Category Archives: racism

19 Officers Swarm Black Woman As She Tries To Get Into Her Own Apartment: LAist

Fay Wells, who is the vice president of strategy at a multinational corporation, penned a piece in The Washington Post today, detailing the harrowing ordeal that took place on Sept. 6 and how she is still shaken up. She writes, “I’m heartbroken that the place I called home no longer feels safe.”Wells had just gotten back from her weekly soccer game and found that she had locked herself out of her home, and hired a locksmith to open the door for her. But after she got inside her apartment, that’s when things escalated. A large dog was barking in her stairwell, and officers pointed guns at her. They entered her apartment, and an officer pulled Wells’ hands behind her back and took her outside. That’s when she saw an “ocean of officers.” Though Wells says that the officers at the time wouldn’t explain to her why they were there, she later found out that a total of 19 were dispatched and that her white neighbor had reported a burglary at her apartment.Wells writes:It didn’t matter that I told the cops I’d lived there for seven months, told them about the locksmith, offered to show a receipt for his services and my ID. It didn’t matter that I went to Duke, that I have an MBA from Dartmouth, that I’m a vice president of strategy at a multinational corporation. It didn’t matter that I’ve never had so much as a speeding ticket. It didn’t matter that I calmly, continually asked them what was happening. It also didn’t matter that I didn’t match the description of the person they were looking for — my neighbor described me as Hispanic when he called 911. What mattered was that I was a woman of color trying to get into her apartment — in an almost entirely white apartment complex in a mostly white city — and a white man who lived in another building called the cops because he’d never seen me before.It’s still been an uphill battle for Wells, who says she’s had to jump through hoops to get from the Santa Monica Police Department the names of the officers who showed up that night. Even then, the facts don’t match up. She only received 17 of the 19 names from authorities, and the Washington Post got 17 names that didn’t all match up with the list Wells received. She’s since filed an official complaint with internal affairs. The department told the Washington Post that it was within protocol based on this type of call to warrant “a very substantial police response.”

Source: 19 Officers Swarm Black Woman As She Tries To Get Into Her Own Apartment: LAist

When Solidarity Only Goes So Far | Dame Magazine

As news of the attacks spread, dozens of my Syrian friends, most of whom I have met while they are living as refugees in Lebanon, were changing their profile pictures to the French flag, expressing genuine sympathy—and solidarity—with the people of Paris.One friend, a former tour guide in Palmyra—the oasis of ancient ruins in the Syrian desert that was a UNESCO world heritage site and popular tourist destination before it was recently plundered by the Islamic State—changed his profile picture to an image of the French tricolor superimposed over the ancient city that he once called home.“We had to flee ISIS in Tadmur,” he says, using the Arabic name for Palmyra. “Now France has a taste of how we felt.”Just the day before, I had been having coffee near the memorial at Republique with Bashar, a Syrian refugee who sought asylum in Paris around a year and a half ago. We were talking about whether or not the recent attacks would affect refugee policy in Paris when suddenly, a panicked crowd started running for the café, toppling tables and frantically diving down the stairwell, startled by what turned out to be fireworks, set off at the wrong time.“I felt so bad for the people of Paris,” said Bashar, as we waited inside of the restaurant’s basement kitchen to find out what was going on, and whether or not the coast was clear.“I know how it feels because we had to face so much of this in Syria.”

Source: When Solidarity Only Goes So Far | Dame Magazine

www.german-foreign-policy.com German media pushing WWIII

The current front of Germany’s major national media, orchestrating domestic public opinion and publicistically habituating the population to a “World War” has been broken by a renowned business magazine. Gabor Steingart, Chief Editor of the German Handelsblatt warns, “the West shares the blame for the hostile climate between the cultures.” “Of the 1.3 million lives that the wars from Afghanistan to Syria have cost, the crusade against Iraq, waged under false pretenses – and therefore in violation of international law – alone, accounts so far for 800,000 dead,” explains Steingart. “The majority of these victims were peaceful Muslims – not terrorists.” “The automatism of severity and mercilessness, the premeditated incomprehension of one’s counterpart, the fiery speeches for the respective populations at home, the rapid take-off of bomber squadrons” have “brought us to where we are today.” “This is not how you stop terrorism; this is how you fan its flames. This is not how you obtain peace; this is how you spawn suicide bombers.” In the future, rather than banking on “combat or capitulation,” we should promote “order, respect, and moderation.” “There are alternatives to military escalation.”[13] Among the leading personalities of the German mainstream media, Steingart stands alone with his warning.

Source: www.german-foreign-policy.com

Larissa Pham: The Architecture of Racism at Yale University – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

This tension is not new. It is a product of the systemic racism built into the institution, as ubiquitous as the architecture that characterizes the place in our shared consciousness. “Everyone who enters Yale is reminded that they’re in an environment that is a product of centuries of classism and racism,” Cynthia Hua, who graduated earlier this year, told me. “You can see it in the buildings. They’re symbols of the way society has been stratified—it’s even in their names.” (One of Yale’s residential colleges is named for the nineteenth-century politician John C. Calhoun, who advocated secession and spoke of slavery as a force for good.) And the problem goes beyond architecture—architecture just happens to be its most potent symbol.This breed of racism isn’t showy or overtly violent, which makes it hard to define, like a kind of low-grade radiation that kills slowly. It’s being the only woman of color in a seminar room, or feeling physically unsafe on campus, or having to endure stereotypical assumptions about one’s race in even the most innocuous of situations. Zack Graham, a black student who graduated in 2013, gave me this anecdote: “I showed up for office hours and the TA asked which sport I played—as though the notion that I was a regular student accepted through regular channels was an impossibility.”

