper-sprayed, and handcuffed during a routine traffic stop. The officers involved illegally pulled their weapons, threatened to murder him, and illegally searched the vehicle (NPR). The death of Sandra Bland was also caused by an unjust traffic stop back in 2015 (Vox).

Over-policing also causes harm by weakening trust – not just between police and civilians, but between each other, too. Over-policing creates a biased perception that certain community members are more likely to harm than others, which is racially bias and skewed. And when people lose faith in the system, they’re less likely to cooperate with it, which in turn, makes policing more ineffective as time goes on (Vox). There’s some beneficial work that can come out of this, like mutual aid and safety networks organized by the community as a more nurturing alternative. But it can also spark violent outrage and retaliation, which serves no one.

We must advocate to divest from policing in our communities. We can also do our part to invest in other community-based services and practice using them instead of calling in law enforcement. It might seem small, but that one less interaction could save someone's life.

RELATED ISSUES

12/15/2020 | Repeal stand your ground laws.

9/3/2020 | Support mental health response services.

8/26/2020 | Be an active bystander.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/12/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/12/21

End solitary confinement.

Last week, the HALT (Humane Alternatives to Long-Term) Solitary Confinement Act was signed into law in NY (Bronx Times). This law establishes a series of limitations for the use of solitary confinement, particularly to protect vulnerable individuals from its adverse health effects (NY Senate). It also prevents the denial of essential services to those experiencing solitary confinement, requires due process for solitary confinement sentencing, and mandates the use of rehabilitative programming for those that experience it. This is a small but necessary step forward in reshaping the role of incarceration in our society.

Happy Monday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. The passing of the HALT Solitary Confinement Act in New York last week is symbolic, especially considering the stories of Kalief Browder, Layleen Polanco, and so many others that have lost their lives after experiencing solitary confinement in NY state prisons. Today's email explains more about the harmful practices of solitary confinement and encourages us to learn more about the practice in our states.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Listen to first-hand accounts of those directly and indirectly impacted by solitary confinement, including Ian Manuel, Darlene McDay, Dyjuan Tatro, and Akeem Browder.
Research the status of solitary confinement in your state and act accordingly. Review the tools provided by the ACLU to help inform your advocacy efforts.
Support the work of Black & Pink, a national prison abolitionist organization dedicating to supporting the safety and liberation of the LGBTQIA2S+ and people living with HIV/AIDS impacted by the criminal justice system. You can make a donation or become a pen pal with someone incarcerated.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

Solitary confinement is the most extreme form of isolation in a detention setting, and can include physical and social isolation in a cell for 22 to 24 hours per day. During this time, those in solitary confinement receive very little human interaction (and always behind a barrier), have no or little natural light, are stripped of any reading materials or entertainment, and are severely limited from communication to the outside world (ACLU).

There’s a misconception that this form of punishment is reserved for violent offenders. In reality, most of the individuals held in solitary confinement have a cognitive disability or mental health condition. Many others impacted are those unfairly penalized for a low-level infraction (ACLU). In four of the five facilities that participated in a study with the Vera Institute for Justice, low-level, nonviolent offenses were the most common infractions to result in solitary confinement (Vera).

A 2018 study found that men of color were much more likely to be placed in solitary confinement than white men. Although women, compared to men, are less likely to experience solitary confinement overall, they’re more likely to be sent there because of a low-level infraction (Vera). Prisoners between the ages of 18 and 36 were more likely to be segregated than were older individuals (ASCA). And incarcerated individuals that identify as LGBTQ+ are more likely to experience solitary confinement. A national survey of LGBTQ+ people that have been held in state or federal prisons found that 85% of respondents spent some time in solitary confinement during their time behind bars – some because it was “safer” than the abuse they experienced in general lockup (Solitary Watch). At least 80,000 people are held in “restricted housing” each day (Prisons Within Prisons: The Use of Segregation in the United States). A more recent study found that nearly 2,000 prisoners have been held in isolation for more than six years (NYAPRS).

Solitary confinement is detrimental to the health of those that experience it. Psychologically, the social deprivation caused by solitary confinement can rewire the brain, creating long-lasting neurological damage. Individuals who experience prolonged social lack can experience “social pain,” which the brain processes in the same way as physical pain. Young people, who are still in the formative stages of their physical and mental development, are particularly vulnerable to this. Individuals who experience solitary confinement can suffer from hypertension, heart attacks, strokes, and exacerbated pre-existing health conditions. It’s also directly linked to premature death. In New York State, the rate of suicide was 5x higher for those that experienced solitary confinement than the average prison population (Vera).

It also harms those that experience it indirectly. Family members of those held in solitary confinement experience added levels of duress when they couldn’t be in contact with their loved ones, which has lasting implications (Vera). Staff members often experience higher stress and anxiety levels when working in restrictive housing units (Vera).

And not only is it cruel, research indicates that it’s ineffective to change behavior. Studies show that the practice does not significantly reduce misconduct, violence, or recidivism. In fact, in some cases, it might increase the likelihood for people to re-offend, especially if they transition directly from solitary confinement to release (Supermax incarceration and recidivism). It’s also costly, calling for 2-3x the costs of housing an incarcerated individual in the general population (Solitary Watch). Facilities could instead leverage these resources for safer and effective forms of care.

There are alternative options that center the wellbeing of those incarcerated while maximizing safety for all parties involved. Alternative practices have included severely limiting the time of solitary confinement, divesting some of the time/energy in solitary confinement towards mental health care, and fostering social interaction in a more healthy and generative way. They also rally to end the use of solitary confinement entirely for young people, pregnant women, and those with severe mental health conditions. You can read specific tactics taken by five facilities in a partnership with Vera, and review the Restrictive Housing Assessment Tool they created to guide other facilities to adopt similar practices.

