New Zealand city takes down statue of British navy commander

 12 June 2020

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A New Zealand city on Friday took down a statue of a British navy commander accused of killing indigenous Maori people in the 19th century, as global debate swirls over monuments that represent racial oppression.

Statues glorifying colonialists and slave traders have come into focus as part of a broader movement inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests that started in the United States following the death of George Floyd.

Floyd, 46, died on May 25 after a police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes, sparking anti-racism protests around the world.

Protests in Australia and New Zealand have focused on atrocities committed against indigenous people by European colonisers, with thousands of anti-racism protesters marching over the past week.

The statue of British commander John Hamilton in the New Zealand city of Hamilton, named after him, was taken down a day after a Maori leader threatened to tear it down himself.

Mayor Paula Southgate said a growing number of people found the statue personally and culturally offensive.

"We can’t ignore what is happening all over the world and nor should we. At a time when we are trying to build tolerance and understanding between cultures and in the community, I don’t think the statue helps us to bridge those gaps," Southgate said.

Hamilton led a regiment at the Battle of Gate Pā between the colonial government and Maori tribes in the 1860s, where he was killed.

There had been repeated calls by the Maori community to remove the statue. It was vandalised in 2018.

However, not everyone agreed with the idea of taking down statues. Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters called it a "wave of idiocy".

“A country learns from its mistakes and triumphs and its people should have the knowledge and maturity to distinguish between the two,” he said.

WESTPOINT PRODUCED 

GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, 
GENERAL GEORGE CUSTER, 
AND MIKE POMPEO

THAT SAYS IT ALL 

Clip from "Santa Fe Trail" (1940; 110 min) Santa Fe Trail is a 1940 American western film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Raymond Massey and Ronald Reagan. Written by Robert Buckner, the film is about the abolitionist John Brown and his fanatical attacks on slavery as a prelude to the American Civil War. Subthemes include J.E.B. Stuart and George Armstrong Custer as they duel for the hand of Kit Carson Holliday. The film was one of the top-grossing films of the year, and the seventh Flynn–de Havilland collaboration.

The film's premise is that many of the major figures of the Civil War- especially the ones who became "boy generals", were all in the West Point Class of 1854 and that several of them served in "bleeding Kansas" and at Harper's Ferry. Some of what the film depicts is true. Some of it is not. John Brown did raid in Kansas in 1855-56 and then made the raid on Harper's Ferry on 10/16/1859.

UH OH
Protests in Trump country test his hold in rural white areas

Polls suggest white voters without college degrees could be more open to supporting Biden than they were to supporting Clinton four years ago

Published: June 13, 2020 By Associated Press

In the lake country 200 miles northwest of Detroit, hundreds danced, prayed and demanded racial justice in Cadillac, a Michigan town that was long home to a neo-Nazi group.

It was not an isolated scene. In eastern Ohio, even more demonstrated in rural Mount Vernon, a town with its own current of racial intolerance, just as others did in Manheim, Pennsylvania, a tiny farming town in Lancaster County, with its small but active Ku Klux Klan presence.

The protest movement over black injustice has quickly spread deep into predominantly white, small-town America, notably throughout parts of the country that delivered the presidency for Donald Trump. Across Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, more than 200 such demonstrations have taken place, many in cities with fewer than 20,000 residents, according to local media, organizers, participants and the online tracking tool CrowdCount.

“That’s what’s so striking, that these protests are taking place in rural places with a white nationalist presence,” said Lynn Tramonte, who grew up near Mount Vernon and is monitoring the Black Lives Matter demonstrations around Ohio.

The protests in these Republican-leaning areas offer a test of the president’s ability to reassemble his older, white voting bloc. If he cannot replicate that coalition, it would leave Trump with few options, especially since he continues to lose support in suburbs.
“If President Trump cannot hold onto white, working-class voters in rural, small-town Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio, I don’t know how he wins the election,” said Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “Can you rule out he won’t have that same level of enthusiasm? No, you can’t.”

Trump carried Pennsylvania by about 44,000 votes in 2016, in part with overwhelming support from a patchwork of rural, white counties.

The pattern also played out in Michigan and Wisconsin, where he won by even fewer votes. In Ohio, that coalition propelled him to an easy victory.

Trump’s reelection campaign is working chiefly through online outreach to hold onto his largely white base and to identify new voters in rural areas as a defense against inroads by presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Some polls suggest that, while white voters without college degrees are still a strong group for Trump, they could be more open to supporting Biden than they were to supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton four years ago.

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh did not directly address the protests taking place in counties won by the president, but said more generally in a statement to The Associated Press, “President Trump expressed disgust and shock over what happened to George Floyd and praised the peaceful demonstrations, but also knows that Americans cannot live with riots and lawlessness in cities nationwide.”

But the pace of change over racial justice after Floyd’s death last month by police in Minneapolis has quickened and has sparked protests in hundreds of communities in every state, on a scale rarely, if ever, seen before. It is not that Biden will necessarily win rural counties that Trump carried easily, but he may be able to cut into Trump’s margins enough to bring those states back to the Democratic column.

In Cadillac, branch home of the National Socialist Movement — among the nation’s prominent neo-Nazi groups as recently as 2007 — black organizers were undeterred in staging their event at a lakeside pavilion even as armed opponents associated with the white nationalist group Michigan Militia parked nearby as a show of force.
Trump won Wexford County, home to Cadillac, with 65% of the vote, similar to neighboring counties in the lightly populated region, where unemployment has run higher than average in Michigan.
In neighboring Grand Traverse County, which Trump won by a smaller margin, more than 2,000 packed Traverse City’s Lake Michigan shoreline park to hear protest organizer Courtney Wiggins. The 38-year-old black woman listed demands, including that police in the 95% white town of 14,000 end racial profiling, as armed protesters affiliated with the far-right Proud Boys dotted the perimeter.

Though similar events popped up in exurban Cedarburg and Grafton, keys to Ozaukee County in the GOP-leaning suburbs of Milwaukee, far more have materialized many miles from the major metropolitan areas in these four pivotal states, according to organizers and advocates who have tracked the protests.

In Mount Vernon, Ohio, the seat of Knox County where Trump received 66% of the vote, 700 people turned out on June 6 despite threats from opponents, who staged an impromptu rally later that day.

Dozens of protests have taken place in counties in these four battleground states that Trump flipped from Democrat to Republican. Among them were Macomb County outside Detroit, Portage and Mahoning counties in northeast Ohio, and — perhaps most notably — Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, where voters swung dramatically from President Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump four years later.

Still, the vast majority have taken place in more than 200 small cities and towns across these four states, like Oconto, Wisconsin, Marietta, Ohio, and Meadville, Pennsylvania, all with populations under 20,000 and in counties Trump carried with at least 60% of the vote.

And while the battle for the White House will likely be waged most intensely in these states’ diversifying suburbs, where Democrats made gains in 2018, even a slight uptick among Democrats or a softening of Trump support in the vast spaces between could be enough to alter the election.

If Biden carries every state Clinton did in 2016 and reclaims Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, he would win a majority of the Electoral College votes.

Of those states, none was as close as Michigan, which Trump won by 10,704 votes out of more than 4.7 million ballots cast.

A little more than 11,000 voters backed Obama in 2008 and either didn’t vote or supported Trump in 2016 in Grand Traverse County and the five counties surrounding it, including Cadillac’s home in Wexford County, according to state voting records.

“These marginal numbers, a few extra votes here and there, we’re talking, like, a handful of votes per county, and they exist in my six-county region,” said Betsy Coffia, a Democratic Grand Traverse County commissioner. “This can make a difference.”

