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Following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, protest in downtown Charlotte turn violent in NC, United States on May 30, 2020 (Photo: Peter Zay/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
No one wants to see their community burn. But the fires burning in Minneapolis, just like the fire burning in the spirits of so many marginalized Americans today, are a natural response to the trauma black communities have experienced, generation after generation.
No one wants the fires - even activists on the ground have said this. But they have also shared how their non-violent pleas and protests have gone unnoticed for years as the situation has gotten out of hand. No one knows who and what is behind the violence, but we do know that countless activists, grassroots leaders and preachers were screaming non-violently long before now: "Change, America! Change, Minneapolis!" Rather than listen, many of those in power saw even their non-violent protest as an unwelcome development.
"If we take time to listen to this nation's wounds, they tell us where to look for hope."
This is so often the case because many Americans struggle to imagine that our government's policies and its long train of abuses demand radical transformation. Too many want to believe racism is merely caused by a few bad actors. We often turn racism into a spectacle, only considering the cruel legacy of racism when an egregious action escalates outrage to this level.
Black Americans have rarely been able to sustain such illusions. Deadly racism is always with us, and not only through police brutality. In the midst of the current pandemic we are painfully aware that our families bear a disproportionate burden of Covid-19 deaths. In some cities where racial data is available, we know that black people are six times as likely to die from the virus as their white counterparts. Even before Covid, large numbers of black Americans died because of the racial disparities in healthcare, which are systemic and not unintentional.
African Americans are three times more likely to die from particulate air pollution than our fellow Americans. The percentage of black children suffering from asthma is nearly double that of white people, and the death rate is 10 times higher. This is but a reflection of the fissures of inequality that run through every institution in our public life, where the black wealth gap, education gap and healthcare gap have persisted despite the civil rights movement, legal desegregation and symbolic affirmative action. We understand that the same mentality that will accept and defend the violence of armed officers against unarmed black people will also send black, brown and poor people into harm's way during a pandemic in the name of "liberty" and "the economy".
Many have cited Dr King to remind Americans that a riot is the language of the unheard. But I have been reflecting on the eulogy he offered when another man - a white man who came to Selma, Alabama, to work for voting rights--was brutally murdered by racist violence in 1965. At the funeral for James Reed, Dr King said it is not enough to ask who killed the victim in a case like the murder of George Floyd. Weak and unacceptable charges have been brought against the officer whose knee choked George Floyd, staying on his neck for three minutes after he went unconscious, but no charges have been filed against the other officers who stood by and watched. Even still, dealing with who did the killing is not all that justice demands. Dr King said the question is not only who killed him, but also what killed him?
The systemic racism that killed George Floyd has taken untold souls from us for over 400 years. And it is killing the very possibility of American democracy today. I join those screaming that this is all screwed up, and it's been screwed up far too long. But we are not screwed as long we have the consciousness and humanity to know what is right and wrong.
Those of us who have faced the lethal force of systemic racism have also learned something else in the American story. We can be wounded healers. We don't have to be arbitrarily destructive. We can be determined to never accept the destruction of our bodies and dreams by any police, person or policy. We have learned that there is a force more powerful. When hands that once picked cotton have joined together with white hands and Native hands, brown hands and Asian hands, we have been able to fundamentally reconstruct this democracy. Slavery was abolished. Women did gain the right to vote. Labor did win a 40-hour work week and a minimum wage. The civil rights movement in the face of lynching and shooting did expand voting rights to African Americans.
If we take time to listen to this nation's wounds, they tell us where to look for hope. The hope is in the mourning and the screams, which make us want to rush from this place. There is a sense in which right now we must refuse to be comforted too quickly. Only if these screams and tears and protests shake the very conscience of this nation -and until there is real political and judicial repentance--can we hope for a better society on the other side of this.
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No one wants to see their community burn. But the fires burning in Minneapolis, just like the fire burning in the spirits of so many marginalized Americans today, are a natural response to the trauma black communities have experienced, generation after generation.
No one wants the fires - even activists on the ground have said this. But they have also shared how their non-violent pleas and protests have gone unnoticed for years as the situation has gotten out of hand. No one knows who and what is behind the violence, but we do know that countless activists, grassroots leaders and preachers were screaming non-violently long before now: "Change, America! Change, Minneapolis!" Rather than listen, many of those in power saw even their non-violent protest as an unwelcome development.