Solitary confinement is a public health issue that needs to be addressed. No one person’s wellbeing should be at the expense of the illusion of safety.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Last week, the HALT (Humane Alternatives to Long-Term) Solitary Confinement Act was signed into law in NY (Bronx Times). This law establishes a series of limitations for the use of solitary confinement, particularly to protect vulnerable individuals from its adverse health effects (NY Senate).
Solitary confinement is detrimental to the health of those that experience it and their loved ones, and the staff that participates in it. It's also not proven to reduce levels of misconduct, violence, or
recidivism.
There are alternative options that center the wellbeing of those incarcerated while maximizing safety for all parties involved.

RELATED ISSUES

1/29/2021 | Abolish prison labor.

1/12/2021 | Abolish the death penalty.

1/6/2021 | End felony disenfranchisement.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/9/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/9/21

End exploitative internships.

This week, Condé Nast resumed its internship program after shuttering it due to a class-action lawsuit in 2013. That controversy sparked a national dialogue on unpaid labor, one that’s important to revisit in these uncertain times. Currently, about 43% of internships at for-profit companies are unpaid (Washington Post), and new research indicates that number may be increasing (NBC News). Yet at the same time, a young workforce is eagerly looking for potential opportunities to gain experience this summer after a year disrupted by COVID-19. How do we reconcile the inequities of the industry with the desire to learn and grow?

Happy Friday, everyone! A dear reader reminded me of this topic this week, which I've been meaning to write about all month. I really dislike how much youth are expected to prove themselves to get a job while they redefine culture and society from their smartphones. I can't stop thinking about how many teenagers have testified during the Derek Chauvin trials. And yet somehow we're still creating barriers to entry-level employment?!

I wrote this today because I've been researching how we can continue to support young writers over here at the ARD. I don't have anything formed yet, but I DO have an open inbox for young BIPOC writers looking for advice. Just reply to this email.

Tomorrow is our weekly Study Hall where I answer questions from the community about what we published this week, or how this work is showing up in your life. Reply to this email to submit your own.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Support Pay Our Interns, an organization advocating for paid internships across all work sectors.
Donate to organizations offering funding to ease the burden of taking internships, like the Black Girl 44 Scholarship and Latinx44 Scholarship Program.
Advocate for the compensation of any unpaid interns at your organization.
If you have the capacity, consider offering mentorship to those entering a new career path so they can generate experience with more flexible terms.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

Unpaid internships blossomed in the 1970s, where there was a higher rate of college graduates than ever before. The rise of increased supply was well-timed with a workforce that needed less labor-intensive roles than ever before, thanks to the rise of technology. Internships became a way for companies to get more hungry and skilled workers on projects at a much lower cost, effectively replacing the entry-level job (Time). Over time, entry-level employers grew to expect employees to have this experience.

But these came to a head after the lawsuits referenced above. In 2013, two former interns from W and The New Yorker sued, citing that they were underpaid for the work they contributed at their offices (one individual was paid $1/hour to organize accessories in the fashion closet) (Reuters). Similar lawsuits in fashion and entertainment led to a shift in the industry, and the unpaid internship became less popular, moving to college credit or a small stipend. However, the U.S. Department of Labor still allows employers to offer internships without pay as long as they meet allow employers to offer unpaid internships, on the condition that they can be proven as “educational” (dol.gov). And often, the light compensation does little to change the conditions that make these opportunities untenable.

It’s clear that working an unpaid internship takes a lot of privilege. Many people can’t financially afford to work for free, and are forced to either decline opportunities or work an additional job to sustain themselves (The Eyeopener). It also takes a lot of time privilege; people with kids at home or other time-consuming responsibilities might not be able to get away. But internships like these have more lasting implications, too. Often, entry-level roles are filled from unpaid internships, which means that those with the most privilege to weather these roles are first to be hired (NACE). This can accelerate the lack of diversity and representation at major companies.

But on a broader scale, it starts creating a narrative of worth and value around our youth. There’s a correlation between knowledge and capabilities with having an internship. Young people that can’t get access to an internship may not be perceived as someone that deserves the same level of recognition. When access to internships is already to center those privileged, it’s easy to see how those from marginalized backgrounds can suffer from the insinuation that they are “less than” in the workforce. This subtle form of bias adds to the layers of discrimination that people with marginalized identities face in the workplace.

Important to note that many internships require candidates to be in school, which even further excludes youth that aren’t pursuing a degree and older people that might be starting their careers for the first time.

Some internships offer college credit as compensation. Although that offers some sort of recognition for work completed, it often costs more than it might be worth. Most students still have to pay the university for those credits accumulated, which increases their financial burden instead of eases it (Washington Post). You can argue that they would have had to pay for those credits anyway, but is that justification to extract labor? Some colleges have waived these fees.

"
Experience doesn't pay the bills. An intern cannot go to the grocery store, go to the checkout line, and when the cashier says cash or credit you can't pay with experience. You can't go to your landlord and pay your rent with experience. That's the key thing here. No one is denying that the main purpose of education is to get experience. It is. But people need a paycheck to pay for bills while they're getting that experience.

Carlos Mark Vera, co-founder and executive director of Pay Our Interns, for NBC News

Some people are quick to defend unpaid internships for a few reasons. First, there’s the perception that people have to earn their dues before being compensated for their labor. This reasoning tends to ignore that students who receive internships while in college already earn those dues in class all day – often racking up tens of thousands of dollars of debt in the process. Others admonish that unpaid internships are the only way that smaller businesses with tight budgets can gain extra labor. We know that small organizations often thrive off of volunteer support, and are often necessary to reach scale. However, the normalization of unpaid internships is reinforced by large, multimillion corporations, not small businesses.