AUSTRALIA
Police disrupt planned anti-racism rally in Sydney
RICK RYCROFT, Associated Press•June 12, 2020


Protestors carry an Aboriginal flag as the walk past a statue of British explorer James Cook in Sydney, Friday, June 12, 2020, to support U.S. protests over the death of George Floyd. Hundreds of police disrupted plans for a Black Lives Matter rally but protest organizers have vowed that other rallies will continue around Australia over the weekend despite warnings of the pandemic risk. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

SYDNEY (AP) — Hundreds of police disrupted plans for an anti-racism rally in downtown Sydney on Friday, but protest organizers vowed that other rallies will continue around Australia over the weekend despite warnings of the coronavirus risk.

Police ringed Sydney Town Hall hours before around 3,000 people were expected to attend a rally inspired by the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minnesota. Police vans were parked in side streets in preparation for mass arrests for breaching a 10-person limit on public gatherings because of the pandemic.

Protesters instead split, with about 100 dispersing around the hall while a few hundred converged on nearby Hyde Park.

Protesters in the park held a banner reading “Stand up Australia" near a statue. Those near the hall chanted “Too many coppers, not enough justice.” They appeared to obey police directions to leave or be arrested.

Government leaders have urged activists not to attend anti-racism and other rallies planned for the weekend due to the pandemic risk.

Rallies are planned for Australian cities this weekend over Floyd, the coronavirus risk posed to asylum-seekers held in crowded Australian immigration detention centers, and a pandemic threat created by eating meat.

Police largely did not enforce social distancing rules during peaceful anti-racism rallies attended by thousands in Australian cities last weekend that focused on the high incarceration rate of indigenous Australians.

But Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged police to charge protesters with breaching pandemic restrictions during the coming weekend.

“The very clear message is that people should not attend those events, because it is against the health advice to do so,” Morrison told reporters.

A court on Thursday ruled that a refugee rally planned for Sydney on Saturday is illegal because of the pandemic threat, increasing the range of powers available to police to block it.

Organizer Ian Rintoul said the protest would continue because asylum seekers are in urgent need.

“The point has come, even in terms of the COVID-19 experience in Australia, where the street protests are possible. They can be held safely, and I think we need to insist on that,” Rintoul told Ten Network television.

Animal rights group PETA plans to limit numbers at a Sydney protest on Saturday to avoid police attention. PETA blames the consumption of wildlife sold in Chinese wet markets for the pandemic.

“If a pandemic born out of animal abuse is not the best time to talk about and protest animal abuse, then when is?” PETA spokeswoman Aleesha Naxakis said.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann suggested demonstrators could lose government welfare payments if they attend rallies, but Morrison later ruled out any such federal retaliation. The government pays a wage subsidy to 3.5 million Australians to keep them in work during the pandemic lockdown.

A protester became sick after attending a Melbourne rally on Saturday and later tested positive for COVID-19. Authorities suspected he was infected before the rally and might have spread the virus to other protesters. Authorities say any disease cluster caused by last weekend’s rallies might not become apparent for weeks.

Australia is relaxing its pandemic restrictions, with 2,000 fans allowed in Adelaide for an Australian rules football match on Saturday, but no protest rallies.

Melbourne is the state capital of Victoria, which is alone among Australia’s eight states and territories to experience community spread of COVID-19 in recent weeks. Most cases involve people who have returned from overseas.

Australia has not recorded any COVID-19 deaths since May 23, when the toll rose to 102. The country has confirmed 7,285 coronavirus cases and 524 cases remain active.

___

Associated Press writer Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, contributed to this report.

Patel condemns ‘unacceptable thuggery’ as ‘statue protectors’ clash with police

NOT PROTECTING THE MANDELA STATUE THEY WERE PROTECTING A STATUE OF CHURCHILL WHO ORDERED TROOPS TO ATTACK STRIKING WORKERS DURING THE 1926 GENERAL STRIKE

Jess Glass and Taz Ali, PA
PA Media: UK News13 June 2020

Police were pelted with bottles during confrontations in central London after large crowds gathered claiming they were there to protect statues from Black Lives Matter protesters.

