GOP attorneys general attack Target’s LGBTQ Pride merchandise as potentially ‘obscene’ and ‘meant to sexualize’ kids

David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
July 7, 2023,

Todd Rokita / Office of Indiana Attorney General.

Seven Republican attorneys general have banded together to issue a threatening letter to Target, suggesting its LGBTQ Pride merchandise may violate state child-protection and parental-rights laws, and claiming at least some of the products are potentially "harmful to minors," "obscene," "meant to sexualize" children, and "anti-Christian." They also imply the corporation's officers may be in violation of their fiduciary responsibilities by allowing the "promotion and sale" of those items.

The six-page letter, dated July 5, also appears to promote a form of Christian nationalism, suggesting right-wing boycotts over the LGBTQ Pride products harmed the company's market value, and then stating: "It is likely more profitable to sell the type of Pride that enshrines the love of the United States. Target’s Pride Campaign alienates whereas Pride in our country unites."

The letter also refers to reports from right-wing media including the National Review, Fox News, the New York Post, and the Daily Caller, along with articles from Reuters and Axios.

It denounces Target's financial support of GLSEN. The 33-year old education non-profit's website says it works to "advise on, advocate for, and research comprehensive policies designed to protect LGBTQ students as well as students of marginalized identities," but the attorneys general claim the organization "furnishes resources to activists for the purpose of undermining parents’ constitutional and statutory rights."

The attorneys general point to specific state laws 12 times, but do not specifically tell Target it is actually in violation of any laws. An article published in CBS affiliate Idaho News concludes, "It is not immediately clear what response the attorneys general are seeking from Target."

Those attorneys general, all Republicans, are: Indiana's Todd Rokita, the lead sponsor of the letter, Tim Griffin (Arkansas), Raul Labrador (Idaho), Daniel Cameron (Kentucky), Lynn Fitch (Mississippi), Andrew Bailey (Missouri), and Alan Wilson (South Carolina). Several are former U.S. congressmen with anti-LGBTQ voting records.

"As Attorneys General committed to enforcing our States’ child-protection and parental-rights laws and our States’ economic interests as Target shareholders, we are concerned by recent events involving the company’s 'Pride' campaign," the letter begins. "Our concerns entail the company’s promotion and sale of potentially harmful products to minors, related potential interference with parental authority in matters of sex and gender identity, and possible violation of fiduciary duties by the company’s directors and officers."

"As the chief legal officers of our States, we are charged with enforcing state laws protecting children and safeguarding parental rights. State child-protection laws penalize the 'sale or distribution . . . of obscene matter.' A matter is considered 'obscene' if 'the dominant theme of the matter . . . appeals to the prurient interest in sex,' including 'material harmful to minors.' Indiana, as well as other states, have passed laws to protect children from harmful content meant to sexualize them and prohibit gender transitions of children."

They also claim that "Target wittingly marketed and sold LGBTQIA+ promotional products to families and young children as part of a comprehensive effort to promote gender and sexual identity among children," "Target reportedly promoted and sold products in our states that included, among other products, LGBT-themed onesies, bibs, and overalls, t-shirts labeled 'Girls Gays Theys;' 'Pride Adult Drag Queen Katya' (which depicts a male dressed in female 'drag'); and girls’ swimsuits with 'tuck-friendly construction' and 'extra crotch coverage' for male genitalia."

Reports have stated the "tuck-friendly construction" was only part of adult clothing lines.

The attorneys general also point to merchandise from what they say is a "self-declared 'Satanist-Inspired' brand," "products with anti-Christian designs, such as pentagrams," and one design that "included the phrase 'Satan Respects Pronouns.'"

Lastly, they claim these actions "not only raise concerns under our States’ child-protection and parental-rights laws but also against our States’ economic interests as Target shareholders."

"The evidence suggests that Target’s directors and officers may be negligent in undertaking the 'Pride' campaign, which negatively affected Target’s stock price. Moreover, it may have improperly directed company resources for collateral political or social goals unrelated to the company’s and its shareholders’ best interests," they claim. 

Corporations have First Amendment free speech rights.

California state leaders vow to provide textbooks for students after a school board rejected a social studies curriculum

Story by Cheri Mossburg • Yesterday 2:49 a.m.

After a Southern California school district rejected a state-endorsed social studies curriculum that includes material on gay rights, top state officials are vowing to buy a textbook in question and distribute it to students before the new school year.

“That social studies book is being censored by the local school board,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a video message directed at parents in the city of Temecula.

A statement from the governor’s office Thursday said the state will “secure textbooks for students” in the district if the school board “fails to take action at its next board meeting” next week.

The announcement is the latest dispute between state and local officials after the Temecula Valley Unified School District’s board voted 3-2 on May 16 to reject the curriculum, with some board members claiming there was not enough parental involvement in the curriculum creation process as well as making comments attacking gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk.

The curriculum – for grades one through five – contains supplemental resource material for teachers that includes a short biography of Milk, who is believed to be the first openly gay politician elected to public office in California in 1977. The materials describe his lifestyle and his work for gay rights in California until his assassination in 1978.