If you want to participate in an unpaid internship, by all means. But let’s shift the expectation that everyone can, and must, to thrive. If you’re an employer hiring someone new to your industry, consider placing less emphasis on internship experience during the interview process. If unpaid internships are absolutely necessary for your work, ensure you’re offering as much care and attention to the burden it places on its participants. And most importantly, notice how our appreciation of labor shapes our perception of the worth and value of entire communities.

11/17/2020 | Cancel student debt.

8/17/2020 | Fight for equity in remote learning.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/8/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/8/21

Learn about COINTELPRO.

COINTELPRO, a shortening of “Counter Intelligence Program,” was a series of covert and illegal initiatives by the FBI designed to disrupt and discredit significant movements in the 1960s. Although it was initially focused on Communism in the U.S., it quickly began to target any movement related to equity and social justice. But one of its main goals was to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of the Black nationalists" (PBS). Under FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s direction, this group either directly or indirectly caused the death and incarceration of major civil rights leaders.

Happy Thursday! As we’ve written previously, the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been whitewashed and sanitized to fit into the image that society wants us to believe, one that is repackaged and resold each year on Martin Luther King Day in the U.S. But another danger of this narrative is the lack of awareness and accountability on his assassination. However, if we fully understand the circumstances surrounding his death – and the fates of other civil rights leaders – we have a more accurate depiction of the true impact of his life. Today’s email is a VERY basic overview, and I highly recommend digging into the articles provided to learn more.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on our website or Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Protect protesters. Watch this video to learn how to identify surveillance technologies at protests, and learn how to protect your identity.
Black activists targeted and surveilled under COINTELPRO are still imprisoned. Support efforts to release Dr. Mutulu Shakur and Mumia Abu-Jamal, activists that advocates emphasize were falsely imprisoned.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

Most of its focus was on dismantling the Black Panther Party, which Hoover saw as “the greatest threat to the country’” (Berkeley). Some of their actions were direct: they often organized raids with local law enforcement to kill or displace members. One of these resulted in Fred Hampton’s death, the 21-year-old chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. In 1969, Fourteen plainclothes police officers raided the apartment building where Black Panther members and their families lay sleeping, firing over 90 times from pistols, shotguns, and a machine gun (History). Hampton and chapter member Mark Clark were killed, and four others were physically injured during the raid.

But they also created lies and deceit to influence the actions of leaders and those around them. To disarm the Black Panther Party, they seeded false information to create rifts between BPP leaders (most notably, Eldridge Cleaver and Huey P. Newton) and create dissent between the BPP and Black nationalist groups. They also drove the actress Jean Seberg, who financially supported the BPP, to die by suicide. They leaked a fake letter to the press insinuating that she was pregnant not by her husband but a high-ranking official of the Black Panther Party (NYTimes). The stress of this controversy caused Seberg to go into labor early, ultimately losing her child. She ultimately died by suicide.

COINTELPRO targeted many other notable civil rights leaders. Their actions led to the assassination of Malcolm X and drove Assata Shakur out of the country. It spied on famed boxer Muhammad Ali and his relationship with the Nation of Islam for years. Through COINTELPRO, the FBI collected a 1,884-page file about the author and activist James Baldwin.

The COINTELPRO program was disbanded after a group of activists exposed them – with proof. On March 8, 1971, four people broke into an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole classified documents outlining the program. The group chose this night specifically; it was the night of the “Fight of the Century,” the boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, and they knew people would likely be out of office. They seized over 1,000 documents and promptly mailed them anonymously to newspapers across the country (Zinn Education Project). Betty Medsger is reportedly the first person to break teh story at the Washington Post, and you can read more about her experience here. The burglars’ identities remained a secret until 2014 when three of them joined Medsger in an interview with Democracy Now!

This exposure helped to contextualize the loss of great figures, and, in some cases, encourage the families of victims to speak out. One case was after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On April 4, 1968, Dr. King was assassinated, shot while standing on his hotel room’s balcony. The suspect, James Earl Ray, was arrested a couple of months later. Ray confessed and pled guilty to the murder. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison (Stanford).

But days later, he recanted his confession and said he was coerced by law enforcement (Washington Post). This information, paired with the exposure of COINTELPRO in the early ’70s, led the family of Dr. King to be suspicious of the circumstances of his death. Because COINTELPRO had, of course, been actively surveilling Dr. King, too. Since 1963, the bureau regularly wiretapped King’s home, offices, and hotel rooms. They also sent him a tape of a recording of his sex life, along with a blackmail note threatening to expose him publicly unless he killed himself (NYTimes). Other civil rights leaders who surrounded Dr. King, like Bayard Rustin. More extensive records of surveillance of Dr. King, including FBI investigations of his death, will be released to the public in 2027.

In 1993, another man admitted he was part of a conspiracy to kill Dr. King (History). These claims led the King family to sue for wrongful death for a symbolic $100, as the case was solely about seeking justice. The case, Coretta Scott King v. Loyd Jowers, found that Dr. King was the victim of a conspiracy involving the Memphis police and federal agencies. This was a civil, not criminal case, so no one was charged, nor was the federal government on trial. The Department of Justice subsequently rejected the trial results, and the allegations included (DOJ). Regardless, the family is still adamant about the conspiracy (The Grio).

“

There is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. And the civil court's unanimous verdict has validated our belief. I wholeheartedly applaud the verdict of the jury, and I feel that justice has been well served in their deliberations.