Hundreds of mostly white men converged on Parliament Square on Saturday after far-right groups, including Britain First, called on supporters to guard the monuments.

Many of those present were drinking and there were a number of clashes with police in riot gear as crowds chanting ‘England’ and raising their arms surged towards lines of officers.

View photos

Police are confronted by protesters in Whitehall near Parliament Square, London (Jonathan Brady/PA)More

As several hundred demonstrators blocked roads around Parliament Square, police tried to corral them onto the pavements.

Other officers, some holding shields, remained in a line blocking access to the Cenotaph in Whitehall, while some in the crowd screamed abuse at them.

Their behaviour was slammed by Home Secretary Priti Patel, who tweeted: “Thoroughly unacceptable thuggery.



Throughly unacceptable thuggery.

Any perpetrators of violence or vandalism should expect to face the full force of the law. Violence towards our police officers will not be tolerated.

Coronavirus remains a threat to us all. Go home to stop the spread of this virus & save lives. https://t.co/HsOx9cgrqD

— Priti Patel (@pritipatel) June 13, 2020

“Any perpetrators of violence or vandalism should expect to face the full force of the law. Violence towards our police officers will not be tolerated.”

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan also took to Twitter to condemn the violence, writing: “This is totally unacceptable. We will not tolerate attacks on our police and perpetrators will feel the full force of the law.

“It is clear that far right groups are causing violence and disorder in central London, I urge people to stay away.”



This is totally unacceptable. We will not tolerate attacks on our police and perpetrators will feel the full force of the law.

It is clear that far right groups are causing violence and disorder in central London, I urge people to stay away. https://t.co/4fzPEbwCQD

— Mayor of London (gov.uk/coronavirus) (@MayorofLondon) June 13, 2020

On Friday, statues in Parliament Square including of Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, were boarded up to prevent them being targeted by protesters both from the Black Lives Matter movement and far-right groups.

Police on horseback pushed back demonstrators near the statues of Mandela and Gandhi on Saturday as protesters continued to throw objects towards them, including at least one smoke bomb.

Large groups of far-right protesters moved to Trafalgar Square, where fireworks were thrown across the crowds.

Police attempted to stop them getting to Hyde Park where a Black Lives Matter demonstration, which had largely been peaceful, was taking place.

View photos

People taking part in a Black Lives Matter protest (Victoria Jones/PA Wire)More



The violence continued as some protesters managed to break metal barriers around the Cenotaph on Whitehall while hurling flag poles, a smoke flare and a traffic cone towards police who were striking them back with batons.

Speaking before the clashes, Paul Golding, leader of Britain First, said the crowds had turned out to “guard our monuments”, telling the PA news agency: “I am extremely fed up with the way that the authorities have allowed two consecutive weekends of vandalism against our national monuments.

Britain First leader Paul Golding (right) shakes hands with a BLM protester in Parliament Square (Jonathan Brady/PA)

“Anyone who comes along today to try and vandalise them will probably be dealt with by all of these Englishmen that turned up, and they’re fed up as well.”

But when asked the Nelson Mandela statue, Mr Golding said: “Why should we have a communist terrorist mass murderer in the capital city of England? It doesn’t make any sense.

“We would like to see that one go, on good grounds, but the rest of them are our historical heritage.”

A demonstrator from south London, who gave her name as Victoria, was in the square with a banner reading “All lives matter”.

Discussing controversial statues, she told PA: “It’s the past. You’ve just gotta learn to live with it, they’ve done w they’ve done but it’s still in the records they hatdid good things.

A protester in Newcastle holds up a picture of George Floyd (Owen Humphreys/PA)

“I’ve got things I don’t want to remember, but I wouldn’t go smashing things up because of it.”

Daisy, a 26-year-old from Pimlico, passed demonstrators in Parliament Square as she went for a run at around 10.30am on Saturday morning and claimed many were already drinking alcohol.

“They were all drinking beers and there was already loads of cans lying round on the floor treating it like it was some sort of football away-day,” she told PA.