Many parents at a June public hearing decried the school board’s rejection of the curriculum, and the board is due to review at its next meeting on July 18 a new proposed curriculum that should meet state standards, according to the board’s president.

The Temecula board has previously drawn attention for firing its superintendent without cause, according to the Los Angeles Times, and banned critical race theory from school curricula in December.

State can deliver materials, Newsom says

Newsom’s announcement Thursday also contained statements from state legislative leaders, including Senate President pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, who collectively rejected what they described as a book ban.

“California will secure textbooks for students in Temecula if the local school board fails to take action at its next board meeting and the state will enact legislation to impose fines on any school district that fails to provide adequate instructional materials,” the governor’s office said in a news release.


In response to the governor’s announcement, Joseph Komrosky, who serves as the president of the district’s board and voted against the curriculum, said the district “did not ‘ban’ a book at its May 16, 2023 regular meeting. Instead the Board of Education determined not to adopt as curriculum a history-social science program for District-wide use that had been part of a pilot study conducted by the District.”

Komrosky added that board members shared concerns about supplemental material he described as “not a textbook” that was part of that curriculum related to a lesson for fourth graders about Milk.

Board members who opposed the curriculum called Milk a “pedophile” in the May meeting before voting it down. The 34-year-old Milk had a relationship with a 16-year-old while living in Greenwich Village in New York that has long been a source of controversy, according to the late San Francisco journalist Randy Shilts’ biography of Milk, “The Mayor of Castro Street.” The age of consent in New York was raised from 14 to 18 in 2017.

Komrosky said in June that his statements about Milk “were not based upon him being a homosexual, but rather based upon him being an adult having a sexual relationship with a minor.”

In Thursday’s response, Komrosky continued, “But what the Governor has conveniently ignored is that members of the Board of Education expressed other significant concerns about the District’s process, including whether it had adequately engaged the community regarding the adoption of curriculum.”

The proposed social studies curriculum was part of a pilot process started last year and included 47 classrooms with 1,300 students, Kimberly Velez, assistant superintendent of Student Support Services, said during the May meeting.

The curriculum rejected by the Temecula school board is one of four standard, state-approved textbooks being used across hundreds of school districts in California, the governor’s office said Thursday.

“Cancel culture has gone too far in Temecula: radicalized zealots on the school board rejected a textbook used by hundreds of thousands of students and now children will begin the school year without the tools they need to learn,” Newsom said in the statement.

“If the school board won’t do its job by its next board meeting to ensure kids start the school year with basic materials, the state will deliver the book into the hands of children and their parents — and we’ll send the district the bill and fine them for violating state law.”

CNN reached out to each member of the Temecula Valley Unified School District for further comment.

Board member Steven Schwartz said, “I believe the Governor is acting in the best interest of our students. I have supported the (social studies) textbooks based on the expertise of our teachers who piloted the program.”

Board member Alison Barclay said, “I am pleased to hear that the State of California is willing to support our students and ensure that they have access to the most up to date and accurate information. … Our students deserve the best and having to continue to learn from a completely outdated curriculum that doesn’t meet state standards is not what’s best for our students.”

Thurmond has sponsored legislation that, if passed, would impose fines on districts that fail to provide adequate instructional materials, according to a news release.

CNN’s Aya Elamroussi, Taylor Romine, Elizabeth Joseph and Alexandra Coenjaerts contributed to this report.

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Online Incitement Against LGBT People in Cameroon

Planned Visit by French Expert Met with Online Hate

Larissa Kojoue
Researcher, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people in Cameroon are all too aware of homophobic rhetoric and violent attacks against them. This has been highlighted once again in the outpouring of vitriol before a scheduled visit by Jean-Marc Berthon, the French ambassador for the Rights of LGBT+ Persons.


IDAHOT 2021 Campaign by Elles Cameroun, “Resister. Soutenir. Guérir”, May 17, 2021, Bepanda Douala. © 2021 Elles Cameroun

Berthon was due to visit Cameroon later this month for an event on gender and sexuality hosted by the French Institute in Yaoundé, the capital. Cameroon’s government officially registered its objection to the visit, and Foreign Minister Lejeune Mbella Mbella said in the media that the visit would contravene Cameroonian law, which forbids consensual same-sex relations.

The visit was then cancelled.

Since the visit was announced, many people have called for mob justice and violence against LGBT persons on social media. Some government and political officials, as well as public figures, referred to LGBT people as “against nature,” “an anomaly,” “vampire citizens,” “destructive of the family,” “destructive of the state,” or as using “satanic and demonic practices.” In addition to this online hatred, people perceived as LGBT live with constant threats of harassment and physical violence every day.

Tamu (not their real name), an LGBT activist living in Yaoundé, told me, “The situation is very tense. People are scared. Everywhere you go you hear: 'We have to burn them all.' … There are young [LGBT] people calling me from everywhere. They don't know what to do.”