Coretta Scott King, The Transcription of the King Family Press Conference on the MLK Assassination Trial Verdict, The King Center

It’s important to remember that COINTELPRO wasn’t the start of violence against civil rights leaders but a more formalized approach to a long history of these kinds of tactics. Much of this work also happened under the War on Drugs led by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (established by Hoover, led by Harry Anslinger). The famed artist Billie Holiday was hounded by law enforcement throughout her life, which ultimately led to her death (28 Days of Black History).

And surveillance continues on civil rights movements to this day. In 2015, it was revealed that the Oregon Department of Justice was conducting digital surveillance on state residents that used the Black Lives Matter hashtag online (Oregon Live). And as protests unfolded across the U.S. last summer, there were a series of reports of law enforcement agencies deploying advanced surveillance technology, including facial recognition, aerial surveillance, and cellular phone exploitation (EFF). More gravely, six activists in the Ferguson, Missouri, community have been found dead in the four years since Michael Brown was killed (CBS News).

Many educational textbooks skip COINTELPRO altogether, which means that many people don’t have this context when they read about the importance of securing our identity in this technologically advanced, connected age. But we can’t forget about the past as we fight to protect our future. COINTELPRO might seem long in the past, but its influence is still causing harm today.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

COINTELPRO was a series of covert and illegal initiatives by the FBI designed to disrupt and discredit significant movements in the 1960s
It is directly responsible for the death, exile, deportation, etc of prominent civil rights leaders of the 1960s
The family of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are adamant that the FBI conspired in his death
Surveillance still continues of the current Black Lives Matter movement

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/6/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/6/21

Unpack white feminism.

“Harriet Tubman, RBG, Marie Curie, Oprah Winfrey, Amelia Earhart, Frida Khalo, Malala Yousafzai, Wu Zetian... all Unrelatable AF.”

It's Tuesday, y'all! And we're back to discuss the role of whiteness in the feminist movement. It's no coincidence that feminism has disproportionately benefitted white women, and today's newsletter highlights some ways women of color and other marginalized voices have been silenced in the narrative.

This newsletter is a free resource and that's made possible by our paying subscribers. Consider giving $7/month on Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. Thank you to all those that support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Educate yourself on feminism from the leaders like Barbara Smith, Grace Lee Boggs, Audre Lorde, Mikki Kendall and Gloria Anzaldúa.
Take anti-racism courses from Black leaders like Rachel Cargle, Leesa Renée Hall, and Austin Channing Brown.
Review the “apology” that Hollis posted on her Instagram and compare it to our previous newsletter on crafting an apology.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

Last week, author and motivational speaker Rachel Hollis posted a video where she fought back against being called “privileged” because she has a housekeeper. In it, she defends her need for support for being a hard-working, successful woman and compares herself to her idols, which she lists in the caption:

“Harriet Tubman, RBG, Marie Curie, Oprah Winfrey, Amelia Earhart, Frida Khalo, Malala Yousafzai, Wu Zetian... all Unrelatable AF.”

Unsurprisingly, the backlash was swift. People quickly noted the condescending tone that Hollis used when referring to her housekeeper who “cleans my toilets.” Many indicated that working hard isn’t always synonymous with the financial freedom to hire a housekeeper. Others admonished her audacity to compare herself to anyone on this list, particularly Harriet Tubman and Malala Yousafzai, who didn’t achieve success by “waking up at 4 am” but overcoming acts of violence and oppression. This wasn’t the first time Hollis has come under criticism; last year, she used a quote by Maya Angelou without attribution, which re-ignited a broader conversation on the importance of citing Black women.

The post, and the poor excuse for an apology that followed, was unsurprising; Instagram influencers are constantly posting something disappointing these days. But I found this one particularly interesting because it feels as if white feminism itself crafted it word-for-word. It exemplifies how, throughout history, white feminism has centered white women over women of color and justified any harm through its pursuits in the process.

Many people supported the women’s suffragists movement because they believed that enfranchising (white) women’s right to move would neutralize the Black vote and gain white supremacy (History). Historians emphasize that many white suffragist leaders were racist, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who repeatedly attacked immigrants, the working class, and Black people to justify the rights for white women (New Yorker). Black women suffrage clubs tried to affiliate with the national (white) suffrage movement but were discouraged from doing so; admission of Black people could anger white Southerners (NYTimes).

But this focus – white women above all – has continued into movements that we see today. Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” movement, which emphasized that women can “have it all” if they’re bold and brave enough to ask for it, glaringly didn’t reflect the challenges women of color experience in the workplace. And, I’d like to add, women with disabilities, women that many not benefit from cisgender privilege or neurotypicality. The notion was publicly criticized by former First Lady Michelle Obama (Washington Post), along with other voices quick to name how Sandberg’s whiteness and wealth made this a much more unrealistic strategy for everyday people of color (People of Color in Tech).

Sometimes, women’s movements don’t just overlook the experiences of women of color – but abandon them altogether. In October 2017, actress Alyssa Milano encouraged women to share stories of sexual assault publicly, using the phrase and hashtag #MeToo to demonstrate solidarity. The tweet quickly gained steam, accelerating the #MeToo movement we know today. But the term “Me Too” was coined by activist Tarana Burke, a Black woman, back in 2006, before hashtags even existed. Milano was quick to credit Burke accordingly, but many people (still) credit Milano for it. The movement quickly became centered on the voices of mainly white celebrities harmed by powerful men in Hollywood. As it evolved, Burke continued to emphasize that, despite the growing impact of the movement, there are “tons of voices that have gone unnoticed,” particularly those most marginalized.

“

The women of color, trans women, queer people—our stories get pushed aside and our pain is never prioritized. We don’t talk about Indigenous women. Their stories go untold.”