"If we take time to listen to this nation's wounds, they tell us where to look for hope."
This is so often the case because many Americans struggle to imagine that our government's policies and its long train of abuses demand radical transformation. Too many want to believe racism is merely caused by a few bad actors. We often turn racism into a spectacle, only considering the cruel legacy of racism when an egregious action escalates outrage to this level.
Black Americans have rarely been able to sustain such illusions. Deadly racism is always with us, and not only through police brutality. In the midst of the current pandemic we are painfully aware that our families bear a disproportionate burden of Covid-19 deaths. In some cities where racial data is available, we know that black people are six times as likely to die from the virus as their white counterparts. Even before Covid, large numbers of black Americans died because of the racial disparities in healthcare, which are systemic and not unintentional.
African Americans are three times more likely to die from particulate air pollution than our fellow Americans. The percentage of black children suffering from asthma is nearly double that of white people, and the death rate is 10 times higher. This is but a reflection of the fissures of inequality that run through every institution in our public life, where the black wealth gap, education gap and healthcare gap have persisted despite the civil rights movement, legal desegregation and symbolic affirmative action. We understand that the same mentality that will accept and defend the violence of armed officers against unarmed black people will also send black, brown and poor people into harm's way during a pandemic in the name of "liberty" and "the economy".
Many have cited Dr King to remind Americans that a riot is the language of the unheard. But I have been reflecting on the eulogy he offered when another man - a white man who came to Selma, Alabama, to work for voting rights--was brutally murdered by racist violence in 1965. At the funeral for James Reed, Dr King said it is not enough to ask who killed the victim in a case like the murder of George Floyd. Weak and unacceptable charges have been brought against the officer whose knee choked George Floyd, staying on his neck for three minutes after he went unconscious, but no charges have been filed against the other officers who stood by and watched. Even still, dealing with who did the killing is not all that justice demands. Dr King said the question is not only who killed him, but also what killed him?
The systemic racism that killed George Floyd has taken untold souls from us for over 400 years. And it is killing the very possibility of American democracy today. I join those screaming that this is all screwed up, and it's been screwed up far too long. But we are not screwed as long we have the consciousness and humanity to know what is right and wrong.
Those of us who have faced the lethal force of systemic racism have also learned something else in the American story. We can be wounded healers. We don't have to be arbitrarily destructive. We can be determined to never accept the destruction of our bodies and dreams by any police, person or policy. We have learned that there is a force more powerful. When hands that once picked cotton have joined together with white hands and Native hands, brown hands and Asian hands, we have been able to fundamentally reconstruct this democracy. Slavery was abolished. Women did gain the right to vote. Labor did win a 40-hour work week and a minimum wage. The civil rights movement in the face of lynching and shooting did expand voting rights to African Americans.
If we take time to listen to this nation's wounds, they tell us where to look for hope. The hope is in the mourning and the screams, which make us want to rush from this place. There is a sense in which right now we must refuse to be comforted too quickly. Only if these screams and tears and protests shake the very conscience of this nation -and until there is real political and judicial repentance--can we hope for a better society on the other side of this.
No one wants to see their community burn. But the fires burning in Minneapolis, just like the fire burning in the spirits of so many marginalized Americans today, are a natural response to the trauma black communities have experienced, generation after generation.
No one wants the fires - even activists on the ground have said this. But they have also shared how their non-violent pleas and protests have gone unnoticed for years as the situation has gotten out of hand. No one knows who and what is behind the violence, but we do know that countless activists, grassroots leaders and preachers were screaming non-violently long before now: "Change, America! Change, Minneapolis!" Rather than listen, many of those in power saw even their non-violent protest as an unwelcome development.
"If we take time to listen to this nation's wounds, they tell us where to look for hope."
This is so often the case because many Americans struggle to imagine that our government's policies and its long train of abuses demand radical transformation. Too many want to believe racism is merely caused by a few bad actors. We often turn racism into a spectacle, only considering the cruel legacy of racism when an egregious action escalates outrage to this level.
Black Americans have rarely been able to sustain such illusions. Deadly racism is always with us, and not only through police brutality. In the midst of the current pandemic we are painfully aware that our families bear a disproportionate burden of Covid-19 deaths. In some cities where racial data is available, we know that black people are six times as likely to die from the virus as their white counterparts. Even before Covid, large numbers of black Americans died because of the racial disparities in healthcare, which are systemic and not unintentional.