The foreign minister claimed that there are no LGBT people in Cameroon, which is patently false. LGBT groups exist in Cameroon and several even manage to work with the government on initiatives to combat HIV/AIDS. But Cameroon has a dismal track record on upholding the rights of LGBT people. Security forces have failed to protect LGBT people from violence and in some instances have been responsible for acts of violence, or complicit in them. The Cameroonian government should unequivocally condemn violence and incitement to violence against LGBT people, investigate such crimes against LGBT persons, and bring those responsible to justice.

Overlooked No More: Hannie Schaft, Resistance Fighter During World War II

She killed Nazis in the Netherlands and was known as “the girl with the red hair” on their most-wanted list. Then she was executed.

Hannie Schaft was one of few women to take up arms during the resistance. She was a student when the Nazis occupied the Netherlands.

Credit...Wikimedia Commons


By Claire Moses
Claire Moses reported this story from Amsterdam and The Hague, using documents from the 1940s at the Dutch National Archives.

July 7, 2023

This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.

It’s April 17, 1945. Two Nazi officers are making a 24-year-old woman walk ahead of them toward the sandy dunes along the Dutch coast. She’s wearing a blue skirt and a red and blue sweater.

She is the Dutch resistance fighter Hannie Schaft, but one might not have recognized her immediately: Her signature red hair has been dyed black.

As she walks, one of the officers fires his gun at the back of her head. The bullet ricochets off her skull and doesn’t kill her. The other officer then shoots her, also in the back of the head, this time at closer range.

That is how Hannie Schaft died, just a few weeks before the end of World War II in Europe. She had been arrested and sent to a prison in Amsterdam about a month earlier, during a random check in Haarlem, her hometown in the Netherlands, when she was found carrying a gun, as well as illegal newspapers and pamphlets from the resistance movement, in her bicycle bag. Initially it wasn’t obvious to the Nazis whom they had arrested, but it soon became evident that it was the woman they had been looking for, the woman known as the “girl with the red hair,” who had shot and killed multiple Nazis and collaborators.

More in ‘Overlooked’

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June 25, 2023

Overlooked No More: Lou Sullivan, Author and Transgender Activist
June 9, 2023


She was born Jannetje Johanna Schaft on Sept. 16, 1920, in a left-wing, middle-class household, to Aafje Talea (Vrijer) Schaft, a homemaker with a progressive streak, and Pieter Schaft, a teacher. Hannie, a name she adopted when she became a resistance fighter, had an older sister, Annie, who had died of diphtheria. As a result, she had a protective childhood, said Liesbeth van der Horst, the director of the Resistance Museum in Amsterdam, which has a display about Schaft that includes her glasses, a version of the gun she carried, and a photo of her and a fellow resistance fighter.

“She was a serious, principled girl,” van der Horst said in an interview. “She was a bookworm.”

She added that despite being shy, Schaft “was proud of her red hair” and how it helped her stand out.

After high school in Haarlem, Schaft studied law at the University of Amsterdam, in the hopes of becoming a human rights lawyer. She was a student when the Nazis occupied the Netherlands in May 1940, plunging the country into war and targeting Jewish citizens. Though Schaft was not Jewish, the occupation set her on a path to political activism.

“As the Nazi regime’s policies got harsher against Jews, her own sense of moral outrage grew stronger,” said Buzzy Jackson, the author of “To Die Beautiful” (2023), a novel about Schaft’s life. “She started to want to do more.”

She began volunteering for the Red Cross, rolling bandages and making first aid kits for soldiers and helping German refugees. When the Nazi regime required all students in the Netherlands to pledge their loyalty to the occupiers, Schaft, like many others, refused to do so and was forced to drop out.

After the Nazis arrested Schaft, she admitted her resistance activities. She was 24 when they executed her.

Credit...Wikimedia Commons


She maintained the friendships she had formed with two Jewish girls at the university, helping them obtain fake IDs to evade Nazi checkpoints and hiding them as the Nazis continued stripping Jewish citizens of their basic rights.

By the end of the war, more than 100,000 people — nearly 75 percent of all Dutch Jews, the highest percentage of any Western European country — would be deported to concentration camps and murdered.

The resistance, van der Horst said, was not one organized movement but rather a tangle of overlapping networks.

Schaft joined the Resistance Council, a communist group, where she met two sisters, Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, who became her close friends and would survive the war. (In March, the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation announced that it had found two letters written by Truus Oversteegen to a friend, in which she mentioned Schaft.)

The armed resistance was an extremely dangerous undertaking, with many fighters arrested and executed. It’s unclear how many attacks can be attributed to Schaft, but researchers say there were at least six.

In June 1944, Schaft and a fellow resistance fighter, Jan Bonekamp (with whom she was rumored to have had a romantic relationship), targeted a high-ranking police officer for assassination. As the officer was getting on his bicycle to go to work, Schaft shot him in the back, causing him to fall off the bike. Bonekamp finished the killing but was injured doing so. He died shortly after. Schaft managed to escape on her own bike, which was how she got around doing her resistance work.

Schaft was also involved in killing or wounding a baker who was known for betraying people, a hairdresser who worked for the Nazis’ intelligence agency, and another Nazi police officer.

Before confronting her targets, Schaft put on makeup — including lipstick and mascara — and styled her hair, Jackson said. In one of the few direct quotations that have been attributed to Schaft, she explained her reasoning to Truus Oversteegen: “I’ll die clean and beautiful.”