Tarana Burke, Time 100 Summit in 2019

And now we’re facing the end of the Girlboss era, the latest manifestation of white feminism. Coined by entrepreneur Sophia Amoruso, the movement advocated for female corporate success to move gender equity forward. Female founders launched brands that catered to women, often reclaiming space in male-dominated industries. In this way, feminism became both a movement and a marketing strategy. But when the racial reckoning of last summer emboldened others to speak out, it became clear that many of their leadership patterns only reinforced existing racial disparities seen in companies led by white men (The Atlantic). Employees, particularly those of color, shared stories of abuse, intimidation, racism, and sexual assault (GEN Magazine).

By overlooking the barriers that women of color face, movements like these perpetuate the narrative that it’s the fault of women of color that they can’t live up to opportunities. It eschews collective accountability for individual responsibility, only adding to the burden that women of color face. This is partly why, to this day, we still see stark disparities for women’s rights between white women and people of color. We know that white women make 79 cents for every dollar a man makes, but Black women make $0.62 and Hispanic women $0.55. Black women are twice as likely to experience life-threatening pregnancy-related complications than white women (American Progress).

Feminism alone isn’t solely to blame for the inequalities that we face, and it certainly won’t solve it alone. But we do need to prioritize the voices of the women most marginalized as we continue to advocate for women’s rights. Otherwise, feminism will be wielded as a weapon against communities of color with the guise of empowerment and SHE-E-O energy, and non-white women will be left with the burden.

This is only possible when white women de-center their own narrative and elevate others instead. But it doesn’t look like we can expect that from Hollis anytime soon. Instead of acknowledging on how whiteness may have influenced her privilege, and taking accountability for the harm of her actions, she’s left the post and deflected responsibility onto her team.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Last week, Rachel Hollis posted an insensitive video that exemplified the fallacies of white feminism
Throughout history, the feminist movement has prioritized the needs of white women over the needs of women of color, and often at their expense
In order to achieve true equity, we have to center the voices and perspectives of marginalized women

RELATED ISSUES

7/14/2020 | Embrace your race privilege.

10/22/2020 | Stop tone policing.

9/7/2020 | Learn about critical race theory.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 4/1/21 Nicole Cardoza 4/1/21

Protect the unhoused community.

Last week, a thriving houseless encampment in Echo Park, Los Angeles, was destroyed by city officials. The community released a statement asking not to be disturbed, and allies gathered to stand in solidarity in advance of the raid. Nevertheless, on March 24, over four hundred LAPD officers descended to remove the unhoused community forcibly. Over 182 people were arrested, including at least a dozen journalists. By early the following day, police erected fences around the perimeter so residents couldn’t leave or return (The Knock LA). Protestors have since reported violence and projectiles inflicted by law enforcement at the scene.

Happy Thursday, and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. As we enter our 10th month of reporting (!!!), I'm still overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of this community. Thank you for being here, and remember: we're making big shifts together, even if you feel like your efforts are small. Thank you for staying committed and consistent with this work.

The stories from the forced displacement at Echo Park last week are still haunting me, so I wanted to educate myself a bit more about the houselessness crisis across the U.S. I want to emphasize that local engagement is critical on this issue, so do your best to find organizations and initiatives to support nearest you.

Also, we're launching an Earth Week newsletter series (similar to 28 Days of Black History) written and edited by young environmental justice leaders of color. If you are under the age of 18 and doing this work in your community, OR a grownup that can connect us to a voice we must include, kindly reply to this email with details.

This newsletter is a free resource made possible by our supporters. We'd love you to consider making a monthly recurring donation on our website or Patreon. You can also give one-time on PayPal or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza). Thank you for all your support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Use these steps to help the unhoused in your community get their stimulus checks. Join a virtual teach-in to learn more on Monday, April 5.
Support local mutual aid organizations focusing on the unhoused communities near you. Some suggestions: Remora House in DC, the Echo Park Rise Up GoFundMe, Minneapolis Northside Mutual Aid, and the SF Neighbors Solidarity Network in San Francisco.
Research how your city engages with its unhoused community and advocate for its wellbeing. For example, Austin will vote May 1 on Proposition B, which will make it illegal to camp in certain public places, sit or lie in public spaces, and panhandle at night (KVUE). My work is to advocate against this criminalization by raising awareness and encouraging my local friends to vote against it.

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

In this article, we use the term houseless and houselessness, which distinguishes the difference between having insecure access to shelter rather than the sense of belonging and identity with the concept of home, which can be much more than a physical place. Pete White, executive director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, shares in Curbed that unhoused people may still identify home as that neighborhood, city, and/or lands (although this shouldn’t discredit those displaced and unhoused because of houselessness). I also appreciate the perspective from unhoused.org, which states that “unhoused” implies “that there is a moral and social assumption that everyone should be housed in the first place.” This, to me, sharpens the focus of the issue.

“

We view the displacement of the homeless residents of Echo Park Lake as a forced eviction. Indeed, it was eviction at gunpoint, one that entailed the invasion and closure of the park by a militarized police force and led to 'uncertainty, fear, anger' for the homeless residents.

From an open letter from UCLA staff members condemning the actions at Echo Park.

Echo Park is a well-known location in Los Angeles (The Hollywood Reporter), and that, paired with the scale of the crackdown, garnered national attention. But unhoused populations across the country – and around the world – face similar injustices regularly.

Like many issues in our society, houselessness is frequently positioned due to an individual’s actions. If you believe stereotypes depicted in media, a person’s addiction, violent tendencies, lack of academic commitment, money mismanagement, etc., led them to lose their homes. But really, the story of houselessness highlights the failings of a system, not its people. Evictions are often the major life event that precedes an unhoused experience, particularly in urban communities with rapidly rising rent and homeownership costs (Washington Post). Incarceration does as well; formerly incarcerated people are up to 13x more likely to experience houselessness than the general population (Urban Institute). So does job insecurity, which is increasingly likely for those working low-wage jobs and in temporary roles.

These issues tend to impact people of color disproportionately. A study from 2018 found that Black people account for 12% of the population but 43% of the homeless population (National Low Income Housing Coalition). Because it’s embedded in everything from the housing market to employment, incarceration, and academia, systemic racism and discrimination accelerate the likelihood that someone will become unhoused. The New York Times offers a comprehensive overview of the impact of racism on houselessness in Los Angeles. Read more in-depth about other issues that foster houselessness here.

And all of this was well-documented before the impact of the pandemic, which has forced many more people into houselessness. In fact, the Echo Park community swelled in size this year because of it. One study estimates that this year will cause twice as much houselessness as the 2008 Great Recession. From now – 2023, the unhoused community is projected to grow by 49% in the United States, 68% in California, and 86% in Los Angeles County (Economic Roundtable).

Experiencing houselessness may increase the likelihood of contracting COVID-19. According to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center, the highest single 7-day rate of positive COVID tests for the entire United States population between the months of June and October was 7.8%. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reported that COVID positivity rates for those experiencing houselessness fell in an average range of 9-12% for that same time period (United Way). Despite this, at least twenty states did not include people living in shelters as part of their vaccine distribution plans (National Academy for State Health Policy).

In addition, some unhoused people don’t have access to a consistent address and may not file taxes because of their low income. This makes it difficult for them to access the COVID-19 stimulus checks, which have been a lifeline for many people regardless if they have reliable access to housing or not. Individuals can file a tax return this year (and the deadline was extended until May 15th) to receive the latest payment, so there’s still time to support those in your community using the resources provided above.

Racism and discrimination also shape how our system responds to houselessness. As demonstrated in Echo Park, unhoused people are often criminalized instead of supported, which can exacerbate the trauma and pain of being unhoused. Cities will pass laws banning people from sleeping in public spaces or cars and laws against scavenging through trash for food. Local law enforcement will write citations or charge fines for those “loitering” in public areas. 72% of cities have one or more laws prohibiting camping in public places, and 83% of cities restrict or ban begging in some or all public places. In addition, 55% of cities prohibit storing property in public places, which gives law enforcement legal protection to seize and discard people’s things, including essential items like identification, medicine, food, and shelter (Housing Not Handcuffs 2019, National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty).

This approach to houselessness isn’t effective. First off, it continues to apply individual punishment for systemic failures. It also wastes precious resources – resources that could nourish communities and reduce the situations that lead to houselessness in the first place. These same resources can also reduce incarceration and policing, improve education, and foster employment, a far more generative solution for communities overall than punitive measures. It also contributes to the narrative that houselessness is at fault of the people and not decisions made by local leaders.

When we consider the belated response of the U.S. government to the pandemic, paired with our existing economic and social issues, I don’t understand how we can insinuate that houselessness is the fault of one person – let alone any justification to treat unhoused people like criminals. The community in Echo Park emphasized that they had created “a sense of security, stability, and safety” against all odds and despite the city’s lack of support. When members of our community are most vulnerable, we must protect their well-being. Policing is not the answer.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Residents of an unhoused community in Los Angeles were forcibly removed from the property after building a space of resiliency despite lack of support from the city
Houselessness is an issue likely to increase due to the social and economic impact of the pandemic
Criminalization is not the answer to houselessness

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 3/29/21 Nicole Cardoza 3/29/21

Rally against voter suppression.

Last Thursday, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a sweeping voter suppression bill into law that allows for more legislative oversight and control on election proceedings. The bill has a couple of positive provisions, like lengthening the time of early voting in general elections, but they fail to compensate for the negative.

Happy Monday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily! We covered this topic briefly last June on the anniversary of Shelby County v. Holder, and it's all the more relevant with the law that passed in Georgia last week. I didn't realize how many other states have similar legislation pending – so stay alert for the latest in yours.

This newsletter is a free resource made possible by our supporters. We'd love you to consider making a monthly recurring donation on our website or Patreon. You can also give one-time on PayPal or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza). Thank you for all your support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

Donate to the New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan effort to register and educate Georgia voters. The most effective way to reverse these laws is to create a Democratic-led state government in 2022.
Voter suppression laws are in progress in several other states right now. If you live in teh following states, click the link to take action (provided by Fair Fight): Arizona | Georgia | Florida | New Hampshire | Texas.
Sign the petition to encourage your Congresspeople to pass H.R. 1 and H.R. 4.

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By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

Absentee voters have to submit a driver’s license, state ID or other proof of their identity.
Absentee ballot drop boxes can only be located in early voting locations (which are often placed predominately in wealthier, white neighborhoods)
Drop boxes won’t be available in the last days of an election (after it’s too late to mail ballots in)
The State Election Board is now managed more by the state legislature, who now have the power to suspend anyone for inappropriate conduct
It shortens runoff elections from nine weeks to less than a month and cuts the early voting required from three weeks to one week. Consider how critical the runoff election in Georgia was for establishing a Democratic Senate in early 2021.

(NBC News)

The most blatant addition prohibits volunteers from distributing items like food, water, and folding chairs to voters waiting in long lines. Because of the lack of polling locations available, Georgia voters – particularly those of color – waited hours to be able to vote in the 2020 elections (NBC News). Not only is this an apparent attempt to deter individuals from voting, but it’s also troubling that the government finds it appropriate to ban a human from providing food and sustenance to another while participating in their civic duty.