“It was a really tense and hostile atmosphere. I didn’t stay too long… it was really uncomfortable.”

In an attempt to avoid a repeat of last week’s sporadic clashes with officers during BLM protests, the Metropolitan Police warned people joining demonstrations on Saturday that they must be off the streets by 5pm or risk being arrested.

In response to the statements by far right groups, BML organisers urged supporters to stay away from central London on Saturday.

Protesters from Black Lives Matter take part in a silent vigil in Brighton (Andrew Matthews/PA)More

There were similar gatherings on Saturday in Belfast, Glasgow and Bristol with crowds massing around monuments.

In Brighton, more than 1,000 protesters formed a line along the seafront in a Black Lives Matter demonstration.

Protests against police brutality and racism have erupted all over the UK and across the globe following the death of African-American George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police nearly three weeks ago.

Last week, the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was pulled down and dumped into Bristol harbour by Black Lives Matter protesters, while the UK’s war-time Prime Minister memorial in London was defaced with the words “was a racist”.

Black Lives Matter protesters form mile-long line along Brighton seafront
Michael Drummond, PA Media: UK News13 June 2020

More than 1,000 protesters have gathered in Brighton to stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter demonstrations worldwide.

Forming a mile-long line along the seafront, activists wearing black clothes and masks and holding signs held a silent protest on Saturday afternoon.

Anti-racist demonstrators poured in from all over the city for the event for the second week in a row.



Protesters lined up along the sea front for the silent demonstration (Andrew Matthews/PA)More

It comes as people across the world continue to express outrage over the death of George Floyd in the US, and over racism in society.

Observing social distancing where possible, the Brighton protesters joined together in applause in the balmy sun.

Ahead of the silent protest, organiser Ellie Ruewell said to those planning to attend: “We will be lining the closed Madeira Drive road along the seafront to show solidarity to all BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of colour) communities who continuously and tirelessly have their human rights challenged and fear dangerous oppression from authorities and governments alike.

“I need to again stress this is a peaceful, silent protest where we stand in solidarity.”



It was the second weekend in a row that a protest supporting the Black Lives Matter movement had been held in Brighton (Andrew Matthews/PA)More

Protesters held signs calling out racism and prejudice, with one saying: “If you had time to watch Tiger King, you had time to learn.”

Another echoed the phrase chanted across the world: “No justice. No peace.”

The demonstration was watched over by Sussex Police, with officers on foot and motorcycle seen at the edges of the crowd.

Many of the protesters were later expected to join a separate event, marching through the streets of the East Sussex city.

UK considers ending financial support for fossil fuels overseas

Jillian Ambrose The Guardian12 June 2020

Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

The UK government is considering steps to end its ongoing financial support for fossil fuels overseas after using £3.5bn of public funds to support polluting projects since signing the Paris climate agreement.

Senior civil servants are understood to be planning a new climate strategy that would phase out financial support for oil and gas infrastructure in developing countries ahead of the UN’s Cop26 international climate talks next year.

The talks come amid growing outcry from MPs and campaign groups over the government’s continuing financial support for fossil fuel projects in Africa and south-ease Asia through its foreign finance institutions.

Separate investigations by campaigners, to be published this week, reveal that the government has offered billions of pounds-worth of overseas fossil fuel financing since the Paris climate accord was agreed in 2016, and forged close links with the fossil fuel industry through a series of hospitality events and gifts.

UK Export Finance (UKEF), a government credit agency, has offered loans, guarantees and insurance worth at least £3bn to UK companies involved in foreign fossil fuel projects since the Paris climate agreement, according to figures unearthed by Global Justice Now.

The campaign group found that the government’s development bank, CDC Group, has directly invested at least £300m in high-emissions projects in Africa and south Asia, including fossil fuel power plants and cement-making.

CDC’s indirect investments include £34.5m for the African Infrastructure Investment Fund III, which has invested some of this money in four different fossil fuel projects, according to Global Justice.

Daniel Willis, a climate campaigner with Global Justice, said the financial support offered by the financial institutions and other aid since the Paris agreement in 2016 has totalled £3.5bn.

“For the government to show real climate leadership ahead of Cop26 and support a global green recovery from Covid-19, it needs to end these highly damaging investments,” he said.

A separate investigation by Global Witness has found that 96% of the gifts and hospitality accepted by UKEF in the past 20 years related to the energy sector were paid for by major fossil fuel companies, including Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil business Saudi Aramco and Gazprom, which is owned by the Russian government.

The gifts include Nokia mobile phones from Sabic, a petrochemical company owned by Saudi Aramco, and trips worth several thousand pounds to visit a gas project in Russia that was paid for by Gazprom.

A modest 4% of UKEF’s energy industry hospitality events were linked to renewable energy companies, according to the report.

Adam McGibbon, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, said UKEF’s hospitality records “underline just how in bed they are with some of the world’s biggest polluters”.

“Hospitality gifts are more than just pleasantries; they are a tried and tested technique for big business to maintain influence over policy. When the UK-hosted Cop26 finally happens in 2021, ending the hypocrisy of exporting pollution abroad will be a key test of just how serious this government is about fighting climate change,” he said.

A UKEF spokesperson said the agency supported UK exports “in all sectors”, and was “proactively developing the breadth of our support for renewable sectors”. UKEF has allocated £2bn to its direct lending facility for clean growth and renewable energy projects, the agency added.

Both UKEF and CDC have increased the proportion of renewable energy within their financial support for energy projects. A CDC spokesman said the development bank will reveal its new climate strategy later this year, which will prioritise investment in renewable energy over fossil fuels.

Government officials are understood to be wary of calling for fossil fuel financing to be ruled out entirely at the expense of helping developing countries achieve other development goals, including access to reliable electricity for almost 1 billion people for the first time.

This stance would likely draw criticism from environmentalists and MPs who believe renewable energy could help power developing economies.

The Labour party leader, Keir Starmer, before his election as leader of the opposition, said earlier this year that “rather than funding fossil fuel projects abroad, we should use our development budget and technical expertise to help other countries skip our bad habits and grow their own low-carbon economies on renewables instead”.

A spokesperson for the Department of International Development said the UK government had agreed that “all future aid spend will be aligned with the Paris agreement” and last year doubled its investment to help developing countries tackle climate change.

Indigenous inequality in spotlight as Australia faces reckoning on race

REMNANTS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

Luke Henriques-Gomes in Melbourne

The Guardian 12 June 2020

Photograph: Rick Rycroft/APMore
Australia’s prime minister took his time before weighing in on the country’s Black Lives Matter movement. Five days after tens of thousands of people joined protests over Indigenous deaths in custody, Scott Morrison spoke out on Thursday, wondering aloud on a right-leaning radio station whether something that had started with a “fair point” had lost its way.

“I think we’ve also got to respect our history as well,” he said. “And this is not a licence for people to just go nuts on this stuff.”

As Black Lives Matter protests have swept around the world after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander campaigners have sought to seize the moment. Pointing to figures showing 437 Indigenous people have died in custody since1991, they argue it is time for Australia’s own national reckoning.

Successive governments have failed to move the dial on Indigenous inequality, despite an apology in 2008 to the stolen generations – Indigenous people who were forcibly removed from their families as children by the state – from the then prime minister, Kevin Rudd. Indigenous Australians account for 28% of people in prison. Life expectancy is 10 years less than that of the general population. Decades of calling for recognition in the constitution have gone unanswered.

Now that racism is in the headlines, there has been a greater focus on Indigenous Australians, although campaigners have expressed frustration that it took the death of an African American man to shine a light on their plight.

The anger has coalesced around high-profile deaths in custody. Public rallies have become vigils to those lives lost: people such as David Dungay, whose last words were “I can’t breathe” as he was restrained by prison guards in 2015; Tanya Day, who died from a fall in prison in 2017 following an arrest for public drunkenness; and Ms Dhu, who was denied medical care by police who arrested her over unpaid fines and died in custody in 2014.

In the week before protesters took to the streets, a Sydney police officer slammed an Indigenous teenager’s face into concrete.

A man places a candle at a vigil with a portrait of David Dungay during a protest in Sydney. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Morrison’s conservative government has done little to directly address the frustrations of campaigners who say recommendations from a 1991 royal commission into Indigenous deaths in custody still have not been implemented.

The prime minister said he viewed the “very high level of Indigenous incarceration” as a genuine issue. Yet he dismissed the broader argument from campaigners that Australia should not see itself as absent of the kind of racism present in the US.

“Australia, in this global moment of Black Lives Matter, is revealing itself as the colonial outpost that it is,” said Dr Chelsea Bond, a Munanjali and South Sea Islander academic at the University of Queensland. She questioned how it was that Morrison could say in the radio interview that there was “no slavery in Australia”.

Morrison later acknowledged he had been wrong. From the “blackbirding” of Pacific Islander people who were were kidnapped and forced into labouring work, to the Indigenous farmhands and domestic servants who were traded between settlers and not paid, there certainly was slavery in Australia. But in his apology, Morrison said he did not want to start a “history war”.

“Appealing for truth-telling in history is not a matter of feelings,” Bond said. “It’s deeply irresponsible for our prime minister to be trying to incite a history war based on lies. It strikes me that he wouldn’t want to use this moment to honour the pain and trauma Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have experienced in this country. Why wouldn’t you want to do that?”

The Labor opposition has sought to elevate the case for a “voice to parliament”, a constitutionally enshrined representative body to advise politicians on Indigenous policy. This has been rejected by the government.



A banner at a protest in Melbourne. Photograph: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

Labor has walked a fine line in declining to directly criticise people taking to the streets in defiance of rules on physical distancing, while arguing that everyone should follow the authorities’ health advice. The advice, unequivocally, is that protests should not go ahead.

“My point is that for people to think carefully about what they decide to do,” said Linda Burney, Labor’s most senior Indigenous MP. “It is not up to me or anyone else to tell people what to do, but to heed the health warnings and to think about what the issues are here. And that’s what I would like the media to also focus on: it’s not ‘do you or don’t you’. It’s actually thinking about deeply what the issues are.”

Morrison appeared somewhat chastened as he was taken to task about his claims that there was no slavery in Australia. “I acknowledge there have been all sorts of hideous practices that have taken place. And so I’m not denying any of that. OK. I’m not denying any of that. And I don’t think it’s helpful to go into an endless history wars discussion about this.”

Protesters have indicated they intend to hold more rallies at the weekend. Many argue that while they acknowledge the health risks from the pandemic, racism poses its own risks to Australia’s First Nations people. A popular placard at last weekend’s rallies read “Racism is a pandemic”.

Bond said it was a painful moment. “We’re hearing that black lives matter, but what black people are being reminded of is how little they’ve mattered,” she said. “People are hurting because it’s taking them back to the first time they noticed that race was real and was violence. We are reliving all of our experiences of racial violence in this moment. In the hope that it could lead to some change, not just a hashtag trending.”

TRUMP'S RACE WAR
Trump is poised to accept the GOP nomination in Jacksonville on August 27 — the same day and city where white men violently attacked Black people 60 years ago

Sarah Al-Arshani,Business Insider•June 12, 202

President Donald J. Trump spoke to several thousand supporters at the Monroe Civic Center in Monroe, Louisiana on November 6, 2019.
Michael S. Williamson/Getty Images

President Donald Trump will give his speech at the Republican National Committee convention, which was relocated to Jacksonville, Florida, on August 27, if the RNC sticks to its initial plans for the convention.

It's the same date as the 60th anniversary of Ax Handle Saturday, where a white mob attacked Black people participating in a sit-in with baseball bats and ax handles.