African Americans are three times more likely to die from particulate air pollution than our fellow Americans. The percentage of black children suffering from asthma is nearly double that of white people, and the death rate is 10 times higher. This is but a reflection of the fissures of inequality that run through every institution in our public life, where the black wealth gap, education gap and healthcare gap have persisted despite the civil rights movement, legal desegregation and symbolic affirmative action. We understand that the same mentality that will accept and defend the violence of armed officers against unarmed black people will also send black, brown and poor people into harm's way during a pandemic in the name of "liberty" and "the economy".
Many have cited Dr King to remind Americans that a riot is the language of the unheard. But I have been reflecting on the eulogy he offered when another man - a white man who came to Selma, Alabama, to work for voting rights--was brutally murdered by racist violence in 1965. At the funeral for James Reed, Dr King said it is not enough to ask who killed the victim in a case like the murder of George Floyd. Weak and unacceptable charges have been brought against the officer whose knee choked George Floyd, staying on his neck for three minutes after he went unconscious, but no charges have been filed against the other officers who stood by and watched. Even still, dealing with who did the killing is not all that justice demands. Dr King said the question is not only who killed him, but also what killed him?
The systemic racism that killed George Floyd has taken untold souls from us for over 400 years. And it is killing the very possibility of American democracy today. I join those screaming that this is all screwed up, and it's been screwed up far too long. But we are not screwed as long we have the consciousness and humanity to know what is right and wrong.
Those of us who have faced the lethal force of systemic racism have also learned something else in the American story. We can be wounded healers. We don't have to be arbitrarily destructive. We can be determined to never accept the destruction of our bodies and dreams by any police, person or policy. We have learned that there is a force more powerful. When hands that once picked cotton have joined together with white hands and Native hands, brown hands and Asian hands, we have been able to fundamentally reconstruct this democracy. Slavery was abolished. Women did gain the right to vote. Labor did win a 40-hour work week and a minimum wage. The civil rights movement in the face of lynching and shooting did expand voting rights to African Americans.
If we take time to listen to this nation's wounds, they tell us where to look for hope. The hope is in the mourning and the screams, which make us want to rush from this place. There is a sense in which right now we must refuse to be comforted too quickly. Only if these screams and tears and protests shake the very conscience of this nation -and until there is real political and judicial repentance--can we hope for a better society on the other side of this.
"A just transition is not a luxury or a campaign to be used for greenwashing; it's a matter of survival and securing our future," said a movement member in the host country.
The Fridays for Future movement announced this week that it is planning the next Global Climate Strike for November 14, the first Friday during the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil.
The movement began in 2018, with then-teenage Greta Thunberg's solo protest at the Swedish parliament, which inspired millions of people to hold similar school strikes for climate action around the world.
The U.N. summit, COP30, is set to run from November 10-21. Brazil's website for the conference states that "the main challenges include aligning the commitments of developed and developing countries in relation to climate finance, ensuring that emission reduction targets are compatible with climate science, and dealing with the socio-economic impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations."
On November 14, "under the banner #JustTransitionNow, young people around the world will mobilize to demand urgent, justice-centered action to phase out fossil fuels and build a sustainable future for all," according to a Monday statement from Fridays for Future.
"Global leaders must stop listening to fossil fuel lobbyists... It's time they start listening to science, to young people, and to traditional communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis."
According to the movement, the upcoming global strike will highlight the urgent need to:
"Global leaders must stop listening to fossil fuel lobbyists or seeking alliances with groups like OPEC+," said Daniel Holanda of Fridays for Future Brazil, referring to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other leading oil exporters.
"It's time they start listening to science, to young people, and to traditional communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis," Holanda added. "A just transition is not a luxury or a campaign to be used for greenwashing; it's a matter of survival and securing our future."
The movement's announcement of the next strike follows last week's landmark advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—the U.N.'s primary judicial organ—that countries have a legal obligation to take cooperative action against the "urgent and existential threat" of human-caused planetary heating.