Source: Larissa Pham: The Architecture of Racism at Yale University – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

G.O.P. Governors Vow to Close Doors to Syrian Refugees – The New York Times {25 Governors announce they are actively anti-American, bigoted, and cowards!}

Twenty-five Republican governors vowed to block the entry of Syrian refugees into their states, arguing that the safety of Americans was at stake after the Paris attacks by terrorists including a man who entered Europe with a Syrian passport and posed as a migrant. Among the governors were those from Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas and other states that have already resettled relatively large numbers of refugees from among the 1,900 Syrians accepted by the United States in the last four years.

Source: G.O.P. Governors Vow to Close Doors to Syrian Refugees – The New York Times

Commentary: Turning our backs on migrant children isn’t solving the immigration issue | Latina Lista

Yes, let’s turn back the thousands of men, women, children and babies floating across the Mediterranean in overcrowded rafts and hiking miles and miles in the open elements, with their worldly possessions strapped to their backs, fleeing certain death and throwing themselves on the mercy and compassion of the rest of the world, because a few of them could turn out to be terrorists.That rationale makes as much sense as continuing to keep asylum-seeking Central American children and their mothers in detention facilities because…they pose a threat to U.S. society?The hard truth is those who are intent to do harm will find a way to either do it themselves or indoctrinate like-minded believers who may already live within a certain country. Yet, those who are in need of a new home or refuge, have no other recourse than to depend on their fellow human beings. That’s especially true of the children. Children are the face of the 21st Century international migration crisis. To think that it’s ok to deny them a safe future in this world is as barbaric an act as any atrocity committed by a terrorist because when these children are turned away, their days can be literally numbered.Reports have surfaced that some of the asylum-seeking Central American children who had been detained and later deported back to their home countries of El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala were murdered after returning — the reason why they fled their native countries in the first place and asked U.S. authorities for help. Isolationism isn’t a quality of a great nation, nor is fear of what could happen. But what will happen in a country that, not only recognizes the life-threatening reasons forcing children and their families to flee their homes, but actively works to include them in their society, is a whole new generation who won’t just call their adopted country home but be among their most ardent defenders.

Source: Commentary: Turning our backs on migrant children isn’t solving the immigration issue | Latina Lista

Donald Trump Repeats Call to Inspect Mosques for Signs of Terrorism – First Draft. Political News, Now. – The New York Times

The suggestion of basing refugee status on religion offended President Obama on Monday. Speaking at a news conference in Turkey, he called the idea un-American.“When I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution — that’s shameful,” the president said.

Source: Donald Trump Repeats Call to Inspect Mosques for Signs of Terrorism – First Draft. Political News, Now. – The New York Times

Canada’s Sikh defence minister faces racial abuse – The Times of India

The incident of disrespect to the minister prompted Chief Warrant Officer Kevin West to send an e-mail to soldiers warning against such conduct, the newspaper said. He lamented the fact a high-ranking member of the forces made “negative” comments about the minister and warned them against disrespectful behaviour, adding that to say he is angry would be an understatement.The Forces issued a strong statement on Wednesday condemning the behaviour. “We are very much aware of an incident in which a Canadian Armed Forces member wrote inappropriate comments on social media about the new minister of national defence,” Forces spokesman Dan Le Bouthillier said.”Racist attitudes are not compatible with military ethos and with effective military service. Any conduct that reflects such attitudes will not be tolerated,” he said. “As previously stated by chief of the defence staff Jonathan Vance, bullies have no place in the organisation.”

Source: Canada’s Sikh defence minister faces racial abuse – The Times of India

NYPD Admits Spying On Muslim College Students But Denies “Overarching Blanket Surveillance”: Gothamist

“What we are currently in the process of trying to settle with [the NYPD], is what we saw as a systematic violation of the old Handschu guidelines,” he added. “They were reading [the guidelines] in a way that was too loose. The criminal predicate became, somebody’s a Muslim, Muslims are potential terrorists, therefore we investigate Muslims.”Soon after the story was posted, Todd Fine, a first-year history PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in Manhattan, started a petition demanding that the CUNY Chancellor, James Milliken, “formally state [his] opposition to these [NYPD] operations and work actively to stop them.” The petition has since been handed into the Chancellor’s Office with over five hundred signatures.Michael Arena, the director for communication and marketing at CUNY, told Gothamist, “The petition is currently under review by the University office of legal affairs.”Toward the end of the WNYC interview, Miller said that the need to prevent terrorist attacks sometimes came into conflict with the need to respect constitutional rights. “We have two sets of tensions that pull against each other every day, and the hardest thing to have to do is find a balance.”We asked Rumaysa, one of the three former Brooklyn College students we interviewed who knew Mel the undercover, what she thought of Miller’s explanation (Rumaysa is a pseudonym—all the women requested anonymity).”To be honest it hurts to think that the surveillance-induced trauma I’ve had to deal with is simply dismissed as collateral damage, if even that,” she said.

Source: NYPD Admits Spying On Muslim College Students But Denies “Overarching Blanket Surveillance”: Gothamist

Adel Termos: The Lebanese Hero Of the Borj el Barajneh Terrorist Attacks | A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares

Tonight, Haidar lost his mother and father. Shawki Droubi and Khodr Aleddine, a nurse, were lost to their families. Hussein Mostapha passed away with his wife, leaving their son behind. Samer, a Syrian father of two who fled horrors in his country, was killed in what he had feared back home, and Hussein, a Palestinian man whose family sought refuge here, also passed away. Alaa Awad, a third year law student, was also among the victims. Rawan Awad was a school teacher. Hanady Joumaa, Bilal Hammoud, Ahmad Awwada, Rawan Atwi were among the victims too.

Source: Adel Termos: The Lebanese Hero Of the Borj el Barajneh Terrorist Attacks | A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares