Author: It's Not You, It's Capitalism @AlgonquinBooks | Former Sr. News & Politics Editor @essence | 2024 New America Fellow
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Aug 23 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
It’s not lost on me that after the largest demonstration against police violence in the US, we gained a pro-police administration in 2020. After possibly the biggest movement for Palestinian liberation we have witnessed while seeing the depths of America’s imperialist violence, patriotism is being whipped into a frenzy.
We are reminded that America is indeed an empire. Its leaders will always serve that function, whatever the party, whatever the race. For leftists who wish to see a different world, it’s important not to despair.
Jul 20 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
So @NPR has a cutsey photo spread of MAGA supporters at the RNC in Milwaukee. I live here. Nothing about their presence and this convention should be normalized.
The last few days have felt dystopian. Cops were shipped from out of state to beef up security. Some of them are trigger happy. Some of them shot and killed a Black Milwaukee man who was nearly a mile away from the venue.
What elected officials tried to paint as a boon for the city feels like collective punishment. Many residents stayed home and some businesses closed for the week *precisely* to avoid the kind of conflict that comes from a regime that glorifies state and vigilante violence, repression and racism
Nov 19, 2021 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Many of us use the term “criminal legal system” instead of “criminal justice,” because what is legal is not the same as what is just.
People can debate legal nuances of a few seconds in the Rittenhouse case, and they likely will for the weeks, months, or years ahead.
But I’ve seen firsthand how folks in Wisconsin have continuously been at the mercy of injustice for decades.
Aug 5, 2021 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
As a (semi-retired) public policy attorney, who wrote laws for legislative government for about 7 years, I see there are a number of misconceptions about the new eviction moratorium.
First, it’s not an extension. It’s an entirely new ban, which the CDC had to craft to account for a change in the pandemic from when Trump’s CDC first issued an order.
Aug 4, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Folks on here spent days belittling Cori Bush’s protest as a sleepover photo op. But she may have singlehandedly facilitated a ban on evictions for 2 more months.
Being a keyboard warrior is cute, but some officials are actually fighting to get things done.
If you wonder how you would have responded to the narratives, politicians, and environment that led to the 1994 Crime Bill, here’s your chance.
We’re living in it.
Biden's gun crime fact sheet cites a report that attempts to link last summer's protests to increased violence.
The section that proposes this has absolutely no references.
Jun 22, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I may have already heard this on #onhere, but the way people are trying to spin some workers refusing to return to low wage jobs reminds me of slave owners calling enslaved Africans lazy.
When the law can’t compel behavior, resort to propaganda, whether in 1821 or 2021.
If I would hazard a guess (maybe some historians know), the language & laws re. labor in the US today wouldn’t be so business friendly if not for the language & laws to control enslaved Black labor.
Everyone is denied a proper safety net bc it’s all attributed to “laziness.”
Jun 20, 2021 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
I’ve been trying not to wade into this much bc I hate being reactive to foolishness, but it’s annoying as hell being a Black woman lawyer taught by a number of preeminent Critical Race Theory pioneers and see it butchered like this, from every end of the ideological spectrum.
Critical Race Theory is a form of legal scholarship that responded to a pervasive ideology that the law/legal decisions were colorblind. This should not be controversial in 2021.
Other fields then applied certain CRT tenants to their studies.
Jun 15, 2021 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Latin America is a textbook case in how the whole “let’s just all have mixed, ambiguous babies to end racism teehee” is absolutely wrong.
It doesn’t end white supremacy. In some ways, it strengthens it.
Well what are those ways? Glad you asked:
- By purporting to be racially mixed without addressing beliefs in white superiority, a hierarchy based on skin color emerged in Latin America, with darker skinned Latin Americans still on the bottom socioeconomically
Mar 30, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I went to Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse on the last day of its union drive. There are details about the working conditions that are striking up close, before you even enter (THREAD)
Full-time workers told me they have 10-hour shifts & just two 30 min breaks. In the hot Alabama sun (it said 68 degrees but I swear it felt 10 degrees hotter) that means many workers I saw only have time to sit in their car, turn the engine/AC on & run up their gas