Dawn Skorczewski, a lecturer at Amsterdam University College, said Schaft’s involvement in the resistance was particularly extraordinary because few women in the movement took up arms.

“It’s unusual that a woman of her age would start killing Nazis in alleyways,” she said in a video call.

Once the Nazis started looking for “the girl with the red hair,” as she was described on their most-wanted list, Schaft disguised herself by dying her hair black and wearing wire-frame glasses.

The Nazis raided Schaft’s parents’ house and arrested them, hoping that she would turn herself in, but they were released nine months later, according to the Resistance Museum.

After Schaft was caught, she admitted her resistance activities. But there is no evidence that she gave the Nazis information about any of her fellow resistance fighters.

After the liberation of the Netherlands on May 5, 1945, Schaft’s body was dug up from a mass grave with hundreds of other people the Nazis had executed. She was the only woman among them.

Later that year, she was buried at the Honorary Cemetery in the seaside town of Bloemendaal, alongside hundreds of other resistance fighters. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands attended the service, according to documents in the Dutch National Archives.

Schaft’s name is well known in the Netherlands. There are streets and schools named after her, and in 1981 she was the subject of a scripted movie called “The Girl With the Red Hair.” (Janet Maslin panned the film in The New York Times, writing that Schaft’s story “was undoubtedly more exciting in reality than it is on the screen.”) An Amsterdam-based postproduction company is planning to polish the original film and rerelease it for the Netherlands Film Festival in September.

Her story is still being uncovered by researchers — a challenging task because resistance fighters worked undercover and often left little evidence behind.


As Jackson, the author of “To Die Beautiful,” noted, “The reason we know about Anne Frank is because she left a diary.”

Schaft, on the other hand, made it a point not to put anything in writing. “That’s true for most people in the resistance,” Jackson said. “There are not a lot of records to look at.”

Claire Moses is a reporter for the Express desk in London. More about Claire Moses

Canada's Trudeau and Alberta Premier Smith look for agreement on climate policies

By Nia Williams

July 7, 2023

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meet as the annual Calgary Stampede rodeo, exhibition and festival kicks off in Calgary, Alberta, Canada July 7, 2023. REUTERS/Todd Korol

July 7 (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith on Friday said they hoped to find agreement on climate and energy policies that have been a sore point between the federal government and the largest oil-producing province.

Trudeau was visiting Canada's oil capital Calgary at the start of the city's annual Stampede event, a 10-day celebration of rodeo and western cowboy culture.

The Liberal Prime Minister and United Conservative Party leader Smith have clashed over federal climate policies including a proposed oil and gas emissions cap and clean electricity regulations.

"We'd like to bring our emissions reduction and energy development plan with the target of carbon neutrality by 2050 in alignment with some of the objectives of the federal government," Smith said, speaking alongside Trudeau ahead of their bilateral meeting.

She said they would discuss establishing a working group to achieve a net-zero power grid, which Ottawa wants to achieve by 2035, a date Alberta says is unrealistic.

The meeting would also cover the oil and gas emissions cap, and Article 6 of the Paris Climate Accord, which would allow Canadian provinces to obtain credits for reducing emissions abroad by displacing coal with liquefied natural gas exports, Smith said.

Trudeau's government has pledged to cut Canada's emissions 40-45% below 2005 by 2030, but will struggle to do so without significant decarbonization in Alberta, home to the oil sands and the bulk of Canada's fossil fuel industry, and the highest-emitting province.

"There's lots of things to work through. But I can say there's been a really positive and constructive working relationship between our ministers and our folks from the very beginning," Trudeau said.

Reporting by Nia Williams; Editing by David Gregorio

 

Nasser’s Ideology vs Practice: Postcolonial Critique of Egypt’s Yemen Intervention

Amadeus Marzai

Jul 7 2023 •

This content was originally written for an undergraduate or Master's program. It is published as part of our mission to showcase peer-leading papers written by students during their studies. This work can be used for background reading and research, but should not be cited as an expert source or used in place of scholarly articles/books.

esfera/Shutterstock

For too long, the states of the postcolony have been neglected as objects of academic inquiry. As of late, however, the postcolonial state has received increased scholarly attention, which is not least the case since Western political and economic ideas and theorems “seem increasingly febrile and dangerously unsuitable in large parts of the world.”[1] Against this backdrop, it is crucial to understand better what has happened to the ambitious but ultimately corrupted Third World project and its protagonists, who aimed at a socioeconomic, political, and cultural transformation of the postcolony

This paper attempts to do just that by examining one of the Third World’s most scintillating figures, the postcolonial state he governed and one of his most fateful foreign policy decisions, thereby exploring a little-studied phenomenon of international politics. What is meant here is the Egyptian nation-state under President Gamal Abdel Nasser and its military intervention in Yemen starting in 1962, which fuelled the North Yemen Civil War (1962-1970) between insurgents of the deposed Mutawakkilite Kingdom and the newly installed Yemen Arab Republic (YAR). Egypt,[2] at that time, the “cultural, economic and political envy of the Arab world,”[3] not only brought soldiers to the southwest of the Arabian Peninsula but also administrators, doctors, technicians, and teachers as its military intervention was accompanied by an enormous state-building effort, reminiscent of later American and Soviet undertakings in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Egypt’s adventure in Yemen also resembles Vietnam and Afghanistan in the sense that the intervention force could not translate its superiority in equipment and technology into decisive victories as the Royalists successfully relied on guerrilla tactics. The deployment of up to 70,000 Egyptian soldiers quickly developed into a quagmire that swallowed up humans, material, and economic resources. It is not without reason that Nasser referred to the war as “my Vietnam.”[4] This involvement in Yemen is commonly held to have contributed significantly to Egypt’s devastating defeat at the hands of Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Like the American or Soviet interventions in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq, the Egyptian intervention must be understood as imperial and was widely perceived as such in Yemen as the foreign troops came to be regarded as occupiers. Just as in comparable cases, civilians in Yemen suffered greatly. Aerial bombardments of the countryside inhabited by uncommitted or hostile tribes were a recurrent feature of Egyptian warfare.[5] In the process, the Egyptians did not shy away from using a variety of chemical weapons. The civil war between the Republicans trying to safeguard their newly founded republic, their Egyptian patrons and the tribal forces desiring to restore the kingdom ultimately is believed to have claimed more than 200,000 lives.[6]

Apart from the parallels to other conflicts, there are further reasons that make Egypt’s military intervention an intriguing case worthy of academic attention. In contrast to the wars in the Third World led by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US), the 1960s war in Yemen remains largely underexamined and overshadowed by the Arab-Israeli wars. Moreover, it is noteworthy that while his soldiers were waging a brutal imperial war, Nasser, from 1964 to 1970, held the presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). He used this prominent platform to pledge for anti-imperialist struggle everywhere and self-determination, condemning “all attempts of old and new colonialism, all the plots of military or psychological terrorism, and all the crimes of attrition that are practiced against the daily struggle of peoples and against their wealth.”[7]

It is precisely this contradiction between anti-imperialism and progressive internationalism proclaimed by Nasser on the one hand and the ground reality of Egypt’s imperial expedition in Yemen on the other — in short, the difference between ideology and practice — that marks the starting point of this academic undertaking. It seeks to explain the Janus-facedness of Nasser’s intervention through postcolonial theory and examination of its public justifications. It endeavours to answer the question: how can we explain why Nasserist Egypt conducted a brutal and imperial intervention despite being painfully aware of its past as a subject to imperialism? An awareness due to which Cairo gravitated towards pan-Arabism, Third Worldism, and the NAM, displaying itself as anti-imperial. We will adopt the notion that, particularly in the postcolony, foreign policy is a process of nation-making and projecting its meaning into the global sphere.[8] We also stress the importance of political performativity and rhetoric as they narrate “our origin myths and desired futures.”[9]

To find an answer to this puzzle, we will draw on Nasser’s speeches from 1963, which constitute the primary source material for this study. These speeches from the first full year of the intervention — given to returning troops, Yemeni delegations, and the general Egyptian public — help us to approach the research question insofar as Nasser had to explain the intervention to a population that believed Yemen to be a distant land that held no value to Egypt. “In an age of uncertain legitimacy,” spirited and often excessive speeches to mass audiences were the “bread and butter of Arab political discourse.”[10] This was especially the case in a populist regime such as the one architected by Nasser on the banks of the Nile. The symbiosis between the state and its charismatic leader and their reciprocal identification, which made his sensitivities those of Egypt’s, allows us to focus on Nasser’s dialectic. Examining the Nasserist discourse and postcolonial Egypt’s self-fashioning regarding one of its most crucial foreign policy decisions is relevant because Nasserism’s ideological density is still disputed today.

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Meet the Ghanaian Canadian Lego sculptor building a Black universe

Story by Amarachi Orie • CNN

For 42-year-old Ghanaian Canadian artist Ekow Nimako, Lego is more than just a kids’ toy. A trickster deity in the form of a spider, a flower girl holding a giant bee and a Ghanaian kingdom in the year 3020 are all sculptures that he has built using only black Legos.

“I’m making art,” said Nimako. “This is fine art. It’s not a hobby, it’s not a toy, it’s not part of the Lego fandom, it’s not goofy. It doesn’t fall into a lot of categories that Lego creations fall into.”

He started making Lego sculptures in 2012 and his career took off two years later when he received a grant to exhibit his work in Canada during Black History Month. “I started realizing that not only did I enjoy making art with Lego, but it was important that I made Black art very specifically,” he said.

Nimako uses black Lego bricks specifically for three main reasons. The first is technical; black is one of the most common Lego colors, so there are many different pieces available for him to use.

The second is that he simply likes the color. “I think there’s something that is so sophisticated, something that is just expansive about black, and then there’s also something that is dark and sometimes foreboding or haunting about black. It has so much spectrum to it,” he explained.



Nimako, pictured here next to his "Warrior Owl" sculpture, only uses black-colored Lego pieces. -

However, the most important reason is that the beings that he creates are “unequivocally Black. Despite their features or what I may do with them, they’ll always be regarded as Black,” he said.