When asked during his first formal news conference, President Biden was adamantly against the law, stating that it “makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle” (Washington Post). Stacey Abrams called the law Jim Crow 2.0. On Twitter, Kemp proudly shared a photo of the occasion, depicting him seated at a table, surrounded by six white men, signing the bill (Twitter). Reporter Will Bunch from The Philadelphia Inquirer noted that the painting in the background featured the Callaway Plantation, a plantation in Wilkes County, GA, where hundreds of Black people were enslaved, which makes it all the more sinister. Read the full story on Will Bunch’s Twitter thread.

To fully understand the context, we have to analyze its similarities with voter suppression laws of the Jim Crow era. By definition, voter suppression, is when the state or federal government intentionally makes it difficult for people to exercise their right to vote. The Fair Fight PAC breaks down three fundamental voting stages: voter registration, access to polls, and ballot counting. Voter suppression can happen at any stage of this process. Although voter suppression affects everyone from having a fair and democratic election, it usually directly impacts communities of color, the elderly, people with disabilities, and others systemically marginalized in our country.

Voter suppression for Black people has been around since the beginning. The 15th Amendment, enacted in 1870, made it unconstitutional to deny any man the right to vote based "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude” (National Geographic). But, Black men were often barred from the polls, along with other people of color, through state-wide rules and regulations that limited their rights. This wasn’t just a racial decision but a political one; during that time, Black people overwhelmingly voted Republican (the party of Abraham Lincoln).

States implemented polling taxes – which made it too expensive for any poor person to vote. Some also started to use literacy tests to thwart Black people, knowing that many weren’t granted the opportunity to learn – and were punished for attempting to.

Side note: The grandfather clause is often included as a form of voter suppression. This practice granted prospective voters eligibility if their father or grandfather had voted in the past. This obviously did bar non-white voters from voting, but it was actually implemented to enfranchise uneducated and/or poor white men, so the poll taxes and literacy tests didn’t block them. The law became obsolete after a Supreme Court ruling in 1939, but the “grandfathered in” terminology still remains (NPR).

In Mississippi in 1890, the state went so far as to require voters to read and interpret a section of the state constitution chosen by a local official. White people were given simple clauses to read and were often assisted by poll workers. In contrast, Black people were given the most incomprehensible clauses that even the most well-read political figure may not have understood. During his run for re-election, Democratic Senator, Mississipi Governor and noted white supremacist Theodore Bilbos said the following:

“

The poll tax won’t keep ’em from voting. What keeps ’em from voting is section 244 of the constitution of 1890 that Senator George wrote. It says that for a man to register, he must be able to read and explain the constitution...and then Senator George wrote a constitution that damn few white men and no niggers at all can explain.

(Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader)

These laws were effective. In Mississippi, less than 9,000 of the 147,000 voting-age Black people were registered to vote after 1890. In Louisiana in 1896, there were 130,000 registered Black voters. But this number plummeted to 1,342 by 1904 (Smithsonian).

It wasn't until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the federal government attempted to eradicate these voting laws. Within four years of its enactment, Black voter registration increased from 25% to 65% (Brennan Center). But seven years ago, the Supreme Court significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act. In its June 25, 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, the Court rejected a provision of the Voting Rights Act that determined which jurisdictions with a history of discrimination had to “pre-clear” changes to their election rules with the federal government before implementing them. This gave states a free pass to make whichever rules they see fit without oversight (Brennan Center).

This enabled states like Georgia to implement new laws that disenfranchise voters. One rule, the “use it or use it” law, allows states to remove their citizens from the voter registration list if they didn’t vote in past elections. The "exact match" law requires that voters’ registration information exactly matches the information found at the state’s Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration. In 2017, the Georgia state government, led by then-Secretary of State Kemp, who had just announced his run for governor, used these two rules to remove over 600,000 voters from the registry (The New Republic). An additional 53,000 voter registrations were pending at the time of the election. Unsurprisingly, Kemp won the election against Stacey Abrams by roughly 55,000 votes (NBC News). You can read about other examples of modern-day disenfranchisement here.

Progressive leaders have been advocating for the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would reinstate some of the changes made in 2013. They offer a more comprehensive view of discriminatory acts in the voting process that reflects modern-day (Brennan Center). The For the People Act, introduced in early 2021, is also designed to restore the VRA and end gerrymandering and reduce corporate spending in elections (Brennan Center). It’s possible, but not likely, that these will pass the Senate, but we can rally. More urgently, we must support the organizers in Georgia to ensure everyone has access to the resources they need, despite an equitable system. As you watch this conversation unfold, be sure to tune into the latest on voting rights in your state, too.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Last week, Georgia state legislatures passed voter suppression laws that will disproportionately impact marginalized communities.
These laws echo similar acts throughout history that tried to make it more difficult for people of color to access the polls.
Although the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 to end the Jim Crow voting laws, a provisional change in 2013 made it easier for states to create oppressive laws once again.

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Nicole Cardoza 3/26/21 Nicole Cardoza 3/26/21

Learn the definition of "woke.”

This past week, Tim Scott has come under criticism for admonishing “woke supremacy,” naming that the liberal movement is “as bad as white supremacy” (The Hill). The rise of the term “woke supremacy” indicates that the word “woke” has strayed far from its original intentions.

Happy Friday and welcome back. I’m taking a slightly different take on today’s newsletter to highlight the history behind the word woke and the harm in pitting calls for accountability against the violence of white supremacy culture. Because of that, the take action section offers a couple of urgent CTAs from communities across the U.S.

