PRIDE MONTH VICTORY

SCOTUS Justices rule LGBTQ2 people protected from job discrimination

UNDER TITLE VII CIVIL RIGHTS ACT 1964 

THE ONE THE REPUBLICANS OPPOSED UNDER 

GOLDWATER AND STILL OPPOSE

By MARK SHERMAN

The Supreme Court is seen in Washington, early Monday, June 15, 2020. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a landmark civil rights law protects LGBT people from discrimination in employment, a resounding victory for LGBT rights from a conservative court.

The court decided by a 6-3 vote that a key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII that bars job discrimination because of sex, among other reasons, encompasses bias against LGBT workers.

“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court.

Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas dissented.

JUSTICES ROBERTS AND GORSUCH JOINED THE CLASSICAL LIBERALS

Full Coverage: U.S. Supreme Court

“The Court tries to convince readers that it is merely enforcing the terms of the statute, but that is preposterous. Even as understood today, the concept of discrimination because of ‘sex’ is different from discrimination because of ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘gender identity,’” Alito wrote in a dissent that was joined by Thomas.

The outcome is expected to have a big impact for the estimated 8.1 million LGBT workers across the country because most states don’t protect them from workplace discrimination. An estimated 11.3 million LGBT people live in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA law school.

The cases were the court’s first on LGBT rights since Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement and replacement by Kavanaugh. Kennedy was a voice for gay rights and the author of the landmark ruling in 2015 that made same-sex marriage legal throughout the United States. Kavanaugh generally is regarded as more conservative.

The Trump administration had changed course from the Obama administration, which supported LGBT workers in their discrimination claims under Title VII.

During the Obama years, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had changed its longstanding interpretation of civil rights law to include discrimination against LGBT people. The law prohibits discrimination because of sex, but has no specific protection for sexual orientation or gender identity.



In recent years, some lower courts have held that discrimination against LGBT people is a subset of sex discrimination, and thus prohibited by the federal law.

Efforts by Congress to change the law have so far failed.

The Supreme Court cases involved two gay men and a transgender woman who sued for employment discrimination after they lost their jobs.

The federal appeals court in New York ruled in favor of a gay skydiving instructor who claimed he was fired because of his sexual orientation. The full 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 10-3 that it was abandoning its earlier holding that Title VII didn’t cover sexual orientation because “legal doctrine evolves.” The court held that “sexual orientation discrimination is motivated, at least in part, by sex and is thus a subset of sex discrimination.”

That ruling was a victory for the relatives of Donald Zarda, who was fired in 2010 from a skydiving job in Central Islip, New York, that required him to strap himself tightly to clients so they could jump in tandem from an airplane. He tried to put a woman with whom he was jumping at ease by explaining that he was gay. The school fired Zarda after the woman’s boyfriend called to complain.

Zarda died in a wingsuit accident in Switzerland in 2014.

In a case from Georgia, the federal appeals court in Atlanta ruled against Gerald Bostock, a gay employee of Clayton County, in the Atlanta suburbs. Bostock claimed he was fired in 2013 because he is gay. The county argues that Bostock was let go because of the results of an audit of funds he managed.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Bostock’s claim in a three-page opinion that noted the court was bound by a 1979 decision that held “discharge for homosexuality is not prohibited by Title VII.”]

Aimee Stephens lost her job as a funeral director in the Detroit area after she revealed to her boss that she had struggled with gender most of her life and had, at long last, “decided to become the person that my mind already is.” Stephens told funeral home owner Thomas Rost that following a vacation, she would report to work wearing a conservative skirt suit or dress that Rost required for women who worked at his three funeral homes. Rost fired Stephens.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, ruled that the firing constituted sex discrimination under federal law.

Stephens died last month.



LGBT workers protected under civil rights law, rules US top court

LGBT workers are protected against discrimination at work, the US Supreme Court has ruled. Two conservative judges, including Trump appointee Justice Neil Gorsuch, sided with the four liberal justices for a 6-3 verdict.


The US Supreme Court decided in a historic decision on Monday that a key provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects workers who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) against job discrimination.

The court ruled in a 6-3 vote that federal protections against workplace discrimination against employees because of a person's sex, also covers sexual orientation and transgender status.

The ruling was authored by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017.

Chief Justice John Roberts, another conservative, along with the court's four liberal justices, joined Gorsuch's opinion.

US Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch (52) became the youngest Supreme Court appointee since Clarence Thomas in 1991, who is still on the bench

"An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court.

"Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids."

Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh dissented from the ruling.

The cases were the court's first on LGBT rights since Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement and replacement by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Kennedy was a voice for gay rights and the author of the landmark ruling in 2015 that made same-sex marriage legal throughout the United States.

kw/msh (AFP, AP, Reuters)

Date 15.06.2020
Related Subjects Discrimination, LGBT+ rights, LGBT+
Keywords LGBT, LGBT rights, discrimination, sexual discrimination, Brett Kavanaugh, Supreme Court

Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/3do9k

Bill C-16: Canada’s New Federal Human Rights Legislation
Published on 2017 · 07 · 11 by Julian

On Thursday, June 15th, 2017, after over a year, Bill C-16 passed its final reading. This legislation – sponsored by Liberal Party MP Jody Wilson-Raybould who currently serves   was Canada’s Minister of Justice – is now in effect. It added gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act along with related protections in the Criminal Code of Canada. Put simply, it is now illegal in areas of federal jurisdiction to discriminate against someone because of their gender identity or expression.

Not only has legislation protecting gender identity and gender expression now passed at the federal level, most provinces and territories in Canada now also include protections in their own human rights legislation. The Northwest Territories’ government was the first in the Canada to include gender identity protections in its Human Rights Code though gender expression still remains unprotected there. British Columbia’s Human Rights Code was amended in July 2016 to include gender identity or expression as protected grounds.

https://www.ambitgenderdiversity.com/2017/07/bill-c-16-canadas-new-federal-human-rights-legislation/

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow says a return-to-work bonus should replace a weekly $600 unemployment boost

FAKE ECONOMIST PLAYED ONE ON TV

DEMAND EMPLOYERS INCREASE WEEKLY WAGES 

BY $600

CONTINUE THE UNEMPLOYMENT BONUS UNTIL THEN

IN 2020 KUDLOW PLAYED TV DOCTOR
IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THE CORONAVIRUS




KUDLOW HAS ONE ECONOMIC FORECAST
FOR THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
NO MATTER WHAT

Inside Seattle’s ‘Autonomous Zone’
Following violent clashes with Seattle police, 

PLASTIC WATER BOTTLES VS TEAR GAS, RUBBER BULLETS, PEPPER BALL'S

Black Lives Matter protesters have occupied a police-free zone in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood while they negotiate with local officials. 

WSJ’s Jim Carlton reports on the mood there and how protesters would like to move forward. Photo: Ted S. Warren/Associated Press

How 1999’s WTO Protests Influenced the Policing of Protests Today

Violent confrontations between police and protestors during the 1999 World Trade Organization conference changed the way police respond to protests in the U.S. Here’s how we got to the militarized police tactics we see today. 

Eric Draper/Associated Press

AMLO MACHISMO 

This Woman’s Partner Choked Her On The Street During Quarantine — Days After Mexico’s President Said Domestic Violence Calls Are “Fake”For thousands of women in Mexico, the pandemic has meant a double threat: the risk of getting infected by the coronavirus and the danger of being quarantined at home with an abusive partner.
Karla Zabludovsky BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From Mexico City Posted on June 13, 2020

Sipa USA via AP International Women's Day in Mexico City on March 8, 2020.

MEXICO CITY — On May 22, M.F. walked out of the doctor’s office into the bright afternoon sun and told her partner she wanted to be alone for a while. His insults and dirty looks had been particularly intense that day.

But he wouldn’t have it. As their two young daughters watched, he pulled M.F. by the hair into a waiting taxi. She fought back and he started to choke her.

M.F., who asked that only her initials be used for fear of retaliation by her partner, yelled for help at the people who had started to crowd around the car. One of them called the police. After a standoff with her partner, who threatened to take their eldest daughter, 5, with him, the cops took M.F. and the girls to a shelter for victims of domestic violence in Central Mexico.

“I didn’t even have a peso,” said M.F., who lost her job at a garden nursery last month, during a telephone interview. “I didn’t know where to go.”

For thousands of women in Mexico, the pandemic has meant a double threat: the risk of getting infected by the coronavirus, and the danger of being quarantined at home with an abusive partner. Many have been forced to flee.

And yet, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — whose government last year was forced to backtrack on a planned budget cut for domestic violence shelters after criticism from human rights groups — has dismissed reports of rising rates of violence, saying last month that 90% of 911 calls by women are “fake.”

In March, there were 26,171 calls to 911 related to violence against women, a record high since the hotline was launched. And Línea Mujeres, a support program for women in the capital city, recorded 2,338 calls between March and May — when the quarantine was already in place in Mexico — up from 735 during the same period in 2019.

It’s not just calls. The number of women who traveled to the 60 locations that make up the National Network of Shelters to seek help during March and April was up by 77% compared to the same period last year, according to the network’s director, Wendy Figueroa.

As confinement measures are extended, Figueroa said that women affected by domestic violence are less likely to seek help as their abusers prevent them from communicating with friends and family.

“When lockdown is lifted, we are expecting a huge demand in shelter services,” said Figueroa.

M.F. and her partner began dating six and half years ago. But when she got pregnant, “the little happiness we had ended.” It started with shoves but soon escalated to kicks, straight into her belly. It only got worse from there.

Last year, M.F. went to the police to report him. The cops took down her statement and waved her away. They didn’t mention the option of leaving him and going to a shelter. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever hear from the authorities again.

She didn’t.

So M.F. sought refuge with her parents.

Her partner came to her parents’ house a month later, explaining why he had attacked her. He “complained that I hadn’t been cleaning often enough, that the girls were dirty, that I wasn’t serving him properly,” said M.F. “They believed him. They defended him. They gave me back to him.”

According to the United Nations, violence against women is a “shadow pandemic,” preceding the coronavirus, with 243 million women and girls ages 15–49 sexually or physically abused by an intimate partner around the world between April 2019 and the same month this year.


Nurphoto / Getty Images
Protesters hold signs of disappeared and killed women during a march to commemorate the International Women's Day, in Ciudad Juarez, on March 8, 2020.
Earlier this year, several high-profile cases of gender-based violence, including the killing of a 7-year-old girl, caused outrage across Mexico. On March 8, thousands of women marched down the capital’s main thoroughfare demanding an end to femicides, or the hate killing of women. The next day, women participated in a nationwide strike, disappearing from offices and streets, to show what the deeply machista country would look like without them.

Then the coronavirus hit, and many women had no choice but to shelter in place with their abusers. M.F.’s partner, a gardener, started losing jobs from clients who worried about the spread of the coronavirus.

M.F. lost work too, after orders at the nursery where she worked dried up. At home, she kept fighting with her partner over his lackadaisical approach to the virus — he refused to wash his hands and continued hanging out with groups of people. Two people close to him fell ill with COVID-like symptoms, and M.F. feared that she and her daughters would be next.

She didn’t know that she didn’t deserve that treatment, or that shelters existed, and M.F.’s trust in the authorities had nosedived after she first reported her partner last year.

Meanwhile, López Obrador kept dismissing reports of rising violence against women during quarantine. In April, his government suspended funding to shelters for Indigenous women fleeing domestic violence. The following month, during one of his daily, hourslong press conferences, López Obrador said there hadn’t been an increase in reports of violence against women.

“Machismo exists, but so does a lot of fraternity within families,” said López Obrador, a self-described leftist who allied with a right-wing, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ party during his presidential run.

