truthout--2020-06-23--Radical Mothering for Abolitionist Futures Post-COVID-19

The initial effects of COVID-19 coupled with the current uprisings against police violence have torn us from our common sense of normalcy .
This sudden shift in the toxic state of living under the violence of racial capitalism , white supremacy , and settler colonialism affords us the opportunity to uplift centuries of communal wisdom that abound all around us .
The current pandemic made it increasingly apparent that capitalism , not simply COVID-19 , is the disaster .
The killing by white vigilantes ( including an ex-cop ) of Ahmaud Arbery on February 23 , and the police killings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ George Floyd on May 25 and Tony McDade on May 27 reignited the righteous anger stemming from 500 years of U.S. state violence .
In this moment of mass anxiety at the loss of work and economic security , these uprisings have expressed outright refusal against continued abuse by a country built upon the mass genocide of Black and Indigenous peoples .
Five years ago , when abolition began to hit mainstream conversation , adages of “ burn it all down ” never led to its physical manifestation in a concerted sense .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Minneapolis police department on fire and Black bodies raging and protesting in the streets , it is a new moment , a legitimately defiant one .
This system no longer serves us .
It has never served us .
It must fall .
The violence surrounding state responses to COVID has bolstered ongoing campaigns to defund police and invest in community institutions such as schools and healthcare .
As people struggle to adjust to these extraordinary conditions of a global pandemic and mass uprisings , our hope lies in the end of generations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new world based upon alternative ways of being in the world .
The values of mutual aid and collective care that environmental justice and abolitionist social movements , disability justice activists , regenerative or feminist economy movements , Indigenous people and others have been calling for are taking hold in the everyday practices of local communities .
At this moment , we believe our movements have a great deal to learn from one group of people in particular — mothers and caretakers trapped within the prison industrial complex .
George Floyd spent his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , calling , calling , for his mother .
Tamika Palmer has now spoken out to fight for the lost life of her daughter , Breonna Taylor , joining the mothers of Kalief Browder , Trayvon Martin , and Tamir Rice .
All of these heartbreaking stories , coupled with the invisible histories of state violence against Black mothers , which reach back to the rape and sexual assault of enslaved African women as a means for reproducing enslaved people in service to White capital to the killing of black mothers like Korryn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people who do the labor of mothering are expected to accelerate the progress of capital and serve as nurturers for their family and community systems , all while enduring systematic targeting — including murder — by the same state apparatus from which they are fighting to protect their loved ones .
As a result , mothers trapped within the prison industrial complex in one way or another have been modeling what it looks like to integrate care work ( often conceived of as “ service ” ) and political organizing as part of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all along , the labor , visions , and strategies of these very individuals tend to remain invisible within many social movements in ways that we have an opportunity now to uplift and reconsider .
There has long existed in many of our organizing spaces a silent devaluing of the realm of reproduction , including mothering and caretaking , whether biological or non-biological.While those who are mothering attend , lead , and assume the responsibility of caretaker in organizing spaces , it is often true that our positions as anchors of our movements @ @ @ @ @ @ @ engaged as an asset .
The increased neoliberal professionalization of organizing puts pressure on movements to focus on and respond to questions about the metrics of productivity , such as : how many actions are able to be executed , how many members are joining , and how many dollars can be raised in grant funding ?
Core principles of relationship-building and collaborative thinking suffer due to the need for more campaigns , more rallies , and more wins — understandable priorities .
On the ground , social movement resistance to the neo-liberal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ value between “ political organizing ” and “ service , ” and has the effect of intentionally or unintentionally reinforcing the devaluing of mothering and caretaking forms of labor .
Yet , we are now at a time when protesters facing white supremacy , brutal militarized policing , and heightened economic devastation require strategies of collective care more than ever before–including “ feeding , clothing , and housing each other and those in need in their community based on the principles of reciprocity and solidarity.
” We are reminded that the strength of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of our relationships , the depth of our connectedness , and the necessity of mothering at home , in the streets , and beyond .
We co-founded the collective Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity ( MAMAS ) in Chicago to resist the interconnected systems of prisons , anti-immigrant violence , war and colonization , with a focus on uplifting the movement possibilities of mother-survivors of these systems .
Here , we dive into our work around prisons by focusing on practices of mothering among people who have been incarcerated themselves or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Like many feminist abolitionists have been saying , we insist that the violence of prisons extends far beyond prison walls into working class families , neighborhoods , and Black and Brown communities .
A number of folks active in MAMAS are mothering individuals who were physically or psychologically tortured by police into making false confessions , and identify as survivors of police and prison violence in their own right .
As Mary L. Johnson , mother of police torture survivor Michael Johnson , puts it when reflecting on the ripple effect of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As long as my son is doing life , I ’ m a lifer.
” Chicago is home to a powerful movement that has won reparations for police violence and continues to demand justice around police violence and prison abolition .
Chicago ’ s torture survivors have served or are still serving long prison sentences .
Our work draws upon this long history of organizing and collective knowledge production around prison abolition in Chicago , as well as our personal histories as people of Arab and African descent who have been mothering under @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the fierce and unapologetic body of scholarship-activism on revolutionary mothering .
We work from a number of important assumptions ; that • People who mother incarcerated individuals are survivors of gender violence , specifically reproductive injustice , given that • the state violently denies them the ability to mother and to care for and protect their children , and • the criminal justice system blatantly covers up state violence by calling their mothering into question , assuming that unfit parenting is to blame for their child ’ s “ criminality ; ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ justice system is to serve and protect white supremacy and racial capitalism ; and • We have to care for ourselves and each other on the long road to justice .
In our work , we use the idea of mothering to refer to reproductive forms of labor that have , historically , been specifically gendered as female/feminine while at the same time we recognize that such caring work is not performed exclusively by those recognized as women and/or by those biologically related to those receiving care .
The Power of Mutual Aid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Regina Russell , mother of torture survivor Tamon Russell , says when she first met Armanda , mother of torture survivor Gerald Reed , she turned to her union brother , Joe , and whispered to him , “ She ’ s telling my story.
” Regina describes feeling helpless and suffering in silence until she connected with Armanda ’ s strength , which gave her permission to break her own silence and share for the first time , in public , the story of what happened to her own son .
Armanda @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fight to release her son until the bitter end because there are so many others going through the same struggle .
While folks like Regina and Armanda call on their courage and use their voices to advocate and care for themselves , their children , the children of the other mothers , and all incarcerated people , they insist on the interconnectedness of care work and political organizing .
This dual strategy has the effect of breaking down capitalist forms of isolation and individualism that take a disproportionate toll on their lives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a demand for justice .
JeNae Taylor , while working as the Fellowship Coordinator for the National Bailout Collective , talked with us about the power of connection between mothers impacted by incarceration : Connecting with each other provides nourishment and breaking the isolation that comes with living with the ripple effects of incarceration .