This newsletter is a free resource made possible by our supporters. We'd love you to consider making a monthly recurring donation on our website or Patreon. You can also give one-time on PayPal or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza). Thank you for all your support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

A large unsheltered community at Echo Park Lake in Los Angeles, CA, is being displaced by law enforcement after building a safe and peaceful community. Use this toolkit to join the community, and follow the latest on the hashtag #EchoParkRiseUp.
Undocumented workers in NYC have gone on hunger strike to demand access to pandemic aid, which must be included in the state budget by April 1. Donate to support their efforts.
The Missouri State Legislature wants to make protesting in the streets a felony. Sign the petition to protect free speech.

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By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)

The term is often attributed to author William Melvin Kelley, who used the term in his 1962 New York Times essay about the appropriation of Black vernacular (often referred to as AAVE). But the idea of “staying awake” has been used to support social and political issues for hundreds of years. The term “stay woke” specifically was first used as part of a protest song by Blues musician Huddie Ledbetter called “Scottsboro Boys,” which a group of nine Black teenagers in Scottsboro, Arkansas, accused of raping two white women (Vox).

The word resonated with musician Georgia Anne Muldrow, who used it as her own personal mantra to stay motivated. Her definition of the term is as follows:

“

Woke is definitely a black experience — woke is if someone put a burlap sack on your head, knocked you out, and put you in a new location and then you come to and understand where you are ain’t home and the people around you ain’t your neighbors. They’re not acting in a neighborly fashion, they’re the ones who conked you on your head. You got kidnapped here and then you got punked out of your own language, everything. That’s woke — understanding what your ancestors went through. Just being in touch with the struggle that our people have gone through here and understanding we’ve been fighting since the very day we touched down here. There was no year where the fight wasn’t going down.

Georgia Anne Muldrow, in conversation with Elijah C. Watson for OkayPlayer

Muldrow wrote the word into her song “Master Teacher”, which was re-recorded by Erykah Badu, a Grammy-award-winning singer and songwriter, and released in 2008 (OkayPlayer). That track brought the term “stay woke” to the forefront of modern Black culture. “Stay woke” became a rallying cry for Black lives after the killing of Michael Brown in 2014, a reminder to watch out for police brutality. This specific use of the term defines its relevance to our current culture. Aja Romano wrote a detailed history about the word “woke,” including a comprehensive timeline, if you want to learn more (Vox).

And, as words tend to do in culture, the word “woke” was mainstream by 2016. Everyone – individuals, brands, talk shows, politicians, sports teams – started using the word broadly to align themselves with conscious values and ideas. As Sam Sanders notes in his article for NPR, this is a standard pattern for how words cycle through our culture (NPR). And AAVE is routinely adopted and misconstrued by mainstream communities. But a word that once carried significant cultural significance for the Black community got co-opted to display solidarity without any action attached to it. Woke went from something we did to something we only said.

“Words that begin with a very specific meaning, used by a very specific group of people, over time become shorthand for our politics, and eventually move from shorthand to linguistic weapon. Or in the case of woke, a linguistic eye-roll” (NPR).

As soon as the term found mainstream understanding, it also started to be wielded by conservatives as an attack. Nowadays, it’s more likely you hear about “wokeness,” “woke culture,” "woketopians," or “woke supremacy” condescendingly, usually as a way to dismiss liberal views of equity and inclusion as a “liberal agenda” or a form of “political correctness.” Suddenly, the word woke went from protecting marginalized folk to attacking them for standing up for their rights. This evolution of the term aligns with an incredibly polarized era. It’s no wonder that by October 2018, 80 percent of Americans believe that “political correctness is a problem in our country” (The Atlantic).

But woke supremacy is just a phrase. White supremacy is a culture. The word “woke” wouldn’t even exist if Black people had to stay vigilant to stay alive. Individuals, for example, wouldn’t express outrage over a journalist using the N-word if white supremacy hadn’t fostered a condition where discrimination against Black people hadn’t been normalized for generations. The conversation on racial stereotypes in some of Dr. Seuss’s books can’t happen if those racial depictions haven’t been weaponized against communities of color for decades.

Although some individuals have faced personal discomfort after being called out publicly for inappropriate actions, this so-called “woke supremacy” doesn’t have the capacity to create systemic harm. Don Lemon stated it far more plainly on CNN. “I’ve never seen a woke supremacist lynching anybody. Never saw a woke supremacist denying anybody access to housing or a job or education or voting rights. Never saw any woke supremacists enslaving anybody. Never saw any woke supremacists trying to keep people from marrying amongst different races. Where are the woke supremacists attacking police? Where are the woke supremacists hunting police officers in the halls of the Capitol and beating them with Blue Lives Matter signs” (Huffington Post)?

Ironically, centering “woke supremacy” alongside “white supremacy” only emphasizes the real issue. Some people are so focused on protecting white supremacy that they’re willing to manifest a new enemy to exercise its power against. As a result, there are coordinated attacks against “wokeness” that are actually more forceful applications of white supremacy culture. Schools are passing bills to ban the 1619 Project and conversations on racism and sexism from the curriculum and poll public university employees about their political identity. In FiveThirtyEight, Perry Bacon Jr. notes that this isn’t new; the right has leveled the same attacks against “‘outside agitators’” (civil rights activists in 1960s), the ‘politically correct’ (liberal college students in the 1980s and ’90s) and ‘activist judges’ (liberal judges in the 2000s).”

So, what do we do about it? First, we recognize that the argument is inherently flawed. We focus our attention back on systemic harm rather than political noise. In essence, we draw our attention back to the root of the word itself: the social and racial issues that threaten the safety of Black people and other marginalized groups. And instead of preparing for battle in a fictional war, we stay committed to the work. After all, actions are louder than words.

8/23/2020 | Support those incarcerated and impacted by COVID-19.

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