Activists say that statements like these, coupled with attempts at defunding resources for women who suffer violence, underscore how official state policy is misogynistic and sends abusers the message that they are likely to get away with their criminal acts.

It was just a few days after López Obrador’s statement on the “fraternal” bonds within families that M.F. went to the doctor’s office with her partner. They had gone to get the results of a test that signaled a potential tumor in her abdomen. But M.F. was worried about the spread of the coronavirus, too, so she asked the doctor about COVID-19 and what symptoms to look out for.

It was then that her partner shot her a death stare, so M.F. cut the appointment short and they walked out. That’s when he attacked her for the last time — M.F. couldn’t take it anymore, so she went to the police, and from there to the shelter.

She spent the next 15 days isolated in a room with her daughters, a precaution in case they had been exposed to the virus.

Stories like M.F.’s are all too common in Mexico. “This is a matter of public safety, of national security and of social injustice,” said Yndira Sandoval, a women’s rights activist and a member of the We Have Other Data campaign, a movement that pushes back against López Obrador’s often flippant statements on domestic violence.

“And the pandemic makes it all the more evident.”

In an attempt to address the issue of domestic violence, the government released a 30-second video last month. In it, a woman throws up her hands in annoyance after her partner accidentally drops a pile of plates.

“Count to 10, and pull out the white peace flag,” says a narrator.

The publicity campaign targeting potential abusers was immediately mocked in Mexico.

“Who made this campaign? A man?” tweeted María Salguero, founder of the National Femicide Map, a database of femicides.

Meanwhile, the killing of women continues, even as large swaths of the population remain sheltered at home. At least 144 femicides were committed between March and April, according to official data. An additional 1,014 women were killed during that time, though their cases were not recorded as femicides.

Rights groups warn that as the quarantine is extended, women trapped at home with abusive partners will become increasingly isolated, their communication channels cut off.

And officials continue to downplay the problem. This week, the governor of Puebla State, in Central Mexico, said that some of the women reported missing turned out to be hanging out with their boyfriends. He did not provide evidence.

M.F. doesn’t know where she’ll go after the shelter. If the police can guarantee that her partner won’t go near the house they shared together, she’ll go back there. But if that proves impossible, she’ll have to vanish.

“So be it, I’ll find somewhere else,” she said. “I’ll hide from him.”



Karla Zabludovsky is the Mexico bureau chief and Latin America correspondent for BuzzFeed News and is based in Mexico City.

PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

Nuclear powers are modernizing arsenals: SIPRI

Swedish research institute SIPRI has highlighted a worrying trend among nuclear powers: countries are modernizing their nuclear assets. Researchers have warned of a "new nuclear arms race" without an arms control regime.


Despite a global drop in nuclear arms, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on Monday warned that countries are modernizing their arsenals, representing a worrying trend for arms control.

"At the start of 2020, the nine nuclear-armed states — the US, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — together possessed an estimated 13,400 nuclear weapons," SIPRI said.

According to the report, that figure was down by 465 compared to 2019. The US and Russia, which possess 90% of the world's nuclear arms, were largely responsible for the decrease.

'New nuclear arms race'Washington and Moscow are still adhering to the New START treaty that limits the number of deployed nuclear arms, although the accord is set to expire in February 2021. Neither country has committed to renewing it.

"In 2019, the forces of both countries remained below the limits specified by the treaty," the report said. However, they "have extensive and expensive programs underway to replace and modernize their nuclear warheads, missile and aircraft delivery systems, and nuclear weapon production facilities."

The New START treaty effectively extended Cold War-era arms controls on nuclear arms between the two countries. But researchers warned that an end to the arms control agreement could herald a new era.

"The loss of key channels of communication between Russia and the USA … could potentially lead to a new nuclear arms race," said Shannon Kile, director of SIPRI's nuclear arms control program.

Read more: US boosted nuclear arms budget by billions, report says

Modernizing arsenals
China, the third-largest holder of nuclear arms behind the US and Russia, isn't part of the treaty, which observers believe is a central motivating factor behind Washington's unwillingness to recommit to the accord.

The SIPRI report said that China has taken significant steps to modernize its arsenal, including expanding its capabilities in classic military domains.

"China is in the middle of a significant modernization of its nuclear arsenal," said SIPRI researchers. "It is developing a so-called nuclear triad for the first time, made up of new land- and sea-based missiles and nuclear-capable aircraft."

Experts believe the US is holding out in order to bring China into a new agreement limiting deployed nuclear arms. However, China has suggested it would not join talks to reduce its strategic weapons.

Other nuclear powers in the process of modernizing their arsenals include France and the UK.

After the death of George Floyd, Africa mobilises against police violence
Issued on: 13/06/2020 - FRANCE24/AFP

Family members of people killed by Kenyan Police protest in front of the Kenyan Parliament against police brutality in Nairobi on June 9, 2020. © Patrick Meinhardt, AFP

Text by:Romain HOUEIX

If the death of George Floyd has sparked a worldwide protest movement, Africa is not to be outdone. In Kenya, Ghana and South Africa, demonstrators are taking to the streets. Others would like to see their leaders tackle the issue more firmly, in solidarity with their "African-American brothers".

The death of George Floyd, an African-American man who was killed by a police officer on May 25 in Minneapolis, has become a global symbol. That case of police violence sparked a worldwide wave of anti-racist protests, with marchers chanting the slogan "I can't breathe" - the last words spoken by the 46-year-old. Demonstrations have also erupted in Africa, calling on African leaders to address their own problems of police violence, which often go unpunished.

A particular resonance in South Africa

In South Africa, the movement's other major slogan, "Black Lives Matter", has a special resonance in a country scarred by apartheid and still torn apart by sharp racial inequalities.

On June 8, at the call of the radical-left party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), more than 100 people gathered outside the US Embassy in Pretoria to protest racism, police violence and the US President Donald Trump.