"We now have a common foundation based on the rule of law, releasing us from the limitations of individual nations' political interests that have dominated climate action," said Ralph Regenvanu, a minister in Vanuatu, which introduced the U.N. General Assembly resolution that led to the opinion. "This moment will drive stronger action and accountability to protect our planet and peoples."
Plans for the strike also come as U.S. President Donald Trump's administration and congressional Republicans work to undo the limited progress that the United States has made in terms of taking accountability for being the biggest historical contributor to climate pollution.
In addition to the United States ditching the Paris agreement, again, Trump's return to power has meant the elimination of the State Department's Office of Global Change. The latter move, CNN reported Tuesday, "leaves the world's largest historical polluter with no official presence" at COP30.
"While Trump's tariffs continue to cause economic upheaval, corporations are exploiting the chaos and working families are left to foot the bill," said one analyst.
The effects of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs are winding their way through the American economy, and a new piece of analysis claims that corporate America is using them as "cover" to further jack up prices.
Progressive advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative issued a new report on Tuesday that uses corporate executives' own words to show how many firms are taking advantage of the tariff situation by using it as an all-purpose justification for price increases. The report found many of these executives' admissions through quarterly earnings calls in which they discussed plans to increase costs even if their inputs were not being significantly affected by the tariffs.
Among others, the report cited a statement made earlier this year by Aaron Jagdfeld, the CEO of power generation products manufacturer Generac Power Systems, who said on an earnings call that "even if we have metals that weren't impacted directly by tariffs, the indirect effect of tariffs is that it gives steel producers and the mills and other fabricators... great cover for increased pricing in some cases."
Another executive quoted in the report was Matthew Stevenson, the CEO of auto parts manufacturer Holley, who said that "in the marketplace we have seen price increases well in excess of what we put out into the market" and added that "we've seen increases as high as 30% or more on some categories from some competitors."
Thomas Robertson, the CFO of footwear company Rocky Brands, flat-out said during an earnings call that his company planned to raise prices even as Trump had backed off his most strident trade-war threats with China.
"We certainly welcome a reduction in the Chinese tariffs, but we'll be announcing a price increase here regardless of any changes of the Chinese tariffs over the next week or two to go into effect in June," he said.
While the report names and shames corporations for price increases, Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens did not absolve Trump of responsibility for the situation.
"President Trump's turbulent trade policy has created a perfect storm of market chaos, giving corporations a golden opportunity to jack up prices, pad profit margins, and fleece Americans simply because they can," said Owens. "While Trump's tariffs continue to cause economic upheaval, corporations are exploiting the chaos and working families are left to foot the bill."
The Groundwork Collaborative report was released on the same day that consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble announced that it would be raising prices on roughly one-quarter of its products due to Trump's tariffs. As reported by CNBC, the company said during its quarterly earnings call that it expects "mid-single-digit price increases" on a wide range of products over the next quarter to help offset what it projects to be a $1 billion hit from the tariffs levied against major trading partners such as Canada and China.
A report by the Tax Foundation on Monday estimated that the Trump tariffs would affect 75% of all food imported from other countries, which would add even more burden to American consumers. What's particularly troubling about the food tariffs, the Tax Foundation explained, is that they will fall on products such as bananas and coffee that are simply not capable of being grown on a mass scale in the United States.
"In 2024, the U.S. imported about $221 billion in food products, 74% of which ($163 billion) faced the Trump tariffs," wrote the Tax Foundation. "While these imports currently face tariff rates ranging from 10% to 30%, they will exceed 30% for some countries if the reciprocal tariffs go into effect on August 1. The top five exporters of food products to the U.S., in order, are Mexico, Canada, the E.U., Brazil, and China, accounting for 62% of total U.S. food imports."
"An entirely man-made famine," said one United Nations expert. "The threshold of famine has been reached with widespread starvation and malnutrition across the war-torn enclave including among children."
The latest alert on Gaza from the world's leading authority on starvation and malnutrition is not a warning of what could come in the besieged enclave, where Israel is still blocking nearly all humanitarian aid, but of the "worst-case scenario" that has already taken hold.
"Famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip," said the Integrated Phase Food Security Classification (IPC), which ranks food security levels on a scale of 1 to 5, in its Tuesday analysis.