Trump on Friday announced that he was moving the date of an upcoming rally which was set to be on Juneteenth in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

President Donald Trump will give his Republican National Committee convention speech in Jacksonville, Florida, on August 27, The New York Times reported, if the RNC sticks to its initial schedule.

August 27 is also the 60th anniversary of Ax Handle Saturday in Jacksonville. In 1960, a group of 200 white men attacked African American protesters conducting a sit-in at Hemming Park with baseball bats and ax handles. The violence spread, and the mob started attacking all African Americans, according to The Florida Historical Society.

According to The Times, it's one of the grimmest days in the city's history. A marker to commemorate Ax Handle Saturday was added to the park in 2001.

It's not clear if Republican officials were aware of this historical event when they chose Jacksonville as the site for Trump's speech.

The venue was initially set for Charlotte, North Carolina, but after Trump clashed with the governor over social distancing guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic, only a portion of the convention will be in Charlotte, while Trump's speech will be a six-hour drive away in Jacksonville.

In a statement, Paris Dennard, an RNC adviser for Black media affairs said, "While we cannot erase some of the darkest moments of our nation's past, we can denounce them, learn from them, fight for justice and a more perfect union for every American."
Monica Alba (@albamonica) June 12, 2020

On Friday, Trump announced that he would be rescheduling a June 19 rally in Tulsa, after he was advised to change the date out of "respect for this Holiday, and in observance of this important occasion and all that it represents." The rally will now be held on June 20, rather than on Juneteenth, a day that celebrates emancipation.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, is also the site of another brutal race massacre. June 1 marked the 99th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, where a white mob attacked Black Americans and destroyed part of the city.

The Trump campaign was widely criticized for initially scheduling the rally on an important holiday for Black Americans in Tulsa, the site of a massacre that historians estimate left 300 dead and "Black Wall Street" destroyed.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Michael Bennett: NFL owners cannot support both Trump and Black Lives Matter

Austin Knoblauch,LA Times•June 12, 2020

NFL defensive end Michael Bennett says team owners' support for players protesting can't hide their support for President Trump. (LM Otero / Associated Press)

NFL free agent Michael Bennett, a longtime advocate in the fight against racial inequality, is calling out the NFL for its stance on the Black Lives Matter movement.

In an interview with the Daily Beast, the three-time Pro Bowl defensive end said the NFL's efforts to support player protests and causes can't erase the fact that many team owners have supported President Trump.

“If you’re supporting him, then your letter is really null and void," Bennett said in regard to team statements and a video apology by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in the wake of George Floyd's death.

According to multiple reports, at least eight NFL team owners collectively donated close to $8 million to Trump's inaugural committee in 2016. Even after Trump publicly criticized the NFL for its stance on players protesting and called for fans to boycott games, some owners still supported him. New York Jets owner Woody Johnson is serving as the Trump-appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan said he supports Trump's economic policies and Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross hosted a Trump fundraiser in the Hamptons last year.

As a result, Bennett doesn't believe the NFL is being genuine in actively fighting racism.

“[Goodell] saying that Black lives matter is almost like a slap in the face,” Bennett said. “Black talent has been exploited at a high level in the NFL. He knows Black lives matter, because without Black players the NFL wouldn’t be as lucrative as it is.”

This isn't the first time Bennett has called out the NFL for not doing enough to address social issues. In August 2016, Bennett criticized NFL players, particularly the league's stars, for not being at the forefront of change.

In addition to statements and messages in support of player protests and racial equality, the NFL announced Thursday it will commit $250 million over 10 years as part of its initiative to combat systemic racism. The NFL also is recognizing Juneteenth as a league holiday. Bennett, however, believes the NFL needs to show more than just words and money to prove it's indeed a fighter for change.

“Is the intent of the NFL to really make a positive impact or is it not to be seen as if they don’t respect the players?" Bennett asked. “We have to continuously push the NFL to change its core values and change its moral compass on a consistent basis."