Engineers in Charlottesville, Virginia worked to remove a 900lb Confederate statue on Saturday, a moment of symbolic reckoning in the university town that was rocked by a white supremacist march in August 2017.
Related: Black Virginia state senator charged with 'injury' to Confederate monument
Continue reading...Decision to show then withdraw video sparked crisis at MSF Canada, says review
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) broadcast a $400,000 (£307,000) TV fundraising campaign in Canada despite warnings from staff that it was exploitative, reinforced racist “white saviour” stereotypes and breached the medical charity’s ethical guidelines, the Guardian has learned.
A damning review of the decision to run and later withdraw the advert, which featured the REM track Everybody Hurts played over images of crying black children being treated by MSF medics, concluded it exposed a lack of trust in leadership and triggered an “organisational crisis” at MSF Canada.
Continue reading...South Africa’s president hails ‘one of the architects of our constitution’ who helped save Mandela from expected death penalty
George Bizos, an anti-apartheid icon and renowned human rights lawyer who helped defend Nelson Mandela on treason charges for which he escaped the death penalty, has died aged 92.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced rights lawyer’s passing on Wednesday during a media conference. “I have just received news that legal eagle of our country George Bizos has passed away,” Ramaphosa said. “This is very sad for our country.”
Continue reading...Nominees must satisfy two of four key standards addressing onscreen and offscreen representation
The Oscars are raising the inclusion bar for best picture nominees, starting with the 96th Academy Awards in 2024.
In a historic move, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Tuesday laid out sweeping eligibility reforms to the best picture category intended to encourage diversity and equitable representation on screen and off, addressing gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and disability.
Continue reading...Why should black founders jump through more hoops to earn funders’ trust?
I was in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum, when I heard about the shooting of another black man, Jacob Blake, by US police. Close by is a mural of George Floyd, painted on a wall near where I grew up, a reminder that the current upheaval surrounding race in the US has global repercussions. Just as calls for racial justice echo in American and European streets, government offices and boardrooms, we must not forget that the legacy of racial injustice extends far beyond those borders and any honest reckoning must include open dialogue around race in international development.
In Africa, white-led institutions have shaped the development and social entrepreneurship landscape, deciding who succeeds and who fails. Only recently has there been a growing recognition of these imperialist dynamics, which uplift foreign-led practitioners more than local ones. There is a growing consensus that the future should and must be created and led by Africans, because real progress requires it to be on our own terms. And yet, this is just talk until funders shift resources and power, at scale, towards local solutions.
Continue reading...Joe Biden spoke about his meeting with the family of Jacob Blake, a Black man who was gravely wounded after a white police officer shot him in the back, on his way to visiting Kenosha, Wisconsin. 'He talked about how nothing was going to defeat him,' Biden said. 'How, whether he walked again or not, he was not going to give up.'
Continue reading...The daughter of Daniel Prude, a Black man who died of asphyxiation in March after police put a ‘spit hood’ on his head and held his face into the ground, said his death was caused by racism in the police force.
‘A racist police officer saw a black man in need and decided that he just didn’t deserve to live,’ Tashyra Prude, an 18-year-old college student in Tennessee, said.
Daniel Prude died on 30 March after he was taken off life support, seven days after the encounter in Rochester.
Continue reading...Jessica Krug, an activist who teaches African American history, writes Medium post apologizing for false identity
A seasoned activist and professor of African American history at George Washington University has been pretending to be Black for years, despite actually being a white woman from Kansas City.
In a case eerily reminiscent to Rachel Dolezal, Jessica A Krug took financial support from cultural institutions such as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture for a book she wrote about fugitive resistance to the transatlantic slave trade. But according to a Medium post allegedly written by Krug herself, her career was rooted in a “toxic soil of lies”.
Continue reading...More than 90 people – the wounded, the mourning, the defiant – spoke at the sentencing hearing for the gunman responsible for New Zealand’s most deadly terrorist attack, explaining how the massacre changed their lives forever. Here we document their evidence
Continue reading...Make no mistake: this is Trump’s America, where protesters are shot by vigilantes as police look on
Donald Trump took a trip to a place called Biden’s America on Tuesday. It is a strange land where the president of the United States is a helpless guest, a doomed corner of his own country that is somehow ruled by a former vice president.
