If a psychic had predicted in the 1970s that Bernie Sanders would someday stand on the White House lawn in support of an embattled Democratic President, or become a Democrat himself, people who knew him would have considered it a poor joke. Sanders would have called it “totally outrageous.”
Source: The Atlantic
The flag that Dylann Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, endorses the violence he committed.
Last night, Dylann Roof walked into a Charleston church, sat for an hour, and then killed nine people. Roof’s crime cannot be divorced from the ideology of white supremacy which long animated his state nor from its potent symbol—the Confederate flag. Visitors to Charleston have long been treated to South Carolina’s attempt to clean its history and depict its secession as something other than a war to guarantee the enslavement of the majority of its residents. This notion is belied by any serious interrogation of the Civil War and the primary documents of its instigators. Yet the Confederate battle flag—the flag of Dylann Roof—still flies on the Capitol grounds in Columbia.
Turkey held parliamentary elections on June 7, 2015. Against the expectations of virtually everyone, the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP in its Turkish initials) lost its absolute majority. This was seen as a major defeat both for the party and Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
On June 20th the Vermont-based Migrant Justice organization will stage actions at ice cream shops in 14 cities nationally, demanding Ben & Jerry's pay a premium to ensure safe housing and livable wages for farmworkers laboring in their supply chain.
Source: Pambazuka
In Africa, women’s rights have been underrated, ignored and trampled upon. The place of the African woman is often regarded as that of being seen but not heard. Too often, culture is used as a justification for the denial of women’s rights. While every community has traditions which it holds dear, some customs have proven to be quite detrimental to women. For instance, female genital mutilation (FGM), wife beating, early marriages, denial of property rights and inheritance, to mention a few.
Writing about and reporting the Middle East is not an easy task, especially during these years of turmoil and upheaval. But I cannot remember another time in recent history we needed journalists to shine, to challenge conventional wisdom, to think in terms of contexts, motives, alliances, not ideological, political or financial interests.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019