The EFF now kneeling outside the USA Embassy in Pretoria for 8 minutes and 40 seconds against the death #GeorgeFloyd in America at the hands of White Police officers. The #CollinsKhosa family is also here. #sabcnews pic.twitter.com/MetKNxrgc9— #TheLordOfTheMedia (@samkelemaseko) June 8, 2020

EFF supporters paid tribute to Floyd by taking a knee and observing 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence, the time it took for him to die under the knee of a police officer. "Enough with police brutality on our black bodies," EFF leader Julius Malema told the crowd, standing next to the wife of a man recently killed by the South African Army enforcing the Covid-19 lockdown.

Kenya against police violence

In Kenya, portraits of George Floyd plaster the walls of Nairobi. And on the same day as in South Africa, about 200 people demonstrated against police violence in the Mathare slum in the capital. Police violence has claimed at least 15 lives in Kenya since a curfew was imposed to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

The crowd consisted mainly of young people and mothers carrying placards with the names of friends, neighbours or sons killed in recent years in police operations. "Stop Killer Cops," or "Save Our Future," were their slogans.

#JustIn |√ #Kenya: Demonstrators attend a Black Lives Matter protest in front of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.#BlackLivesMatter#Nairobi#GeorgeFloydFuneral #GeorgeFloyd pic.twitter.com/2oIbjwb244— JUST IN | World (@justinbroadcast) June 10, 2020

The Kenyan police are regularly accused by human rights groups of excessive use of force and extrajudicial executions, particularly in poor neighbourhoods. In April, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the police of imposing curfews "in a chaotic and violent manner, from the beginning", sometimes by whipping, beating or using tear gas to force people off the streets.

The organisation cited the case of a 13-year-old boy, Yassin Hussein Moyo, who died in Nairobi on March 31 after he was shot while standing on his balcony by police enforcing curfew in the street below his house.

A new scandal erupted on June 10 with the viral release of a video in which a woman suspected of stealing was tied up and dragged behind a motorcycle. Three policemen were arrested.

Another rogue officer:

IPOA launches probe into assault of a suspect in Olenguruone. Video shows woman being dragged, tied on a motorcycle.

Police claim Mercy Cherono was assaulted by a mob.

Mercy said to be a member of a gang that stole from officer’s house #JKLive pic.twitter.com/wsZMjXI0Qk— Citizen TV Kenya (@citizentvkenya) June 10, 2020

"Three officers were yesterday arrested ... following circulation of a video depicting a woman being whipped & dragged on a motorbike in Kuresoi South Sub-County," the Directorate of Criminal Investigations said in a statement.

"The suspects are in lawful custody helping with further investigations into the matter," it added.

Ghana and Senegal pay tribute to George Floyd

On the Corniche des Almadies in Dakar, facing the ocean that separates Africa from the United States, 50 people - the maximum allowed because of Covid-19 - representing various associations of Senegalese civil society, gathered to pay tribute to George Floyd in this highly symbolic place: the Corniche is soon to house the Slavery Memorial.

Senegalese kneel during a Black Lives Matter gathering following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody, in Dakar, Senegal June 9. REUTERS/ Zohra Bensemr#GeorgeFloyd#blacklifematters pic.twitter.com/BK9l3eApdz— Abdulsatar Bochnak (@AbdulsatarBoch1) June 10, 2020

The President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, was one of the first heads of state to respond to the murder of George Floyd.

"Black people, the world over, are shocked and distraught by the killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer in the United States of America.... It cannot be right that, in the 21st century, the United States, this great bastion of democracy, continues to grapple with the problem of systemic racism," he wrote in a statement posted on Twitter on June 1 with Floyd’s face on a black background. "We hope that the unfortunate, tragic death of George Floyd will inspire a lasting change in how America confronts head on the problems of hate and racism."

#GeorgeFloyd #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd pic.twitter.com/LOIcKLcB5i— Nana Akufo-Addo (@NAkufoAddo) June 1, 2020

Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou said Thursday that the death of George Floyd was "the symbol of the old world that must be changed", during a video conference with his peers in the African Union. “Our conference must condemn this heinous act without reservation.”

The African Union addresses the problem

The Chadian Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, was very quick to react to George Floyd's death, calling it a "murder" as early as May 29. In a statement, he said he "strongly condemns the murder of George Floyd that occurred in the United States at the hands of law enforcement officers".

“Recalling the historic Organisation of Africa Unity (OAU) Resolution on Racial Discrimination in the United States of America made by African Heads of State and Government, at the OAU’s First Assembly Meeting held in Cairo, Egypt from 17 to 24 July 1964, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission firmly reaffirms and reiterates the African Union’s rejection of the continuing discriminatory practices against Black citizens of the United States of America,” the statement continued.

On behalf of the entire @_AfricanUnion family, I condemn in the strongest terms the murder of #GeorgeFloyd at the hands of law enforcement officers in the United States of America. See my full statement here: https://t.co/LslbVFrWHN— Moussa Faki Mahamat (@AUC_MoussaFaki) May 29, 2020

The Chadian diplomat was referring to the very first OAU conference of July 1964 in Cairo, in which the iconic leader of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, participated as an observer. He delivered a pan-African speech to "his African brothers and sisters" on the discrimination suffered by African-Americans on the other side of the Atlantic at that time.

Some intellectuals, however, see it as opportunistic for the continent's leaders to take up the problem in this way. Among them is the Cameroonian economist Célestin Monga, who called on African politicians to put their own houses in order first.

While he commended the "(anger and indignation) of African political leaders over the assassination of George Floyd and police brutality in [the United States]" in a tweet, he said he wished "they would be just as quick to issue condemnations when our police and soldiers are martyring our citizens on a daily basis".

Reviving the pan-African dream

A hundred African writers hope that the repercussions of George Floyd's murder will lead to the revival of the pan-African dream. In an open letter, they call for Africa to be a "refuge" for its diaspora.

"We ask that African governments recognize our alliance and ties with our brothers and sisters across borders, from America to Brazil and throughout the rest of the diaspora. Let them offer those who choose it a refuge, a home and citizenship in the name of pan-Africanism," the African authors urged.

"We note with dismay that what Malcolm X said in Ghana in 1964, namely that 'for the 20 million of us in America who are of African descent, this is not the American dream, this is the American nightmare', remains true for 37 million (African-Americans) in 2020."

This article has been translated from the original in French.

‘Black and treated as such’: France’s anti-racism protests expose myth of colour-blind Republic

EUROPEAN IMPERIALISM AND COLONIALISM 
IS THE SOURCE OF ALL ARYAN RACISM

Issued on: 10/06/2020 - FRANCE24/AFP

Protesters attend a rally against racism and police brutality in Nantes, western France, on June 8, 2020. © Stéphane Mahé, REUTERS Text by:Benjamin DODMAN

The unprecedented wave of protests that swept French cities over the past week has exposed cracks in the country’s universalist model, lifting long-standing taboos and fuelling calls to shed the “myth” of a Republic immune to racism
Maelle B. dithered at length before heading to the Paris courthouse to protest against racism and police brutality. Sporting a broad face mask, the 23-year-old student from the Paris suburbs carried milk and eye drops in her rucksack to ease the sting from teargas.

“We’re black, Arab, white etc. This is the reality. And we need to stop pretending that blacks and others are not discriminated against,” she said, holding up a sign that read: “It’s not black vs white. It’s everyone vs racists”.

Maelle was among more than 20,000 people who rallied in northern Paris on June 2 to vent their anger and frustration over discriminations that have been allowed to fester unchallenged for decades. Inspired by the global protest movement triggered by the George Floyd killing in the US, the Paris gathering was France’s largest such rally in decades.

“Of course France and America are very different countries, but they have a common enemy in racism,” said Maelle. “Nothing will ever change until people are educated about racism.”

White privilege

The June 2 gathering was just the first in a wave of rallies that have swept French cities in recent days, surprising even their organisers by the size and diversity of the crowds. It reignited a longstanding dispute about policing in the immigrant-rich suburbs of France’s largest cities, forcing the government into a rare admission that “there are racist police officers” and that such deviance cannot be tolerated.

Rokhaya Diallo, a prominent anti-racism campaigner who attended the Paris rally, said she had never seen such a large gathering before. In an interview with FRANCE 24, she credited the impressive mobilisation with helping to lift entrenched taboos.

“Racism and police brutality were largely hushed by the media before,” Diallo explained. “The coverage now is still often skewed against the protesters, but at least these subjects are considered worthy of debate.”


For Maelle M. (right) and her friend Aline, tackling racism is they key to healing the fraught relationship between police and youths in the suburbs. © Benjamin Dodman, FRANCE 24

Beyond the issue of policing, the mobilisation has led to a new bout of soul-searching about the long-neglected cracks in the French Republic’s universalist model, which undermine its cherished principles of égalité and fraternité. Mirroring debates taking place in the US, it has prompted talk of “white privilege” — a notion France’s nominally colour-blind Republic is deeply uncomfortable with.

In a searing letter read out on France Inter radio on June 4, prominent novelist Virginie Despentes compared treatment of racial minorities with the relative privilege of being white.

“In France we are [supposedly] not racist, and yet the last time a waiter refused to serve me I was with an Arab; the last time I was told to show my ID, I was with an Arab; the last time a person I was waiting for almost missed a train because police stopped her, she was black,” Despentes wrote.

She added: “A white person like me can move freely through the city without even noticing the police. [...] I cannot forget I am a woman. But I can forget I am white. That’s what it means to be white. To think about it or not, depending on your mood. In France, we are not racist, but I don’t know a single black or Arab person who has such a choice.”

Republican ‘mythology’

The racialised nature of inequality in France is a no-brainer for Maboula Soumahoro, a specialist of African diaspora studies at the University of Tours.

“I am black and I am treated as such,” Soumahoro told FRANCE 24 in a televised interview earlier this year. She said France’s reluctance to address such matters derives in part from a misreading of its history.

“France is not blind to racism. France thinks it’s blind to racism,” she explained, arguing that French colonialism and slave trade had “produced race” throughout the world, but outside mainland France.

“Because slavery was illegal on the mainland, people in France have the impression that this hyper-racialised history that is characteristic of the modern world only concerns the Americas, when in fact we have our own history,” Soumahoro said.

According to Diallo, denial of racism is a legacy of the French Republic’s “mythology”.

“We are fed the story of a country that is blind to colour and impermeable to racism, but this is merely a mystification,” she said. In a perverse effect, she argued, this denial prevents the country from addressing the problem in the first place.

“France won’t give itself the means to measure and address racial discriminations,” Diallo explained. “The country continues to view racism from a moral and individual standpoint. In doing so, it excludes the possibility of enacting broad policies that can tackle the structural problem of racism.”

Social and racial divides

While France famously doesn’t compile official statistics based on faith, ethnicity or skin colour, racial discrimination in all spheres of public life has been widely documented, frequently overlapping with socio-economic inequality.

The intersecting social and racial disparities were glaringly exposed during the nationwide lockdown imposed in mid-March to stem the spread of the coronavirus. The immigrant-rich Seine-Saint-Denis department northeast of Paris – France’s poorest – accounted for a disproportionately high number of both fatalities from Covid-19 and fines handed out for breaching the lockdown rules.

There are obvious reasons for this. The combination of large families in cramped quarters and a lack of doctors and hospital beds left the local population particularly exposed to the virus. And while many Parisians fled to countryside residences or switched to working from home, the capital’s poorer suburbs supplied most of the frontline workers who kept the metropolis running.


Touching on this subject in her letter last week, Despentes noted that many commentators added insult to injury by attributing the high mortality to a lack of discipline.