It is a topsy-turvy place, this Biden’s America. Occasionally, the president can regain his magical ruling powers by summoning assorted minions in uniforms and incanting a spell with his thumbs to tweet the words LAW AND ORDER.
Continue reading...The US president praised police forces while touring the Wisconsin city that became the centre of protests after an police shot Jacob Blake, blaming recent racist incidents on 'bad apples' and officers 'choking' under pressure.
Donald Trump said a silent majority of Kenosha residents were most concerned about 'law and order', insisting people should focus on 'anarchists, looters and rioters' and not peaceful protesters
A group of Oklahomans, led by 105-year-old woman, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday demanding reparations for the 1921 Tulsa race massacre which saw white mobs burn down a thriving black neighborhood and kill hundreds of people.
Related: Trump rally in Tulsa spurs renewed call for 1921 racial massacre reparations
Continue reading...Prosecutors’ inquiry follows outcry over images of Danièle Obono in Valeurs Actuelles
French prosecutors have opened an investigation into allegations of racism after a rightwing magazine published images depicting a black female MP as a slave, prompting a nationwide outcry.
The Valeurs Actuelles weekly triggered controversy after publishing images of the leftwing MP Danièle Obono with a chain fixed to an iron collar around her neck.
Continue reading...The former first lady condemned the shooting of Jacob Blake by police as well as killings of Wisconsin protesters
Michelle Obama said she was “devastated” by the shootings in Kenosha, Wisconsin, this week and is “exhausted and frustrated” at the trauma of Black and brown people in the US.
In a lengthy statement released on Friday, the former first lady condemned the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Wisconsin man shot seven times in the back by police in front of his children, as well as the shooting of three protesters by an alleged 17-year-old rightwing militant in the protests that followed.
Continue reading...The family of Wisconsin shooting victim Jacob Blake condemned racism and demanded criminal justice reform as they spoke in front of thousands at the Commitment March in Washington DC. Earlier this week Blake was shot multiple times in the back by police, leaving him paralysed. The protest, announced in early June following the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, marked the anniversary of the demonstration at which Martin Luther King gave his historic 'I Have a Dream' speech.
Continue reading...A group of angry protesters has confronted senator Rand Paul near the White House in Washington DC. As Rand walked through the crowd with his wife, demonstrators chanted 'say her name', in reference to Breonna Taylor, a black woman from Kentucky who was shot dead by police in May. After the incident, Paul tweeted to say that he had been 'attacked by an angry mob of over 100'.
Continue reading...Yannick Glemarec responds to FT report of 40 complaints including racism and sexism
The head of the UN’s climate finance body has pledged to tackle complaints of misconduct at the organisation “as a matter of urgency”, after such claims against unidentified staff members were published.
Yannick Glemarec, the executive director of the Green Climate Fund, told the Guardian: “We need to continue working on building the culture of the organisation. Trust is key for our organisation.”
Continue reading...Communities have been left to come to terms with the setback for race relations, a frayed relationship with police and the damage that has upended daily life
Antwainnetta Edwards is a new mom. Just weeks ago she had a baby girl and worked hard preparing herself to raise a child during a coronavirus pandemic and the related economic crisis.
Now, as she stood on the porch of her home in Kenosha, rocking her newborn back and forth, she reflected on the last four days and nights that have shaken the small Wisconsin city since, once again in America, a white police officer shot a Black man during an interaction that went out of control, severely wounding Jacob Blake on Sunday.
Continue reading...Officer was caught on video firing seven times into Blake’s back at almost point-blank range
Police in Kenosha, the Wisconsin city rocked by protests and deadly violence since the shooting of Jacob Blake, have named the officer who fired multiple bullets into Blake’s back.
Rusten Sheskey, who has been employed by the Kenosha police department for seven years, was named as the officer caught on video firing seven times into Blake’s back at almost point-blank range as he held him by his shirt.
Continue reading...The Australian man who killed 51 Muslim worshippers in two mosques in Christchurch has received a life sentence without parole sentence. It is the first time under current New Zealand law that a sentence of life without the possibility of parole has been imposed.
Outside the court Muslims and non-Muslims gathered together to mark the end of three days of emotional victim impact statements during which more than 90 of those bereaved or wounded in the attacks addressed the court. Many asked Mander to bar the gunman from ever walking free from jail.
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