The building blocks of life

In 2014, Nimako made his first human sculpture, “Flower Girl,” which “spoke to the innocence lost of young Black girls that didn’t get a chance to be like traditional flower girls in the West – speaking to the girls that came here as a result of the transatlantic slave trade,” he said.



"Flower Girl" was the first human sculpture that Nimako made

The sculpture was initially the size of a six-year-old girl but as his technique developed and more Lego pieces were released, he aged her and enhanced her aesthetic. She is now the size of an average 10-year-old.

“There’s an intrinsic essence of life in my work,” said Nimako. “The sculptures are inanimate objects made of plastic. There’s something that’s quite synthetic about them. But it’s that synthetic quality that I strive to transcend with life, (such as by) spending a lot of time developing the eyes of each sculpture.”


It takes between 50 to 800 hours to make each sculpture, according to the Lego artist, who is “never in a rush.” For a sculpture that he is currently working on, he spent two hours building one section of a jaw, trying to find the right angles and the right parts, and “still didn’t finish.”



Named "Kadeesa" by his wife, this cat sculpture draws on the griffin, a mythological creature that is both lion and eagle, creating what Nimako calls a "griffyx."

He expects that the building process could become longer with each artwork as he discovers more Lego pieces and tries new techniques to make his artworks more dynamic.

“It’s a constant process of evolution,” he said.

‘Resistance is rooted in imagination’

Nimako considers himself to be a “futurist” who blends Africanfuturism, Afrofuturism and Afrofantasy. While Africanfuturism focuses on the experience of those on the African continent, Afrofuturism is more focused on the African American experience of looking into the future, drawing from the past and connecting to the continent, according to the artist.



Nimako is a futurist who used approximately 100,000 Lego pieces to construct a reimagining of the medieval kingdom of Ghana, titled "Kumbi Saleh 3020 CE." -

In his “Building Black: Civilizations” series, Nimako reimagines medieval sub-Saharan African narratives. His “Kumbi Saleh 3020 CE” piece, which is made up of around 100,000 Lego bricks and can be found in the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, is named after the capital city of a medieval Ghanaian kingdom. The artist explores medieval West Africa and reimagines what it would look like 1,000 years in the future.

Nimako hopes for an “inclusive future” that acknowledges the history of anti-Black racism and how “utterly disruptive” it is, and recognizes the role of Afrofuturism in allowing people to “envision a better world.”

“My wife always says, ‘all movements of resistance are rooted in that imagination.’ You have to imagine the freedom, the emancipation. You have to imagine this struggle being over. You have to project that in order to rise up, in order to resist. What else are you resisting for, if not for that Promised Land?” he said. “Even art is a form of resistance and it’s been used as a form of resistance for a very long time.”



Each sculpture takes between 50 to 800 hours to create, and Nimako expects the building process to become longer as he tries new techniques to make his artworks more dynamic. 

He recently released online kits for his “Building Beyond” workshop, which helps people to imagine and build representations of their own descendants from Lego using facial templates called “legacies.” He thinks that “it can help to foster sensitivity and understanding of complex cultures and ethnic groups.”

A Lego documentary

His work is being recognized beyond the art world – including by Lego itself. A Lego documentary based on his work was released in February 2022, and Nimako added that “the Lego Group has been really supportive of my work. After realizing what I do, there’s so much more that we’re going to be doing together.”

Nimako is currently building a sculpture called “The Great Turtle Race,” which depicts Black children racing on the backs of two mythological turtles to “capture the essence of childhood.”

“We’re Black artists when we’re making art,” he said. “You don’t get to just exist as an artist. There’s so much complexity and so much nuance and so much culture to explore. It fills me with so much joy … knowing that Black children are going to be able to engage with my work and see themselves reflected.”

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IT WILL STAY AT 3%

As inflation inches closer to 3%, economists warn progress will stall this year

Story by The Canadian Press • Yesterday 





OTTAWA — As inflation inches closer to three per cent, economists are warning the steady monthly declines in annual price growth will stall and even potentially reverse in the second half of the year.

Statistics Canada is set to release its consumer price index report for June next week, and forecasters are anticipating the annual inflation rate fell from 3.4 per cent in May.

"We're expecting a deceleration to three per cent year-over-year. And that's really mainly because the gasoline prices we're paying today are being compared with the very peaks of what we saw last year," said Andrew Grantham, an executive director of economics at CIBC.

But inflation isn't expected to fall much further this year, making the journey back to the two per cent target a long and tumultuous one.

Desjardins chief economist Jimmy Jean says the upcoming CPI report marks a turning point in the fight against inflation.

"June is going to be really the peak disinflationary force coming from gasoline, in our view. So I think once we're past that, we're going to see that it is going to take quite a long time before we get inflation to a place that we're happy with," Jean said.

The rapid deceleration in inflation since last summer has been largely due to base-year effects, which refer to the impact of price movements from a year ago on the calculation of the year-over-year inflation rate.

Simply put, it means prices weren't rising as fast this year because they were being compared to already elevated prices a year prior.