“In France we are not racist, but when we were told that the death rate in Seine-Saint-Denis was 60 times higher than the national average, not only did we not care, we even had the nerve to suggest this was because ‘they don’t confine themselves properly’,” the novelist wrote.

At the June 2 rally, protesters said this mix of indifference and condescension was apparent in the way much of the media and the political establishment treated their grievances.

Divy Vasanth, a former journalist, pointed to the case of Camélia Jordana, a French singer and actress of Algerian origin who recently caused a storm by using the term “massacre” to talk of police violence in the suburbs. The ensuing backlash, he argued, was indicative of a society that ignores people so long as they live in the banlieue and expects them to be grateful and “shut up” when they are successful.

“When [protest leader] Assa Traoré speaks, she’s told to shut it because she’s from the suburbs. And when Camélia Jordana says something, she’s told she has no reason to complain,” Vasanth said. “They don’t listen to what we have to say: they mock the words we use and ignore the substance.”

Racism ‘not a priority’

Carole Reynaud-Paligot, a historian and sociologist who recently curated an exhibition on racism at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, traces the origins of France’s unspoken racism to the “contradiction” between the French Republic’s universalist principles and the reality of colonialism.

“The result of this contradiction is a form of universalism that is itself not universal, tainted by a sense of superiority and a tendency to depreciate other cultures,” she explained. “Racism is derived from this context of domination, a context that is still at play today, most notably in France’s relations with the so-called developing world.”

Over the years, French ambivalence regarding this past has translated into widely differing political initiatives. In 2001, under a Socialist government, lawmaker Christiane Taubira — one of only a handful of black politicians to have held a high-ranking ministerial portfolio under France’s five republics — sponsored a landmark bill that recognised slavery as a crime against humanity. Just four years later, a conservative administration sought to pass a law stating the “benefits” of colonisation for France’s colonial subjects, until a backlash led by historians forced it to back down.

Reynaud-Paligot said French authorities had failed to identify the legacy of racism as a threat to the unity of the French Republic and the legitimacy of its institutions.

“School programmes continue to be skittish and shy about racism, as though this were not a priority,” said the historian, for whom the situation is even worse when it comes to training civil servants.

“Studies have shown that racism has largely penetrated state institutions, particularly the police and prefectures,” she said, referring to administrative bodies that represent the national government at the local level. “A huge training effort is required in such institutions, but this is not seen as a priority.”

Instead, she added, officials “have been obsessed with the threat of radicalisation ever since the recent wave of terrorist attacks,” neglecting the widespread discrimination that has provided the Republic’s foes with such fertile terrain.

Though born out of legitimate concerns, “the psychosis over radicalisation in turn amplified racial prejudice,” said Diallo, pointing to a “climate of suspicion that only increased the existing racism against minorities perceived to be of Muslim faith", giving free reign to an already prejudiced security apparatus.

Documentarians turn cameras on protests, despite dangers

By LINDSEY BAHR and MARCELA ISAZA

This combination photo shows filmmakers Alexandra Pelosi, left, and Steve James. Documentarians, from “Hoop Dreams” director Steve James to “Outside the Bubble's” Alexandra Pelosi, are bringing out their cameras to capture the historic nationwide protests, despite the danger, the pandemic and even the lack of a plan for how to use the footage. (AP Photo)Christopher Frierson wasn’t expecting to be tear-gassed at a recent protest in Brooklyn, but he’s glad his camera was on. The documentary filmmaker has covered many protests and he’s never experienced anything like he did that day when a thrown water bottle was met with that kind of police response.

Frierson was not deterred, however. In fact, he went back the next day to interview the officers who sprayed him and the others in the crowd.

He’s one of a handful of documentarians, from Steve James (“Hoop Dreams”) to Alexandra Pelosi (“Outside the Bubble”), who have brought out their cameras to capture the historic nationwide protests, despite the danger, the pandemic and even the lack of a plan for how to ultimately use the footage.

“When there is something happening in your environment, you have to shoot it,” said Frierson, whose “Don’t Try to Understand: A Year in the Life of Earl ‘DMX’ Simmons” was supposed to premiere this spring. “If you have a camera, you got to shoot it.”

That was James’ thought too. He had actually finished and debuted a few episodes of “City So Real,” a mosaic of present-day Chicago, at the Sundance Film Festival a few months earlier but re-started filming when the pandemic began. He thought maybe a postscript would be useful. When the unrest erupted after George Floyd’s death, he pivoted again.

His son, Jackson James, a cinematographer on the series, has been shooting some of the protests there. James has also been out, although not as much as he’d like, and doing more interviews remotely when possible.

“I’m being very careful about what takes us out to film,” James said. “Normally I would have been out doing a lot more.”

The decision to film on the ground is not one that any are taking lightly. Pelosi decided to film a protest outside of the White House last week on the evening President Donald Trump decided to walk out the White House gates for the first time. It took a turn when she says officers on horseback started shooting what she described as chemical bullets at the peaceful gathering, and she found herself in the line of non-lethal fire.

“I couldn’t see for like five minutes because I got shot by this thing,” said Pelosi, the daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and director of more than a dozen documentaries.

Filmmaker Ashley O’Shay was putting the finishing touches on her documentary “Unapologetic,” about the Movement for Black Lives in Chicago through the lens of two young women who are queer and black, when the Floyd protests began. She hesitated to venture out in Chicago because of the pandemic.

“I was concerned about my safety and health,” she said. “(But) it’s important for me that we have black artists, people of color artists, behind the camera to capture these stories, to make sure that the people closest to the community are the ones that are deciding how the story is told.”

O’Shay said she isn’t likely to add to her film, but she does hope that it can be used to help as a historical document.

“My film is about a movement that is very much so living and ongoing,” she said. “I don’t want people in this moment to forget about black women and forget about trans voices and gender non-conforming voices and people (who) are even further on the margins than black men themselves.”

She and other filmmakers are hoping to capture the context that isn’t seen on the evening news. O’Shay filmed moments of the aid and the community efforts happening on the ground on Chicago’s South and Westside. James went back to check in with some of his subjects, from a business owner reopening his barber shop to a mayoral candidate delivering groceries to relatives. And Frierson went back to talk to the cops who tear-gassed him. What he found was contrition, remorse and a dialogue.

“The majority of those people are good people. And that goes against the narrative that everybody wants me to say or whatever. But it comes down to communication with them,” he said.

A black female cop told him, “’We’re not all bad actors, just like you are not all bad actors...’ And then she said, ‘Vote. If you want things to change, vote.’”

Although few have specific plans for how to use their footage, James expects there will be a number of documentaries about this moment. He said many were already out filming around the pandemic and exploring issues of race and equality.

Organizations are also stepping up to help documentarians brave the moment. The national nonprofit organization American Documentary is creating a fund to support the mental health wellness of black, indigenous and people of color artists who work in the documentary space. It launches June 15.

Who gets to tell the story of the moment is a delicate matter for some. Firelight Media executive director Stanley Nelson said in a recent interview with Indiewire that filmmakers of color should tell their own stories, and that, “It’s incumbent on white filmmakers to help them do that.”

James agreed with Nelson’s sentiment.

“We always need more opportunity for black and people of color filmmakers to be telling stories,” James said. “But this is also a story of America writ large and what needs to change in America writ large. And for that, we kind of need all hands-on deck as far as I’m concerned.”

Pandemic leads to a bicycle boom, and shortage, around world

By DAVID SHARP and KELVIN CHAN

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In this Tuesday, June 9, 2020 photo, Harvey Curtis, left, discusses repair plans with customer Jack Matheson outside Sidecountry Sports, a bike shop in Rockland, Maine. Matheson is looking forward to getting his 40-year-old Raleigh back on the road. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Fitness junkies locked out of gyms, commuters fearful of public transit, and families going stir crazy inside their homes during the coronavirus pandemic have created a boom in bicycle sales unseen in decades.

In the United States, bicycle aisles at mass merchandisers like Walmart and Target have been swept clean, and independent shops are doing a brisk business and are selling out of affordable “family” bikes.

Bicycle sales over the past two months saw their biggest spike in the U.S. since the oil crisis of the 1970s, said Jay Townley, who analyzes cycling industry trends at Human Powered Solutions.

“People quite frankly have panicked, and they’re buying bikes like toilet paper,” Townley said, referring to the rush to buy essentials like toilet paper and hand sanitizer that stores saw at the beginning of the pandemic.

The trend is mirrored around the globe, as cities better known for car-clogged streets, like Manila and Rome, install bike lanes to accommodate surging interest in cycling while public transport remains curtailed. In London, municipal authorities plan to go further by banning cars from some central thoroughfares.


FILE-In this May 20, 2020 photo, a bicyclist wears a pandemic mask while riding in Portland, Maine. A bicycle rush kicked off mid-March around the time countries were shutting their borders, businesses were closing and stay-at-home orders were being imposed because of the coronavirus pandemic in which millions have been infected and nearly 400,000 have died. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)


Bike shop owners in the Philippine capital say demand is stronger than at Christmas. Financial incentives are boosting sales in Italy, where the government’s post-lockdown stimulus last month included a 500-euro ($575) “bici bonus” rebate for up to 60% of the cost of a bike.

But that’s if you can get your hands on one. The craze has led to shortages that will take some weeks, maybe months, to resolve, particularly in the U.S., which relies on China for about 90% of its bicycles, Townley said. Production there was largely shut down due to the coronavirus and is just resuming.

The bicycle rush kicked off in mid-March around the time countries were shutting their borders, businesses were closing, and stay-at-home orders were being imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus that has infected millions of people and killed more than 450,000.

Sales of adult leisure bikes tripled in April while overall U.S. bike sales, including kids’ and electric-assist bicycles, doubled from the year before, according to market research firm NPD Group, which tracks retail bike sales.

It’s a far cry from what was anticipated in the U.S. The $6 billion industry had projected lower sales based on lower volume in 2019 in which punitive tariffs on bicycles produced in China reached 25%.


FILE-In this Thursday, June 11, 2020, photo, bicycle display racks are empty at a Target in Milford, Mass. A bicycle rush has been brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. In the U.S., bicycle aisles at mass merchandisers like Walmart and Target have been swept clean, officials say, and independent shops are doing a brisk business and are selling out of low- to mid-range "family" bikes. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)




FILE-In this Tuesday, June 9, 2020 photo, bike display racks are empty at a Walmart in Falmouth, Maine. A bicycle rush has been brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. In the U.S., bicycle aisles at mass merchandisers like Walmart and Target have been swept clean, officials say, and independent shops are doing a brisk business and are selling out of low- to mid-range "family" bikes. (AP Photo/David Sharp)

There are multiple reasons for the pandemic bicycle boom.

Around the world, many workers were looking for an alternative to buses and subways. People unable to go to their gyms looked for another way to exercise. And shut-in families scrambled to find a way to keep kids active during stay-at-home orders.

“Kids are looking for something to do. They’ve probably reached the end of the internet by now, so you’ve got to get out and do something,” said Dave Palese at Gorham Bike and Ski, a Maine shop where there are slim pickings for family-oriented, leisure bikes.

Bar Harbor restaurateur Brian Smith bought a new bike for one of his daughters, a competitive swimmer, who was unable to get into the pool. On a recent day, he was heading back to his local bike shop to outfit his youngest daughter, who’d just learned how to ride.

His three daughters use their bikes every day, and the entire family goes for rides a couple of times a week. The fact that they’re getting exercise and enjoying fresh air is a bonus.

“It’s fun. Maybe that’s the bottom line. It’s really fun to ride bikes,” Smith said as he and his 7-year-old daughter, Ellery, pedaled to the bicycle shop.

The pandemic is also driving a boom in electric-assist bikes, called e-bikes, which were a niche part of the overall market until now. Most e-bikes require a cyclist to pedal, but electric motors provide extra oomph.

VanMoof, a Dutch e-bike maker, is seeing “unlimited demand” since the pandemic began, resulting in a 10-week order backlog for its commuter electric bikes, compared with typical one-day delivery time, said co-founder Taco Carlier.

The company’s sales surged 138% in the U.S. and rocketed 184% in Britain in the February-April period over last year, with big gains in other European countries. The company is scrambling to ramp up production as fast as it can, but it will take two to three months to meet the demand, Carlier said.

“We did have some issues with our supply chain back in January, February when the crisis hit first in Asia,” said Carlier. But “the issue is now with demand, not supply.”

Sales at Cowboy, a Belgian e-bike maker, tripled in the January-April period from last year. Notably, they spiked in Britain and France at around the same time in May that those countries started easing lockdown restrictions, said Chief Marketing Officer Benoit Simeray.

“It’s now becoming very obvious for most of us living in and around cities that we don’t want to go back into public transportation,” said Simeray. But people may still need to buy groceries or commute to the office one or two days a week, so “then they’re starting to really, really think about electric bikes as the only solution they’ve got.”

In Maine, Kate Worcester, a physician’s assistant, bought e-bikes for herself and her 12-year-old son so they could have fun at a time when she couldn’t travel far from the hospital where she worked.

Every night, she and her son ride 20 miles or 30 miles (30 or 50 kilometers) around Acadia National Park.

“It’s by far the best fun I’ve had with him,” she said. “That’s been the biggest silver lining in this terrible pandemic — to be able to leave work and still do an activity and talk and enjoy each other.”

Joe Minutolo, co-owner of Bar Harbor Bicycle Shop, said he hopes the sales surge translates into long-term change.

“People are having a chance to rethink things,” he said. “Maybe we’ll all learn something out of this, and something really good will happen.”

___

Chan reported from London. Joeal Calupitan in Manila and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this story.





Taiwan pedals faster to meet global pandemic demand for bikes

Issued on: 15/06/2020

It is boom time for Taiwan's bike manufacturer thanks to soaring demand during the coronavirus pandemic Sam YEH AFP/File

Taichung (Taiwan) (AFP)

Deserted streets, cabin fever and worries over COVID-enabling commutes in Europe and America have sent demand for bikes into high gear -- with factories in Taiwan racing to push out new units and scrambling to find parts.

The deadly virus has sparked a global recession and hammered many industries, but it is boom time in the bike world and a major bonus for Taiwan, which is a leading bicycle producer and has managed to avoid mass lockdowns by defeating the coronavirus early on.

At Giant, the world's largest bike company, it has been a dizzying few months, according to CEO Bonnie Tu.

"We saw what happened and then we reacted quickly," Tu told AFP in an interview last week at their new headquarters in the industrial city of Taichung.

"We mobilise our companies, including our factories and sales company... in order to meet the consumer demand."

The orders have kept on coming, with reports of empty bike racks at dealers and long waits for resupply across Europe and North America.

In Britain, the Association of Cycle Traders said some 20,000 bikes awaiting manufacturing and delivery had already been sold or reserved.

"We've seen a mixture of everybody to be honest," Lincoln Romain, director of Brixton Cycles, in London, told AFP last month.

"People that commute all the time, we've seen new cyclists, we've seen people that have to get in so they have bikes that have been in the shed a little while."

- Waiting for suppliers -

Across the Atlantic, demand has also rocketed.

Year-on-year sales of commuter and fitness bikes increased 66 percent in March, leisure bikes leaped 121 percent and electric bikes rose 85 percent, according to market research firm The NPD Group.

Giant's Tu said demand in both the US and Europe has centred on the more affordable "$1,000 and under" category of bikes.

While Giant's factories in Taiwan kept rolling, many of their facilities on the Chinese mainland had to temporarily shut down when the virus first spread from the central city of Wuhan.

A return to full capacity has been slowed by struggles to get parts from suppliers as they refill factory floors and restock inventories.

"We have to wait for them," Tu said. "So it is actually quite difficult, but we manage."

For Europe, Giant will soon benefit from a large factory it has built in Hungary, part of a gradual shift many Taiwanese manufacturers are making to diversify away from China and be closer to consumer markets.

Gina Chang, secretary-general of the Taiwan Bicycle Association, said manufacturers initially suffered in the first quarter from cancelled or postponed orders when the virus first spread. But since then, demand has roared back.

"We are seeing rush orders or even panic buying," she told AFP. "Taiwan's top two bike makers have orders lined up till the end of this year."

- Taiwanese renaissance -

The coronavirus boom is the latest chapter in a renaissance for Taiwan's bike industry.

The self-ruled island had for years been the world's number-one bike producer until the 1990s, when mainland China's economic reforms saw firms -- including many Taiwanese manufacturers -- take advantage of a vast, cheap labour force.

But while Chinese factories continue to play a dominant role in terms of sheer numbers, Taiwan production is bouncing back, especially when it comes to higher-quality models and in the rapidly growing electric bike market.

Last year, Taiwan exported $1.36 billion in non-electric bicycles, down from $1.5 billion the year before.

But electric bike production is soaring.

In 2019, electric bike exports totalled $863 million, up from $377 million in 2018, with most heading to Europe.

Export of electric bikes from January to April this year reached a record high of $301 million, up 23.6 percent from the same period last year.

And the bikes made in Taiwanese factories tend to be higher quality models that fetch a higher price.

Tu says she hopes the pandemic will help encourage people to adopt bikes as a form of transport long after the threat of the virus has receded, something many European governments are keen on.

"While riding bicycles, you can have fresh air... you cannot be too close otherwise you will crash," she laughed. "So it is natural social distancing."

© 2020 AFP