Category Archives: Black Lives Matter movement

Dutch football captains lead boycott of TV show over racist remarks

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Virgil van Dijk and Sari van Veenendaal hit out at pundit and say ‘enough is enough’

The captains of the Dutch men’s, women’s and youth national football teams are boycotting a leading sports TV programme over the racist comments of a longstanding pundit, warning: “Enough is enough.”

The Liverpool centre-back Virgil van Dijk, and the Atlético Madrid goalkeeper Sari van Veenendaal have led the way after years of the behaviour of Johan Derksen on the Veronica Inside show being explained away as straight-talking humour.

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‘Tipping point’: Greta Thunberg hails Black Lives Matter protests

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People are realising ‘we cannot keep looking away from these things’, says climate activist

Greta Thunberg has said the Black Lives Matter protests show society has reached a tipping point where injustice can no longer be ignored, but that she believes a “green recovery plan” from the coronavirus pandemic will not be enough to solve the climate crisis.

Reflecting on the protests that have swept the globe in recent weeks, the Swedish climate activist told the BBC: “It feels like we have passed some kind of social tipping point where people are starting to realise that we cannot keep looking away from these things. We cannot keep sweeping these things under the carpet, these injustices.

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Protesters topple statue of Confederate general in Washington DC – video

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Protesters in Washington DC climbed up a bronze statue of Brig Gen Albert Pike and brought it down with ropes before setting it alight on Friday.  A US holiday known as Juneteenth that commemorates the end of slavery takes place every year on 19 June. Demonstrators took about an hour to fell the three-metre statue, as Juneteenth celebrations and anti-racist protests took place across the US. The police surrounded the area but did not appear to intervene

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Lenin statue to be unveiled in Germany despite legal fight

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Gelsenkirchen bucks global trends with new monument as other cities confront relics of colonial past

While a global row rages over the controversial pasts of historical figures immortalised as statues, on Saturday a divisive new monument to the former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin will be unveiled in Germany.

More than 30 years after the communist experiment on German soil that followed the second world war ended, the tiny Marxist-Leninist party of Germany (MLPD) will install Lenin’s likeness in the western city of Gelsenkirchen.

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Tulsa braces for Trump’s ‘wild evening’ amid unrest and coronavirus fears

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Donald Trump threatens protesters and ‘lowlifes’ as mass rally draws outrage from black communities with counter rallies expected

The city of Tulsa, Oklahoma is braced for Donald Trump’s first campaign rally since the coronavirus pandemic struck the United States, claiming more than 118,000 lives so far, plunging the economy into recession, and leading to widespread criticism of the president’s botched response to a crisis that has seen his approval ratings tank in recent polls.

The indoor rally, at Tulsa’s 19,000-person capacity BOK Center, comes as the city and the state of Oklahoma experience a surge in Covid-19 cases and local public health officials urge the campaign to reschedule the event over fears that the close contact between attendees – who will not be forced to wear face masks – could lead to more deaths.

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Juneteenth: rallies and celebrations across America commemorate end of slavery – live

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In Oakland, thousands rallied with members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), whose workers arranged a strike at 29 ports up and down the West Coast.

I was there, earlier today. The union workers were joined by a motorcycle brigade, a car caravan, a fleet of cyclists, and thousands on foot. Activist and scholar Angela Davis and filmmaker Boots Riley addressed the crowd.

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In Wisconsin, governor Tony Evers called on the state legislature to ban police chokeholds, among reforms that he unveiled today.

The Democratic governor did not ask for a special legislative session to take up the policy as soon as possible, as the Brack Legislative Caucus had requested.

Our country promises the opportunity of justice and equity and in the wake of the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the calls for justice across our state and nation, and as we celebrate Juneteenth today, we are called to deliver on that promise.

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On eve of Trump visit, Tulsa still haunted by memory of white supremacist massacre

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The president prepares to hold a rally in a city where, in 1921, up to 300 people were murdered in one of the most horrific acts of racist violence in US history

Brenda Alford stood at the spot where her grandfather’s business was burned to the ground.

Related: Why is Trump's comeback rally in Tulsa: the site of a massacre?

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‘I’m very aware I’m mixed race here’: organising a rural UK Black Lives Matter protest – video

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Small towns, as well as big cities, across the UK have been holding Black Lives Matter protests and continue to do so. Flora, 23, meets fellow activists Hannah, Annabel and Alex for the first time at the demo they are organising together in their home town of Yeovil, in Somerset. Flora, who is mixed race,  moved to the area from south London when she was 10. She talks about the difficulties of living somewhere rural but also about how her parents don’t have any regrets 

  • Cover Image by Sue Nitti
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Is this the end for colonial-era statues? – video

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Statues of colonialists and brutal leaders have been toppled by protesters or removed by governments in recent weeks as campaigns to bring down monuments to historical figures tainted by racism and slavery spread around the world.