On Wednesday, the Bank of Canada raised its key interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point in part because it expects inflation to remain high for longer.

It released new projections that suggest inflation will return to target in mid-2025. That's six months longer than the central bank previously forecast.

The central bank said its upward revision to its inflation forecast is due to “excess demand” in the economy, higher-than-expected housing prices and higher than expected goods prices.

The Bank of Canada's key interest rate now sits at five per cent and it hasn't ruled out further rate hikes if needed.

Grantham says CIBC's forecast for inflation in the coming months is in line with the Bank of Canada and warns inflation may even tick up in some months.

Economists tracking changes to price growth note that core measures of inflation, which strip out volatility, have not fallen by much in recent months.

That's led the central bank to raise rates, even as inflation appears on the surface to be easing.

"Where our forecasts differ more from the Bank of Canada's, is what happens after that," he said.

"We actually think that inflation will return to two per cent by the second half of next year."

That's because there are signs of softening in the economy, he said, as well as more improvements in supply chains.

Canada's labour market has begun to ease as the unemployment rate rises and wage growth slows. And data from Statistics Canada shows the rate at which households are saving is on the decline.

Part of the Bank of Canada's hawkishness, though, appears to be driven by the housing market, which rebounded this year despite high interest rates.

"The housing market has seen some pickup. New construction and real estate listings are lagging demand, which is adding pressure to prices," the Bank of Canada said in its press release announcing the latest rate hike.

Jean said the last two rate increases are shifting sentiment in many housing markets, though rapid population growth is blunting the effect interest rate increases have on housing demands.

The rapid rise in interest rates has eroded housing affordability, as mortgage interest costs skyrocket for new homebuyers and existing homeowners with variable rate mortgages.

In May, Statistics Canada's mortgage interest cost index jumped 29.9 per cent, the fastest rise on record.

Mortgage interest costs are also ironically driving up inflation.

Excluding mortgage interest costs, prices actually rose by only 2.5 per cent year-over-year in May, well within the Bank of Canada's targeting range.

Grantham says some of the core measures of inflation that the Bank of Canada tracks exclude these costs, which he says make sense.

"Every time you hike interest rates, if everything else stayed equal, inflation would actually accelerate," Grantham said.

"So it doesn't necessarily make a ton of sense from an inflation-targeting central Bank's point of view, to include those costs."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 16, 2023.

Nojoud Al Mallees, The Canadian Press

Online, 'unalive' means death or suicide. Experts say it might help kids discuss those things

Story by The Canadian Press • Yesterday 8:26 a.m.

Online, 'unalive' means death or suicide. Experts say it might help kids discuss those things© Provided by The Canadian Press

When Emily Litman was in middle school, kids whose parents grounded them would blithely lament: “I just want to die." Now she's a middle school teacher in New Jersey, and when her students' phones and TikTok access are taken away, their out-loud whining has a 21st-century digital twist: “I feel so unalive.”

Litman, 46, teaches English as a second language to students in Jersey City. Her students don’t use — and perhaps have never even heard — English words like “suicide.” But they know “unalive.”

“These are kids who’ve had to learn English and are now learning TikToklish,” Litman says.

“Unalive” refers to death by suicide or homicide. It can function as adjective or verb and joins similar phrasing — like “mascara,” to mean sexual assault — coined by social media users as a workaround to fool algorithms on sites and apps that censor posts containing discussion of explicit or violent content.

Language has always evolved. New words have always popped up. Teenagers have often led the way. But the internet and online life pave the way for it to happen more quickly.

In this case, words created within a digital setting to evade rules are now jumping the fences from virtual spaces into real ones and permeating spoken language, especially among young people. Beyond being interesting linguistic footnotes, the terms suggest ways that kids can safely discuss and understand serious matters while using a vocabulary that science — and the adults in their lives — might see as too casual or dangerously naive.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255.

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But don't get too worried, experts say. Such a shift is known as a “lexical innovation,” says Andrea Beltrama, a linguistics researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. He and others say that while it might be jarring for non-TikTokkers to hear suicide and sexual assault discussed so euphemistically, it doesn't necessarily remove the seriousness from the conversation.

“Whoever says ‘unalive’ intends to communicate something about suicide, and knows that, and assumes that whoever is on the other end will be able to retrieve that intention,” Beltrama says.

Related video: Rising Rates of Suicides: What You Need to Know to Save a Life (Ivanhoe)

Every 11 minutes someone dies by suicide   Duration 1:23   View on Watch

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among people ages 10-24, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and suicide rates for that age group increased more than 50% from 2000-2021.

Using “unalive” could actually make for more meaningful discussions among youths — giving them a sense of community and trust they couldn't have with adults who use the words “suicide” or “kill.” Beltrama draws a parallel between “unalive” and how a saying like “Let's go Brandon” has become a way to express disdain for President Joe Biden without using the profane phrase that it's code for.

Like “Let's go Brandon” — which arose from a sports broadcaster's on-air mistranslation of a vulgar crowd chant about Biden at a NASCAR race — “unalive” took on, well, a life of its own. Political conservatives chummily co-opted “Let's go Brandon,” and TikTokkers did the same with “unalive.”

“'Unalive' is not only successful, but also seems to be creating almost this kind of solidarity or affiliation between groups of people who share this ability of decoding what 'Let's go Brandon' means," he says.

Dr. Steven Adelsheim, a Stanford University psychiatry professor and the director of the Stanford Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing, also advises against overreaction.

“Young people are pretty savvy,” Adelsheim says. “I think people understand what they’re doing when they’re using ‘unalive’ as a flip descriptor.”

Amber Samuels, a 30-year-old therapist in Washington, D.C., who has used “unalive” in her own social accounts, says that she has heard clients use it and similar euphemisms in speech. To her, “it doesn't feel abnormal or unusual."

“I think when we avoid using specific language to talk about suicide and sexual assault, we risk contributing to a culture of silence and shame surrounding these topics,” Samuels says. “In the case of social media, though, it’s the avoidance of using the actual, uncensored word that allows awareness and conversations to even be possible.”

Lily Haeberle, 18, a senior at Indiana's New Palestine High School, says she recently heard a classmate jokingly refer to “re-aliving” oneself after dying. It could be helpful, she says, to reserve words like “unalive” for such flippant references.

“I think they have sort of developed these alternative words as a means of still being able to joke about those types of things without it coming across in such a harsh way," Haeberle says.

It follows that a vanguard of youth culture — video gaming, in which characters are killed right and left and defeated players often cry, “I’m dead!” — has incorporated the term. Gamer forums and chat rooms are rife with references to “unaliving” characters only to have them “respawned,” or resurrected.

Dictionary.com — the hipper alternative to major English-language dictionaries that so far do not appear to address “unalive” in this sense — uses this example in its definition: “The point of the game is to unalive all enemies before losing your last life token.”

Kids have always had their own slang, but today's adolescents are digital natives constantly barraged with information. Litman has mixed feelings about whether referring to suicide with “unalive” might help or hurt, but she's encouraged that kids are at least talking about it. Particularly, she says, if perceiving suicide as “unaliving” might make a struggling youth more likely to ask for help.

“They’re much more comfortable with these topics," she says, "than I would have been at their age.”

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Jeff McMillan, a longtime editor at The Associated Press, is also a member of the AP Stylebook editing team. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/JeffMcMillanPA

Jeff Mcmillan, The Associated Press

WAR IS RAPE
International Criminal Court investigates Darfur killings, rapes as violence surges

Story by By Anthony Deutsch • Thursday

The International Criminal Court building is seen in The Hague© Thomson Reuters

THE HAGUE/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -The International Criminal Court is investigating a surge in hostilities in Sudan's Darfur region since mid-April, including reports of killings, rapes and crimes affecting children, the top prosecutor told the United Nations on Thursday.

The regular army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been battling in the capital Khartoum and other areas of Sudan in a power struggle that exploded in mid-April.

More than 3 million people have been uprooted, including more than 700,000 who have fled into neighbouring countries.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week that Sudan, Africa's third largest country by land area, was on the brink of full-scale civil war that could destabilise the wider region.

"The office can confirm that it has commenced investigations in relation to incidents occurring in the context of the present hostilities," the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan's office said in a report to the U.N. Security Council.

ICC prosecutors are "closely tracking reports of extrajudicial killings, burning of homes and markets, and looting, in Al Geneina, West Darfur, as well as the killing and displacement of civilians in North Darfur and other locations across Darfur," the report said.

It is also examining "allegations of sexual and gender-based crimes, including mass rapes and alleged reports of violence against and affecting children," it said.

In El Geneina, witnesses have reported waves of attacks by Arab militias and the RSF against the non-Arab Masalit people, the largest community in the city, that have sent tens of thousands of people fleeing to nearby Chad.

While the ICC cannot currently work in Sudan due to the security situation, it intends to do so as soon as possible, the report said. Under a 2005 U.N. Security Council resolution, its jurisdiction is limited to the Darfur region.

The ICC has four outstanding arrest warrants related to the earlier fighting in Darfur between 2003 and 2008, including one against former Sudanese President Omar al Bashir on charges of genocide.

Al Bashir and two of his former ministers who are also wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes in Darfur had been in custody in Sudan. The army said Bashir and one of the former ministers, Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein, had been moved to a military hospital before the outbreak of the fighting. The other former minister, Ahmed Haroun, said he had broken out of prison with others 10 days after the start of the conflict.

The International Criminal Court has launched an investigation into violence in Sudan's Darfur   Duration 1:36   View on Watch

Khan said he had sent a request to Sudan's government, which has a long history of not cooperating with the ICC, to find out the current location of the suspects.

In April, the ICC opened its first trial dealing with Darfur crimes in the case of alleged Janjaweed leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman.

While applauding the ICC's investigation, the U.S. State Department on Thursday condemned continued "atrocities and ethnically targeted killings" committed in West Darfur.

"The atrocities and violence in Darfur demand accountability, meaningful justice for victims and the affected communities, and an end to impunity," department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch and Stephanie van den Berg; Additional reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Michael Perry)