Since the IPC's analysis in May, in which it projected that half a million Palestinians in Gaza would reach Phase 5—Catastrophe, defined as an "extreme lack of food"—by September, Israel's bombardments and ground operations have intensified, and people's access to food across the enclave has continued to be "alarmingly erratic and extremely perilous," said the IPC, with more than 1,000 people killed while trying to access food and humanitarian aid.
Between May and July, the proportion of households facing extreme hunger has doubled in Gaza, said the IPC, and the food consumption threshold for famine "has already been passed for most areas of the Gaza Strip." One in three people in Gaza are now going days at a time without consuming any food.
At least 147 people have died from starvation, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
In May, the IPC projected that malnutrition would soon reach critical levels in the governorates of North Gaza, Gaza, and Rafah, with more than 70,000 children under age 5 and 17,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women facing acute malnutrition—and said all of Gaza was facing "a risk of famine."
Tuesday's report, said the International Rescue Committee, was "a devastating but entirely predictable confirmation of what the IRC and the wider humanitarian community have long warned: Israel's restrictions on aid have created the conditions for famine, and the window to prevent mass death is rapidly closing."
More than 20,000 children have been admitted to health centers for treatment for acute malnutrition, with more than 3,000 facing severe malnourishment—the effects of which, said the IRC, can be "lifelong and irreversible" in children who survive.
At least 16 children under 5 have died from starvation since July 17, said the IPC—representing a "rapid increase" in hunger-related deaths that is unlikely to slow down without an end to Israel's blockade and a major ramp-up in the distribution of humanitarian aid—which is currently sitting in thousands of trucks just outside the enclave, as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said Tuesday.
"The worst-case scenario of famine is now happening in Gaza according to the leading world experts," said Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA commissioner-general, whose agency has provided aid and services to Palestinians in Gaza for decades. "An entirely man-made famine. The threshold of famine has been reached with widespread starvation and malnutrition across the war-torn enclave including among children. More than 100 people have died due to hunger in the past few weeks alone. The only way to reverse this catastrophe is to flood Gaza with a massive scale up of aid."
An estimated 62,000 metric tons of staple food—not including fresh foods like vegetables and meat—is required to enter Gaza each month to cover the basic needs of the population. In May and June, only 19,900-37,800 metric tons of food entered the enclave. That includes food provided by the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, where Israeli soldiers have reported that they were directed to shoot at Palestinian civilians trying to access aid.
"People are starving not because food is unavailable, but because access is blocked, local agrifood systems have collapsed, and families can no longer sustain even the most basic livelihoods," said U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General Qu Dongyu. "We urgently need safe and sustained humanitarian access and immediate support to restore local food production and livelihoods—this is the only way to prevent further loss of life. The right to food is a basic human right."
As international outrage has grown over the images of starving Palestinians in recent days—with even the U.S. corporate media and Democratic establishment finally speaking out against Israel's blocking of humanitarian aid—Israel has paused some fighting and allowed airdrops of food, which aid groups have condemned as a "grotesque distraction" that will provide nowhere near the aid that's needed.
"Israel's genocide has thrown Gaza into the final chaotic stages of a full-blown human catastrophe," said Bushra Khalidi, policy lead for Oxfam in the occupied Palestinian territories. "Airdrops, and brief pauses for relative crumbs of aid, is nowhere near enough to prevent human death at an unimaginable scale. We need urgent forceful diplomacy and whatever restrictive measures are necessary in order to achieve an immediate and unconditional cease-fire, break Israel's siege, and allow humanitarian aid to flow freely and safely throughout Gaza."
As Common Dreams reported Monday, Republican leaders in the U.S. including President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) have shown no signs that they will act on the new data in the IPC report; both continued to dismiss the international condemnation of Israel's blockade in Gaza, repeating debunked claims that Hamas is to blame for the starvation of Palestinians.
The U.S. has continued to provide the Israel Defense Forces with support despite its own laws stating that the U.S. cannot send military aid to countries that block humanitarian aid.
Khalidi said the IPC's new warning of "an unfolding famine—one created entirely by Israel's murderous siege—must finally rouse the international community to act with a clarity and resolve that has so far been beyond it."
"World leaders have been variously divided, complicit, uncaring, and collectively ineffectual in stopping Israel's campaign of erasure," said Khalidi. "In failing to protect the Palestinian people, they have no more excuses left. Ending Israel's genocide of Gaza is a test not only of our world order but of our collective humanity."