In Belgium, during Black Lives Matter protests, numerous statues of King Leopold II, whose brutal rule of Congo caused an estimated 10 million deaths through murder, starvation and disease, were defaced and covered in red paint. While in the UK, Oxford University’s Oriel College voted in favour of removing its statue of the Victorian imperialist Cecil Rhodes.

In response to the latest action, the historian David Olusoga looks at the significance of these statues and examines the impact they have had on the victims of colonialists and imperialists, as well as the cost borne by their descendants

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Raab betrays his ignorance of the origin and meaning of taking a knee

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Linking to Game of Thrones disregards Colin Kaepernick’s protest and what it inspired

The foreign secretary Dominic Raab’s assertion that the act of taking a knee appears to be “a symbol of subjugation and subordination” that originates from the TV show Game of Thrones showed a startling level of ignorance of the genesis of the protest adopted by the Black Lives Matter movement.

When the then NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the US national anthem before a game on 1 September 2016 to highlight racism, it began a protest that would reverberate around the world.

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Black Lives Matter protests: Republicans to unveil police reform plan – live updates

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Another statue went down in Richmond, Virginia last night - this time from the Howitzers Monument which was erected in 1892 to commemorate a Richmond Civil War artillery unit.

Activists have been demanding not just reforms to policing in the US, but a deep-seated change in police culture. A report this morning by Jesselyn Cook and Nick Robins-Early for the Huffington Post website illustrates exactly why some people see this as a necessary goal. They’ve been studying the places they describe as “the dangerous online fever swamps of American police”:

This police media ecosystem is not necessarily a broad representation of what most cops believe. But inside this echo chamber, which has thousands of users and readers, extremist views dictate the narrative. Wild misinformation and bigotry are rampant, with people who claim to be current and former officers posting debunked falsehoods and racist stereotypes about protesters.

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Labor senator reads out names of Indigenous deaths in custody – video

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In a powerful statement to the Senate, Malarndirri McCarthy has read out the names of First Nations people who have died in custody, citing Guardian Australia's Deaths inside project.

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Trump administration sues former adviser John Bolton to block his book – live

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The lawsuit filed by the US against John Bolton aims to stop the former administration official “ from compromising national security by publishing a book containing classified information.”

But it states that “on or around” 27 April, Ellen Knight, who was reviewing Bolton’s manuscript, “had completed her review and was of the judgment that the manuscript draft did not contain classified information”.

Bolton’s book The Room Where It Happened will be a critical account of the Trump administration, according to the publisher.

Bolton “shows a president addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government”, according to Simon and Schuster.

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Gunshots heard after demonstrators try to topple conquistador statue in New Mexico – video

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A man was shot after a scuffle broke out when demonstrators tried to remove a bronze sculpture of a Spanish conquistador outside a museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A group of armed men had tried to protect the statue of Juan de Oñate. The injured man was in a critical but stable condition, police said.

Authorities later announced the monument would be removed until the next step could be determined

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Inside Chaz, Seattle’s police-free zone: ‘We’re proving the world can change’ – video

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The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (otherwise known as Chaz or Chop) was established by George Floyd protesters after the Seattle police department vacated its East Precinct building on the site. Over the past week, organizers have created a community garden, painted murals, opened free co-op grocery stores – all in an effort to push the message of Black Lives Matter forward

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‘Trust with the police is broken’: Rayshard Brooks’s family tell of devastation – video

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The family of Rayshard Brooks, who was shot and killed by a white police officer, have paid tribute to him and told of their devastation. During a press conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Brooks’s cousin said the trust between the Atlanta community and its police department had been broken and called for the officer involved to be charged and convicted.

The press conference comes a day after a medical examiner concluded that Brooks, 27, died by homicide caused by gunshot wounds to the back

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Boris Johnson’s racism inquiry: have previous ones changed anything?

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The PM’s commission will be the latest in a line of initiatives examining race inequalities

Boris Johnson has announced a “cross-governmental commission” into racial disparities in education, health and criminal justice. It is the latest of a series of reports into ethnic injustices over recent years.

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Black Lives Matter protests: Atlanta shooting of Rayshard Brooks declared homicide – live updates

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Overnight protesters have torn down a statue of Thomas Jefferson outside a high school that bears his name in North Portland, Oregon.

The school was the starting point for a 1,000 strong Black Lives Matter protest on Sunday evening. The statue was still intact at that point, and reports suggest it was pulled down by a smaller group after the main march had departed.

There’s a couple of stories that are breaking at the moment - one is that a US Air Force F15C fighter aircraft has crashed off the coast of England near Middlesbrough. The status of the pilot is not yet known.

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