Bella , founder of Sister Survivor Network and daughter to parents who were incarcerated , tells us she learns collective ways of being from her mother ’ s incarceration : Indeed , building such a collective sense of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s prioritization of the individual — and profit — over all else .
Folks who work with MAMAS are able to model collective ways of being for each other and for anyone willing to look at incarceration through a critical lens .
At the mercy of courts , often excluded from access to adequate legal aid and information about the law or courts , and excluded from professional networks connected to the criminal justice system , activists with MAMAS combine sharing knowledge as a practice of collective care and as political resistance .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ survivor Nick Eschamilla , was released in 2008 , but Bertha continues to collect data on the cases of all Chicago ’ s torture survivors , including many tortured by cops whose violence is not yet publicly known and of those who have yet to qualify for reparations .
Mothers , loved ones , lawyers , researchers and activists have all relied on the data she shares–including information on ninety-two cases of police violence– to seek justice .
She looks into police reports , locates information about each case , contacts family members @ @ @ @ @ @ @ courthouse , and explains to them what to do and what to look for .
Reflecting on the need for collective informationsharing and relationship-building , Bertha explains : Forced to learn the law and figure it out collectively , Bertha and other activists with MAMAS replace a corporate individualist system that depends on control over people and knowledge for the purposes of exploitation with a horizontal system of knowledge-sharing for the purposes of resistance .
In community , they are caring for each other and those behind bars through both emotional support and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organizing and care are simultaneously revolutionary .
Here , collective care-work is a way of life , born out of the realities of mothering while being targeted by prisons and police .
Bella remembers how her mother , who served years in prison , continued to write letters to her still incarcerated friends and to their children after she was released : “ I see a whole lot of women in my family who take on those roles .
It ’ s not really amplified in a way that a lot of other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for them .
It is life.
” Caring for incarcerated people extends far beyond the individual and far beyond biology to include extended relatives , friends , and neighbors as central actors in collective mothering and caretaking .
Armanda describes how her work against state violence will continue long after her son , Gerald , is released from prison : Esther Hernandez , whose sons are Juan and Rosendo , says she is fighting for everyone , not only her own child : Indeed , folks connected to MAMAS care for many individuals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Kathy Wanek Levettman ’ s best friend ’ s son , Matthew Echevarria , is an incarcerated torture survivor .
As Kathy puts it , “ The thing is , I love him too now .
I have my own personal relationship with him , that ’ s why I don ’ t drop out.
” Likewise , Bertha regularly visits and speaks to prisoners on the phone over a decade after her biological son ’ s release : “ I am involved with anyone who has loved ones incarcerated.
” They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they love , but also to send a message to the criminal justice system and to society more broadly .
They reject narrowly conceived definitions of family and take collective responsibility for each other ’ s children , caring and demanding justice all at once .
When they show up in the courtroom for each other , they are deliberate about the message it sends , as Esther explains : This collective care-work thus serves very practical purposes such as the sharing of information and resources , but it also has symbolic power @ @ @ @ @ @ @ each other ’ s struggles disrupts the 1950 ’ s heteropatriarchal-capitalist ideal of the “ nuclear family ” — and rejects the negative stigmatization of those who are incarcerated as well as those who love them .
Caring for one another unleashes collective organizing power — whether it is by mobilizing people to show up in court or raising the political consciousness of people unaware of the racist and corrupt police and prison systems .
Nationalist , colonialist , and capitalist forces seek to devalue and exploit individuals , families , and communities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ targets of these systems because the caring work they do stand as obstacles to this process .
In Chicago , mother-survivors share a fierce determination to collectively challenge repressive systems and corporate vultures who profit from incarceration .
They nurture one another , declare their love for each other , and seek not only to bring their own children home , but also to expose and protest the inhumanity of the entire prison system .
As they integrate care and collective unity with resistance , they are a force to be reckoned with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lines of the fight for future generations , social movements of all types would do well to let them lead by example .
If the aim of abolition is to build another , better society and if the current surge of support for Black Lives Matter and for defunding and abolishing police make the violent injustices of capitalist control ever more visible , then we need a renewed commitment to horizontal politics , collective labor and to recognizing the often invisible and highly gendered forms of work that enable social movements to survive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often insists that “ we are not a direct service organization , ” as if to imply that providing services and support is somehow disconnected from the loftier political goals of justice and liberation .
Collective practices of mothering show that dismantling harmful structures like the prison industrial complex must be an ongoing collective endeavor that recognizes the power and well-being of all sectors of our communities as essential resources .
They show that mothering labor is movement work that must be nourished , uplifted , and contended with .
The ultimate outcome @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s mass uprisings remains unknown .
One thing we have learned again and again , from contexts like NoDAPL , Tahrir Square , and far beyond , is that protests against militarized state violence require carework if the movement — or the revolution — is going to survive .
Today , masses of protestors wear masks and use distance when possible , and care for one another in an unprecedented situation of protesting during pandemic , enacting the many ways of fighting for life while protecting life .
This time , we need @ @ @ @ @ @ @ granted any longer the carework that has always been exceptionally urgent to our movements .
Whether faced with extraordinary events such as natural disasters , political revolutions , virulent new diseases , or the mundane operations of violent institutions , the movement strategies of those who mother — centered upon the integration of care work and political organizing — constitute some of the most urgently collective ways of being in the world .
Indeed , the labor of mothering in the face of state violence is an inherently radical act .

Part of the Series The Road to Abolition
The initial effects of COVID-19 coupled with the current uprisings against police violence have torn us from our common sense of normalcy. This sudden shift in the toxic state of living under the violence of racial capitalism, white supremacy, and settler colonialism affords us the opportunity to uplift centuries of communal wisdom that abound all around us. The current pandemic made it increasingly apparent that capitalism, not simply COVID-19, is the disaster.
The killing by white vigilantes (including an ex-cop) of Ahmaud Arbery on February 23, and the police killings of Breonna Taylor on March 13, George Floyd on May 25 and Tony McDade on May 27 reignited the righteous anger stemming from 500 years of U.S. state violence. In this moment of mass anxiety at the loss of work and economic security, these uprisings have expressed outright refusal against continued abuse by a country built upon the mass genocide of Black and Indigenous peoples.
Five years ago, when abolition began to hit mainstream conversation, adages of “burn it all down” never led to its physical manifestation in a concerted sense. Now, as images circulate of the Minneapolis police department on fire and Black bodies raging and protesting in the streets, it is a new moment, a legitimately defiant one. This system no longer serves us. It has never served us. It must fall.
The violence surrounding state responses to COVID has bolstered ongoing campaigns to defund police and invest in community institutions such as schools and healthcare. As people struggle to adjust to these extraordinary conditions of a global pandemic and mass uprisings, our hope lies in the end of generations of genocide and the beginnings of a new world based upon alternative ways of being in the world.
The values of mutual aid and collective care that environmental justice and abolitionist social movements, disability justice activists, regenerative or feminist economy movements, Indigenous people and others have been calling for are taking hold in the everyday practices of local communities. At this moment, we believe our movements have a great deal to learn from one group of people in particular — mothers and caretakers trapped within the prison industrial complex.
George Floyd spent his last, final breaths amongst us calling, calling, calling, for his mother.
Tamika Palmer has now spoken out to fight for the lost life of her daughter, Breonna Taylor, joining the mothers of Kalief Browder, Trayvon Martin, and Tamir Rice.
All of these heartbreaking stories, coupled with the invisible histories of state violence against Black mothers, which reach back to the rape and sexual assault of enslaved African women as a means for reproducing enslaved people in service to White capital to the killing of black mothers like Korryn Gaines, bring to stark light that people who do the labor of mothering are expected to accelerate the progress of capital and serve as nurturers for their family and community systems, all while enduring systematic targeting — including murder — by the same state apparatus from which they are fighting to protect their loved ones.
As a result, mothers trapped within the prison industrial complex in one way or another have been modeling what it looks like to integrate care work (often conceived of as “service”) and political organizing as part of a collective, revolutionary project. Yet all along, the labor, visions, and strategies of these very individuals tend to remain invisible within many social movements in ways that we have an opportunity now to uplift and reconsider.
There has long existed in many of our organizing spaces a silent devaluing of the realm of reproduction, including mothering and caretaking, whether biological or non-biological.While those who are mothering attend, lead, and assume the responsibility of caretaker in organizing spaces, it is often true that our positions as anchors of our movements’ micro-communities are overlooked as opposed to engaged as an asset.
The increased neoliberal professionalization of organizing puts pressure on movements to focus on and respond to questions about the metrics of productivity, such as: how many actions are able to be executed, how many members are joining, and how many dollars can be raised in grant funding? Core principles of relationship-building and collaborative thinking suffer due to the need for more campaigns, more rallies, and more wins — understandable priorities. On the ground, social movement resistance to the neo-liberal professionalization of activism reinstates the discrepancy in value between “political organizing” and “service,” and has the effect of intentionally or unintentionally reinforcing the devaluing of mothering and caretaking forms of labor.
Yet, we are now at a time when protesters facing white supremacy, brutal militarized policing, and heightened economic devastation require strategies of collective care more than ever before–including “feeding, clothing, and housing each other and those in need in their community based on the principles of reciprocity and solidarity.” We are reminded that the strength of our movements is tied with the strengths of our relationships, the depth of our connectedness, and the necessity of mothering at home, in the streets, and beyond.
Context: Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity
We co-founded the collective Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity (MAMAS) in Chicago to resist the interconnected systems of prisons, anti-immigrant violence, war and colonization, with a focus on uplifting the movement possibilities of mother-survivors of these systems. Here, we dive into our work around prisons by focusing on practices of mothering among people who have been incarcerated themselves or those with children currently or previously incarcerated.
Like many feminist abolitionists have been saying, we insist that the violence of prisons extends far beyond prison walls into working class families, neighborhoods, and Black and Brown communities. A number of folks active in MAMAS are mothering individuals who were physically or psychologically tortured by police into making false confessions, and identify as survivors of police and prison violence in their own right.
As Mary L. Johnson, mother of police torture survivor Michael Johnson, puts it when reflecting on the ripple effect of prisons on her own life: “As long as my son is doing life, I’m a lifer.” Chicago is home to a powerful movement that has won reparations for police violence and continues to demand justice around police violence and prison abolition. Chicago’s torture survivors have served or are still serving long prison sentences. Our work draws upon this long history of organizing and collective knowledge production around prison abolition in Chicago, as well as our personal histories as people of Arab and African descent who have been mothering under these systems of oppression, in addition to the fierce and unapologetic body of scholarship-activism on revolutionary mothering.
We work from a number of important assumptions; that
People who mother incarcerated individuals are survivors of gender violence, specifically reproductive injustice, given that the state violently denies them the ability to mother and to care for and protect their children, and the criminal justice system blatantly covers up state violence by calling their mothering into question, assuming that unfit parenting is to blame for their child’s “criminality;” That the purpose of the criminal justice system is to serve and protect white supremacy and racial capitalism; and We have to care for ourselves and each other on the long road to justice.
In our work, we use the idea of mothering to refer to reproductive forms of labor that have, historically, been specifically gendered as female/feminine while at the same time we recognize that such caring work is not performed exclusively by those recognized as women and/or by those biologically related to those receiving care.
The Power of Mutual Aid and Identification on Behalf of the Collective
Regina Russell, mother of torture survivor Tamon Russell, says when she first met Armanda, mother of torture survivor Gerald Reed, she turned to her union brother, Joe, and whispered to him, “She’s telling my story.” Regina describes feeling helpless and suffering in silence until she connected with Armanda’s strength, which gave her permission to break her own silence and share for the first time, in public, the story of what happened to her own son. Armanda says she is going to stay in the fight to release her son until the bitter end because there are so many others going through the same struggle.
While folks like Regina and Armanda call on their courage and use their voices to advocate and care for themselves, their children, the children of the other mothers, and all incarcerated people, they insist on the interconnectedness of care work and political organizing. This dual strategy has the effect of breaking down capitalist forms of isolation and individualism that take a disproportionate toll on their lives as they take on the state in a demand for justice.
JeNae Taylor, while working as the Fellowship Coordinator for the National Bailout Collective, talked with us about the power of connection between mothers impacted by incarceration:
…for them to embrace each other and be like “Yo! What’s up?” and say “Hello” and introduce themselves because cages isolate us intentionally and for folks to have one experience [of] cages and be a part of the mass bailout and do a deep dive of political education to get answers to the questions they have answers to and to meet each other and anticipate the glow up it fulfilled at that moment– I will never forget. I think that is the coolest thing because we get to tear down isolation and be a part of fellowship together.
Connecting with each other provides nourishment and breaking the isolation that comes with living with the ripple effects of incarceration. Bella, founder of Sister Survivor Network and daughter to parents who were incarcerated, tells us she learns collective ways of being from her mother’s incarceration:
What my mother and other folks she knows that have been incarcerated do is give themselves permission to see themselves in a different way, as valuable and not disposable. I want to follow in my mother’s footsteps. She has never left any of her friends behind. I have had my mother’s examples to show me that in real life and real time.
Indeed, building such a collective sense of self constitutes a challenge to neoliberalism’s prioritization of the individual — and profit — over all else. Folks who work with MAMAS are able to model collective ways of being for each other and for anyone willing to look at incarceration through a critical lens. At the mercy of courts, often excluded from access to adequate legal aid and information about the law or courts, and excluded from professional networks connected to the criminal justice system, activists with MAMAS combine sharing knowledge as a practice of collective care and as political resistance.
Bertha Escamilla’s son, torture survivor Nick Eschamilla, was released in 2008, but Bertha continues to collect data on the cases of all Chicago’s torture survivors, including many tortured by cops whose violence is not yet publicly known and of those who have yet to qualify for reparations. Mothers, loved ones, lawyers, researchers and activists have all relied on the data she shares–including information on ninety-two cases of police violence– to seek justice. She looks into police reports, locates information about each case, contacts family members by phone or meets them at the courthouse, and explains to them what to do and what to look for.
Reflecting on the need for collective informationsharing and relationship-building, Bertha explains:
We are put into this situation where we don’t have any knowledge of what we’re supposed to do. We’re not educated to know about the law. We are factory workers or just driving a bus. We [mothers] encourage other mothers to look for things pertaining to their case so they know what to ask the lawyers. We do this with a lot of the families.
Forced to learn the law and figure it out collectively, Bertha and other activists with MAMAS replace a corporate individualist system that depends on control over people and knowledge for the purposes of exploitation with a horizontal system of knowledge-sharing for the purposes of resistance. In community, they are caring for each other and those behind bars through both emotional support and fighting for justice on the premise that organizing and care are simultaneously revolutionary. Here, collective care-work is a way of life, born out of the realities of mothering while being targeted by prisons and police.
Bella remembers how her mother, who served years in prison, continued to write letters to her still incarcerated friends and to their children after she was released: “I see a whole lot of women in my family who take on those roles. It’s not really amplified in a way that a lot of other work is because it is not work for them. It is life.”
Caring for incarcerated people extends far beyond the individual and far beyond biology to include extended relatives, friends, and neighbors as central actors in collective mothering and caretaking. Armanda describes how her work against state violence will continue long after her son, Gerald, is released from prison:
I have had some people tell me when Gerald gets out your fight is over, but NO my fight is just beginning. Thinking about what I have been through and the people that were there to support me and thinking there are other men locked up in prison some whose families are gone and some of them their mothers are no longer around. I talk to some of those young men out there in those facilities. Gerald puts me on the phone to talk to them because they have nobody else. That is what I am fighting for. He [Gerald] is not there by himself.
Esther Hernandez, whose sons are Juan and Rosendo, says she is fighting for everyone, not only her own child:
Every year in November we hold a potluck and fill out Christmas cards for all of them [inmates incarcerated with her sons]. The ones who are out tell me we are giving them hope. We are all here to fight for our loved ones. Together we have something to offer. All around Chicago, there is corruption with the police and we want to let people know it is going on.
Indeed, folks connected to MAMAS care for many individuals to whom they are not biologically related. Kathy Wanek Levettman’s best friend’s son, Matthew Echevarria, is an incarcerated torture survivor. As Kathy puts it, “The thing is, I love him too now. I have my own personal relationship with him, that’s why I don’t drop out.” Likewise, Bertha regularly visits and speaks to prisoners on the phone over a decade after her biological son’s release: “I am involved with anyone who has loved ones incarcerated.”
They work tirelessly not only to support those they love, but also to send a message to the criminal justice system and to society more broadly. They reject narrowly conceived definitions of family and take collective responsibility for each other’s children, caring and demanding justice all at once. When they show up in the courtroom for each other, they are deliberate about the message it sends, as Esther explains:
The judges look at that. When judges see an empty courtroom, it could harm your case. I always tell people, “Let’s go.” Our community was a target by the corrupted cops so our thing is to bring awareness. We like to support whenever there is a court hearing for the guys. We do rallies in front of the courthouse and we want to expose these detectives for the corruption they have done.
This collective care-work thus serves very practical purposes such as the sharing of information and resources, but it also has symbolic power. Being present to witness and support each other’s struggles disrupts the 1950’s heteropatriarchal-capitalist ideal of the “nuclear family” — and rejects the negative stigmatization of those who are incarcerated as well as those who love them. Caring for one another unleashes collective organizing power — whether it is by mobilizing people to show up in court or raising the political consciousness of people unaware of the racist and corrupt police and prison systems.
Mamas Leading the Way Forward
Nationalist, colonialist, and capitalist forces seek to devalue and exploit individuals, families, and communities; people who mother have long been targets of these systems because the caring work they do stand as obstacles to this process. In Chicago, mother-survivors share a fierce determination to collectively challenge repressive systems and corporate vultures who profit from incarceration. They nurture one another, declare their love for each other, and seek not only to bring their own children home, but also to expose and protest the inhumanity of the entire prison system. As they integrate care and collective unity with resistance, they are a force to be reckoned with. While they stand on the front lines of the fight for future generations, social movements of all types would do well to let them lead by example.
If the aim of abolition is to build another, better society and if the current surge of support for Black Lives Matter and for defunding and abolishing police make the violent injustices of capitalist control ever more visible, then we need a renewed commitment to horizontal politics, collective labor and to recognizing the often invisible and highly gendered forms of work that enable social movements to survive and thrive.
Left-leaning social movement rhetoric often insists that “we are not a direct service organization,” as if to imply that providing services and support is somehow disconnected from the loftier political goals of justice and liberation. Collective practices of mothering show that dismantling harmful structures like the prison industrial complex must be an ongoing collective endeavor that recognizes the power and well-being of all sectors of our communities as essential resources. They show that mothering labor is movement work that must be nourished, uplifted, and contended with.
The ultimate outcome of this current pandemic and today’s mass uprisings remains unknown. One thing we have learned again and again, from contexts like NoDAPL, Tahrir Square, and far beyond, is that protests against militarized state violence require carework if the movement — or the revolution — is going to survive. Today, masses of protestors wear masks and use distance when possible, and care for one another in an unprecedented situation of protesting during pandemic, enacting the many ways of fighting for life while protecting life.
This time, we need to insist that no one takes for granted any longer the carework that has always been exceptionally urgent to our movements. Whether faced with extraordinary events such as natural disasters, political revolutions, virulent new diseases, or the mundane operations of violent institutions, the movement strategies of those who mother — centered upon the integration of care work and political organizing — constitute some of the most urgently collective ways of being in the world. Indeed, the labor of mothering in the face of state violence is an inherently radical act.


truthout--2020-06-23--The Black Radical Tradition Can Help Us Imagine a More Just World

Just as quickly as protests mounted in cities and towns across the country after George Floyd joined the ever-growing list of Black people murdered by police , public health officials began to warn of upcoming spikes in COVID-19 cases due to the lack of social distancing .
It is not as though the mostly masked protesters are ignorant of the health risks of participating in mass gatherings , it is just that some things are worth the risk .
People are leaving the relative “ safety ” of their homes to confront the police , to sit-in at precincts , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ understand that what they are fighting for is important .
Perhaps COVID-19 cases will spike as a result of the protests , but as we have seen in the case of Floyd , who ironically had already been exposed to the virus , Black folks are never truly safe from harm .
Juxtaposed to the massive displays of passion seen in the uprisings is the tepid response of educational leaders , who are uncertain of what K-12 and postsecondary institutions will look like in the fall .
The uncertainty of returning to school @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health and harm reduction .
But an underlying dilemma for educational leaders is that the rewards of schooling now pale in comparison to the freedom struggle unfolding before their eyes .
Equal protection under the “ law , ” the valuing of Black life , and fighting against massive social inequality are being seen as worth the risk of bodily harm or even death .
The same can not be said for educational institutions where these basic questions about social conditions are largely absent from standard curricula .
This glaring distinction between the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ buildings beg the question , “ What kind of education is worth the risk to physical health ?
” As some college presidents and superintendents make pronouncements of ongoing closures and double down on their online instruction , others have recognized that their educational “ product ” can ’ t compete in a market where online learning only serves to flatten experiences across geographies and institutions .
Educators have quickly come to the realization that Zoom will not save us .
What has become apparent across much of the educational landscape is that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
At the university level , they are not buying the idea that online classes , whether taught by world-renowned faculty or not , are worth the increasingly exorbitant , debt-producing price-tag .
In K-12 schools , families are not buying the endless lists of contrived assignments , tantamount to a stack of worksheets , that are sent electronically week after week .
Parents quickly grew tired of struggling to motivate their young children to participate in the skeletal remains of classrooms .
Absent their social glue , kids are fatigued of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through the acquisition and regurgitation of decontextualized bits of knowledge , all while the vibrant and turbulent world around them is ignored .
If anything , the COVID-19 pandemic and the mass uprisings against racialized state violence have effectively exposed the farce of an education system largely built on the rationalizations of free-market economies , social hierarchies , and dehumanizing , technicized approaches to teaching and learning .
Understanding that this pandemic , once survived , is simply one iteration of more to come in a configuration of global power that praises regimes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ costs , the world ’ s only choice is to abandon these regimes and their inherent practices of social control .
Put simply , if education is not to fall into Émile Durkheim ’ s historically accurate sentiment that “ schools are a mirror of society ” — if schools , in George Counts ’ s terms , “ dare to build a new social order ” — then a different set of questions must be asked .
Among them , perhaps it is time even to call into question the ongoing existence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Education at the Threat of Harm and/or Death While this global pandemic is described as unprecedented — and in many ways , it is — the question of education at the threat of physical harm is not .
The descendants of enslaved Africans in the U.S. have continually remained the conscience of the nation-state — a perpetual reminder of the distance between its rhetoric and its reality .
The educational experiences of Black folks in this country , defined by political and social dispossession , have something to teach about education at its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dispossession is the study of education , its purpose , practices and potentials .
In this time of pandemic and unrest , this claim is even truer .
Since the pursuit of education at the risk of physical harm or death has presented itself as a fundamental question , it becomes imperative to study the experiences and theorizations of Black communities in the U.S. who have perpetually experienced these risks .
One need go no further than antebellum state legislation to understand the risk of educational access for Black folks in the U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the less harsh anti-literacy statutes ( others included the threat of lethal punishment ) that came into existence in response to increased slave revolts in the early 1800s following the Haitian Revolution .
The importance of understanding these statutes — which also supported de facto customs and practices of educational dispossession — is that those who have descended from this legacy have an intimate understanding with education at the threat of harm and death .
It should not escape anyone that the anti-literacy codes included a now eerily familiar set of “ social @ @ @ @ @ @ @ historically been confronted with the risks of a health pandemic in the forms of white terror and social policy .
From the legality of corporal punishment for literacy , to white mob attacks on the racially desegregated Noyes Academy in New Hampshire in 1835 , to the threat of lynching the Little Rock Nine in 1957 , school has never been a guaranteed safe space .
And yet Black communities have marched on and educated themselves through developing multiliteracy practices , critical race legal studies , the disciplines of Africana Studies , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sociocultural educational theory .
For Black people , the question of education at the threat of death has already been answered , and the question is not one of how to learn in relative safety , the question is : What is an education worth dying for ?
Risk is always unequally distributed to those on the margins .
For Black communities , physical and/or psychological risk was always a calculation in the pursuit of education .
What remained variable was the reward , or the transmutation of that risk into a dramatically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have articulated as “ liberation.
” Through the lens of Black educational theory , an education worth dying for was directly attached in a linear , causal fashion , to freedom .
Frederick Douglass argued that “ knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.
” Obviously , nothing “ fits ” anyone to be enslaved , but Douglass recognized that the child who had access to liberatory knowledge could conjure a world beyond the servitude they were born into .
For the enslaved , print literacy was often the first step in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deemed worth the risk of physical harm .
Yet , basic education alone does not suffice , as Carter G. Woodson suggests in The Mis-Education of the Negro , where he argues that the political underpinnings of traditional education render Black people useless to their liberation struggle .
Black educational theory forces schools to look beyond the basic transmission of content toward the immediate application of knowledge and skills to social transformation .
In detailing the essence of the study of Black education , Grey Gundaker writes , “ ‘ hidden education ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ] addresses both the world as it ‘ is ’ and the world as it could or should be ; the world that outsiders control and the one that insiders are continually educating each other to make… .
[ I ] t seems the enslaved have contributed a more complex theory of education than that which informs much of today ’ s schooling.
” Taking this fundamental assertion as a starting point for rethinking current educational institutions , how can this more complex theory of education be operationalized ?
While “ freedom ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has various links to power , agency and potential , the conditions that limit freedom are often simpler to name ( e.g .
poverty , degradation , exploitation , captivity , illegality ) .
Education in the pursuit of freedom inevitably deconstructs these concepts , enabling learners to position themselves in a matrix of power relations to more accurately frame the constant of risk and the variable of reward .
The Metaphysics , Not the Material The educational theory of the enslaved can not be detached from the origins of the Black radical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resistance , providing the empirical basis for freedom struggle .
As Cedric Robinson suggests , the Black radical tradition was birthed from the spirit of revolt against the inherent conditions of the unfree .
This tradition called for a new epistemological approach to the endeavor of freedom , one that “ granted supremacy to the metaphysics not the material.
” The notion that the body is merely a vessel to transmit ideas across time between generations disrupts the egoistic pursuits of U.S. society and its desperate cling to individualism .
It disrupts the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to predict , with extreme hubris , the intellectual capacity of each student at any given point in time .
It disrupts the emphasis on protecting the individual body from the ravages of COVID-19 , because if bodies are merely vessels of transmission , then as conduits of what Robin D.G .
Kelley calls “ freedom dreams , ” they are only worth protecting if they are serving this purpose .
This is not an argument for some indiscriminate , reckless spreading of COVID-19 ; rather , the suggestion is that an education @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the intergenerational dissemination of freedom learning — the idea of freedom supersedes the protection of the body .
This theory of education is what allowed the enslaved to steal away from the plantation to learn to read by the firelight at the threat of death .
It is the theory that led Black students at Cornell University to continue to occupy Willard Straight Hall in 1969 , demanding an Africana Studies Center , after being physically assaulted by a vigilante white fraternity .
It is what led parents in the Bronzeville section of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 34-day hunger strike over the closure of Dyett High School ( among nearly 50 other school closures ) , their neighborhood school .
Across time , Black communities have actualized this radical tradition in a direct effort to attain some version of freedom , whether it be a literacy practice , an ethnic studies institution or simply a school to call their own .
Don ’ t be fooled .
The paradigm that governs the current social order is not lost on the notion of prioritizing ideas over protecting bodies .
The idea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ around the globe has come at the expense of the U.S. lives who are recruited to take the lives of others in economically exploited nations .
The idea of profit has continuously been prioritized over preventative health care , living wages or access to healthy food .
The idea of security and property has been held supreme over Black bodies .
A Black radical theory of education recognizes that in each of these prioritizations , those who are constructed as Black are deemed expendable , and/or the fungible commodity to be profited from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ profit and property rights are seen as antithetical to freedom .
Returning to the current unrest as a critical juncture in a human-centered world , it is increasingly evident that the status quo of racialized violence can not proceed .
COVID-19 has been inserted into an already existing matrix of disasters for communities of color .
But COVID-19 is not a natural disaster .
It is a consequence of processes of globalization that have created a complex activity system of relationships between the social and natural worlds , and serves to threaten each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see the role they have played to construct this world , then they will only be interested in basic safety measures that must be in place to continue to regulate children and young adults into standardized mechanisms of thought meant to adhere them to the dogma of economic law and racialism .
The insistence on restoring the economy and the educational paradigms that uphold it pretend that economics is a natural science rather than a social science ; that its laws are immutable , and that there is no way , other than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consumption , to exist in this social world .
Educational leaders could look to the examples of Black educational theory to create new metrics for rebirth .
They could recognize not only this pandemic but the current uprising for Black lives as the inevitable death of a social order that prioritizes vulgar economics over human and non-human relationships .
They could prioritize the freedom of marginalized communities as the pathway forward , questioning the roles of the constructs of race , gender , sexuality , ability , productivity and citizenship .
In more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to apply a theory of Black radical education , they may invest in the following : • An immediate re-centering of interdisciplinary curricula around an examination of the educationally dispossessed ; • A redistribution of educational resources toward communities who have been disproportionately impacted by police violence and COVID-19 ; • Institutional direct action through defunding law enforcement , ending the surveillance and criminalization of communities of color ; • A moratorium on measuring intellectual capacity in all forms beginning with standardized testing .
In more direct terms , schools need only reopen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actively combat the greater public health crisis of systemic racism and socioeconomic inequality .
Otherwise , the reward of “ safety ” is not worth the risk of perpetuating injustice .
If nothing else , concerned people must understand themselves as educational leaders , and question the educational theories guiding the decisions being made for the vast majority in an attempt to restore the brutal consequences of the global economic order .

Just as quickly as protests mounted in cities and towns across the country after George Floyd joined the ever-growing list of Black people murdered by police, public health officials began to warn of upcoming spikes in COVID-19 cases due to the lack of social distancing. It is not as though the mostly masked protesters are ignorant of the health risks of participating in mass gatherings, it is just that some things are worth the risk. People are leaving the relative “safety” of their homes to confront the police, to sit-in at precincts, city halls and state capitals because they understand that what they are fighting for is important. Perhaps COVID-19 cases will spike as a result of the protests, but as we have seen in the case of Floyd, who ironically had already been exposed to the virus, Black folks are never truly safe from harm.
Juxtaposed to the massive displays of passion seen in the uprisings is the tepid response of educational leaders, who are uncertain of what K-12 and postsecondary institutions will look like in the fall. The uncertainty of returning to school is being couched in terms of public health and harm reduction. But an underlying dilemma for educational leaders is that the rewards of schooling now pale in comparison to the freedom struggle unfolding before their eyes. Equal protection under the “law,” the valuing of Black life, and fighting against massive social inequality are being seen as worth the risk of bodily harm or even death. The same cannot be said for educational institutions where these basic questions about social conditions are largely absent from standard curricula. This glaring distinction between the nation’s streets and its school buildings beg the question, “What kind of education is worth the risk to physical health?”
As some college presidents and superintendents make pronouncements of ongoing closures and double down on their online instruction, others have recognized that their educational “product” can’t compete in a market where online learning only serves to flatten experiences across geographies and institutions. Educators have quickly come to the realization that Zoom will not save us. What has become apparent across much of the educational landscape is that youth and families aren’t buying it. At the university level, they are not buying the idea that online classes, whether taught by world-renowned faculty or not, are worth the increasingly exorbitant, debt-producing price-tag. In K-12 schools, families are not buying the endless lists of contrived assignments, tantamount to a stack of worksheets, that are sent electronically week after week. Parents quickly grew tired of struggling to motivate their young children to participate in the skeletal remains of classrooms. Absent their social glue, kids are fatigued of classes built around remedial approaches to learning through the acquisition and regurgitation of decontextualized bits of knowledge, all while the vibrant and turbulent world around them is ignored.
If anything, the COVID-19 pandemic and the mass uprisings against racialized state violence have effectively exposed the farce of an education system largely built on the rationalizations of free-market economies, social hierarchies, and dehumanizing, technicized approaches to teaching and learning. Understanding that this pandemic, once survived, is simply one iteration of more to come in a configuration of global power that praises regimes of production at all human and non-human costs, the world’s only choice is to abandon these regimes and their inherent practices of social control.
Put simply, if education is not to fall into Émile Durkheim’s historically accurate sentiment that “schools are a mirror of society” — if schools, in George Counts’s terms, “dare to build a new social order” — then a different set of questions must be asked. Among them, perhaps it is time even to call into question the ongoing existence of schools as we know them.
Education at the Threat of Harm and/or Death
An underlying dilemma for educational leaders is that the rewards of schooling now pale in comparison to the freedom struggle unfolding before their eyes.
While this global pandemic is described as unprecedented — and in many ways, it is — the question of education at the threat of physical harm is not. The descendants of enslaved Africans in the U.S. have continually remained the conscience of the nation-state — a perpetual reminder of the distance between its rhetoric and its reality. The educational experiences of Black folks in this country, defined by political and social dispossession, have something to teach about education at its deepest levels. The study of educational dispossession is the study of education, its purpose, practices and potentials. In this time of pandemic and unrest, this claim is even truer.
Since the pursuit of education at the risk of physical harm or death has presented itself as a fundamental question, it becomes imperative to study the experiences and theorizations of Black communities in the U.S. who have perpetually experienced these risks. One need go no further than antebellum state legislation to understand the risk of educational access for Black folks in the U.S.:
Code of Mississippi, Article 3, Section 2, 1823 All meetings or assemblies of Slaves, or free negroes, or mulattoes, mixing and associating with such slaves above the number of five, at any place of public resort, or at any meeting house or houses, in the night, or at any school or schools, for teaching them reading or writing, either in the day or night, under whatsoever pretext, shall be deemed and considered an unlawful assembly, and any Justice of the Peace, county or corporation . . . may issue his warrant . . . to inflict corporal punishment on the offender or offenders . . . not exceeding thirty-nine lashes. (An Act to reduce into one the several acts concerning Slaves, Free Negroes, and Mulattoes, 1823)
This is just one example of the less harsh anti-literacy statutes (others included the threat of lethal punishment) that came into existence in response to increased slave revolts in the early 1800s following the Haitian Revolution. The importance of understanding these statutes — which also supported de facto customs and practices of educational dispossession — is that those who have descended from this legacy have an intimate understanding with education at the threat of harm and death. It should not escape anyone that the anti-literacy codes included a now eerily familiar set of “social distancing” guidelines.
Black communities have historically been confronted with the risks of a health pandemic in the forms of white terror and social policy. From the legality of corporal punishment for literacy, to white mob attacks on the racially desegregated Noyes Academy in New Hampshire in 1835, to the threat of lynching the Little Rock Nine in 1957, school has never been a guaranteed safe space. And yet Black communities have marched on and educated themselves through developing multiliteracy practices, critical race legal studies, the disciplines of Africana Studies, and have had a central role in developing sociocultural educational theory. For Black people, the question of education at the threat of death has already been answered, and the question is not one of how to learn in relative safety, the question is: What is an education worth dying for?
Risk vs. Reward
Risk is always unequally distributed to those on the margins. For Black communities, physical and/or psychological risk was always a calculation in the pursuit of education. What remained variable was the reward, or the transmutation of that risk into a dramatically improved lived experience, or what some have articulated as “liberation.”
From the legality of corporal punishment for literacy, to the threat of lynching the Little Rock Nine in 1957, school has never been a guaranteed safe space.
Through the lens of Black educational theory, an education worth dying for was directly attached in a linear, causal fashion, to freedom. Frederick Douglass argued that “knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” Obviously, nothing “fits” anyone to be enslaved, but Douglass recognized that the child who had access to liberatory knowledge could conjure a world beyond the servitude they were born into. For the enslaved, print literacy was often the first step in building critical consciousness, and was thus deemed worth the risk of physical harm. Yet, basic education alone does not suffice, as Carter G. Woodson suggests in The Mis-Education of the Negro, where he argues that the political underpinnings of traditional education render Black people useless to their liberation struggle. Black educational theory forces schools to look beyond the basic transmission of content toward the immediate application of knowledge and skills to social transformation.
In detailing the essence of the study of Black education, Grey Gundaker writes, “‘hidden education’ in the [domain of the enslaved] addresses both the world as it ‘is’ and the world as it could or should be; the world that outsiders control and the one that insiders are continually educating each other to make…. [I]t seems the enslaved have contributed a more complex theory of education than that which informs much of today’s schooling.”
Taking this fundamental assertion as a starting point for rethinking current educational institutions, how can this more complex theory of education be operationalized? While “freedom” as a concept is an abstraction that has various links to power, agency and potential, the conditions that limit freedom are often simpler to name (e.g. poverty, degradation, exploitation, captivity, illegality). Education in the pursuit of freedom inevitably deconstructs these concepts, enabling learners to position themselves in a matrix of power relations to more accurately frame the constant of risk and the variable of reward.
The Metaphysics, Not the Material
The educational theory of the enslaved cannot be detached from the origins of the Black radical tradition, one that was forged in resistance, providing the empirical basis for freedom struggle. As Cedric Robinson suggests, the Black radical tradition was birthed from the spirit of revolt against the inherent conditions of the unfree. This tradition called for a new epistemological approach to the endeavor of freedom, one that “granted supremacy to the metaphysics not the material.”
Frederick Douglass recognized that the child who had access to liberatory knowledge could conjure a world beyond the servitude they were born into.
The notion that the body is merely a vessel to transmit ideas across time between generations disrupts the egoistic pursuits of U.S. society and its desperate cling to individualism. It disrupts the dominant conceptions of educational institutions that seek to predict, with extreme hubris, the intellectual capacity of each student at any given point in time. It disrupts the emphasis on protecting the individual body from the ravages of COVID-19, because if bodies are merely vessels of transmission, then as conduits of what Robin D.G. Kelley calls “freedom dreams,” they are only worth protecting if they are serving this purpose.
This is not an argument for some indiscriminate, reckless spreading of COVID-19; rather, the suggestion is that an education worth dying for is one that prioritizes the intergenerational dissemination of freedom learning — the idea of freedom supersedes the protection of the body. This theory of education is what allowed the enslaved to steal away from the plantation to learn to read by the firelight at the threat of death. It is the theory that led Black students at Cornell University to continue to occupy Willard Straight Hall in 1969, demanding an Africana Studies Center, after being physically assaulted by a vigilante white fraternity. It is what led parents in the Bronzeville section of Chicago in 2015 to engage in a 34-day hunger strike over the closure of Dyett High School (among nearly 50 other school closures), their neighborhood school. Across time, Black communities have actualized this radical tradition in a direct effort to attain some version of freedom, whether it be a literacy practice, an ethnic studies institution or simply a school to call their own.
Don’t be fooled. The paradigm that governs the current social order is not lost on the notion of prioritizing ideas over protecting bodies. The idea of spreading a capitalistic version of democracy around the globe has come at the expense of the U.S. lives who are recruited to take the lives of others in economically exploited nations. The idea of profit has continuously been prioritized over preventative health care, living wages or access to healthy food. The idea of security and property has been held supreme over Black bodies. A Black radical theory of education recognizes that in each of these prioritizations, those who are constructed as Black are deemed expendable, and/or the fungible commodity to be profited from. As such, corporate democracy, profit and property rights are seen as antithetical to freedom.
Education for Liberation
Returning to the current unrest as a critical juncture in a human-centered world, it is increasingly evident that the status quo of racialized violence cannot proceed. COVID-19 has been inserted into an already existing matrix of disasters for communities of color. But COVID-19 is not a natural disaster. It is a consequence of processes of globalization that have created a complex activity system of relationships between the social and natural worlds, and serves to threaten each. If educational institutions are unwilling to see the role they have played to construct this world, then they will only be interested in basic safety measures that must be in place to continue to regulate children and young adults into standardized mechanisms of thought meant to adhere them to the dogma of economic law and racialism.
The Black radical tradition was birthed from the spirit of revolt against the inherent conditions of the unfree.
The insistence on restoring the economy and the educational paradigms that uphold it pretend that economics is a natural science rather than a social science; that its laws are immutable, and that there is no way, other than through an ever-growing web of production and consumption, to exist in this social world. Educational leaders could look to the examples of Black educational theory to create new metrics for rebirth. They could recognize not only this pandemic but the current uprising for Black lives as the inevitable death of a social order that prioritizes vulgar economics over human and non-human relationships. They could prioritize the freedom of marginalized communities as the pathway forward, questioning the roles of the constructs of race, gender, sexuality, ability, productivity and citizenship.
In more concrete terms, if educational leaders were to apply a theory of Black radical education, they may invest in the following:
In more direct terms, schools need only reopen if they join the social unrest and actively combat the greater public health crisis of systemic racism and socioeconomic inequality. Otherwise, the reward of “safety” is not worth the risk of perpetuating injustice. If nothing else, concerned people must understand themselves as educational leaders, and question the educational theories guiding the decisions being made for the vast majority in an attempt to restore the brutal consequences of the global economic order.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.


truthout--2020-06-23--COVID Testing Sites to Lose Federal Funding Even as Fauci Calls for More Testing

The Trump administration is planning to defund a number of COVID-19 testing sites across the country , and it remains unclear whether doing so might be part of a broad plan by the president to “ slow down on testing.
” Thirteen sites across five states in the U.S. that have been funded since the start of the administration ’ s response to the coronavirus pandemic are set to lose federal dollars by the end of this month , according to reporting from Talking Points Memo .
Seven of the sites included in that list are in Texas alone , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus increase substantially in just the past few days .
Looking over the past week ’ s numbers , from June 16 to 22 , Texas witnessed a daily average of 4,037.85 cases .
That ’ s more than double the previous week ’ s daily average , when just 2,018.71 cases per day were observed .
In spite of that spike in numbers , the Department of Health and Human Services ( HHS ) is saying that the defunding of those seven sites is necessary to “ transition ” away from federal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ however , goes against what many local health officials want to see happen .
“ Cases are continuing to rise in Dallas County , and we want to continue with the testing , ” Rocky Vaz , director of emergency management in Dallas , told Talking Points Memo .
HHS seemed adamant in ending the funding , Vaz explained .
“ They told us very clearly that they are not going to extend it , ” he said , adding that he and his agency were “ not expecting it to continue beyond @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which may turn into closures , comes about as confusion abounds over President Donald Trump ’ s comments from a campaign event in Tulsa , Oklahoma , over the weekend .
Trump told attendees at that event that he was frustrated with the rise in new coronavirus case figures , and that he believed the best way to address those numbers was to limit testing .
“ When you do testing to that extent , you ’ re going to find more people , you ’ re going to find more cases .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ Slow the testing down , please , ' ” Trump said on Saturday .
The president doubled-down on Monday , saying in an interview that the “ reason we have more cases is because we do more testing than any other country by far.
” On Tuesday , Trump also tweeted that “ with smaller testing we would show fewer cases !
” While the U.S. has performed more tests in terms of raw numbers , the president doesn ’ t appear to account for population differences .
“ The US may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not the highest # of tests per capita , ” Jennifer Nuzzo , a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security , wrote on Twitter , disputing the president ’ s accounts .
The comments from Trump have led many to wonder whether he ’ s more concerned with perceptions of the pandemic than eradicating or combating it .
In a stark departure from Trump ’ s messaging , however , Anthony Fauci , a member of Trump ’ s coronavirus task force and the director of the National Institute @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Congress on Tuesday that the strategy on testing wasn ’ t to slow down , but to increase the number of tests conducted daily in the U.S. in the coming weeks .
“ I , as a member of the task force , and my colleagues on the task force , I know for sure , to my knowledge , none of us have ever been told to slow down on testing , ” Fauci said .
“ That just is a fact .
In fact , we will be doing more testing @ @

Trump’s talk of slowing down testing contradicts statements from Anthony Fauci, who says tests are set to increase.
The Trump administration is planning to defund a number of COVID-19 testing sites across the country, and it remains unclear whether doing so might be part of a broad plan by the president to “slow down on testing.”
Thirteen sites across five states in the U.S. that have been funded since the start of the administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic are set to lose federal dollars by the end of this month, according to reporting from Talking Points Memo. Seven of the sites included in that list are in Texas alone, a state that has seen rates of coronavirus increase substantially in just the past few days.
Looking over the past week’s numbers, from June 16 to 22, Texas witnessed a daily average of 4,037.85 cases. That’s more than double the previous week’s daily average, when just 2,018.71 cases per day were observed.
In spite of that spike in numbers, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is saying that the defunding of those seven sites is necessary to “transition” away from federal government funded testing. The transition, however, goes against what many local health officials want to see happen.
“Cases are continuing to rise in Dallas County, and we want to continue with the testing,” Rocky Vaz, director of emergency management in Dallas, told Talking Points Memo.
HHS seemed adamant in ending the funding, Vaz explained. “They told us very clearly that they are not going to extend it,” he said, adding that he and his agency were “not expecting it to continue beyond June 30.”
The scheduled defunding, which may turn into closures, comes about as confusion abounds over President Donald Trump’s comments from a campaign event in Tulsa, Oklahoma, over the weekend. Trump told attendees at that event that he was frustrated with the rise in new coronavirus case figures, and that he believed the best way to address those numbers was to limit testing.
“When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please,'” Trump said on Saturday.
The president doubled-down on Monday, saying in an interview that the “reason we have more cases is because we do more testing than any other country by far.” On Tuesday, Trump also tweeted that “with smaller testing we would show fewer cases!”
While the U.S. has performed more tests in terms of raw numbers, the president doesn’t appear to account for population differences. “The US may have done the most tests, but not the highest # of tests per capita,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, wrote on Twitter, disputing the president’s accounts.
The comments from Trump have led many to wonder whether he’s more concerned with perceptions of the pandemic than eradicating or combating it.
In a stark departure from Trump’s messaging, however, Anthony Fauci, a member of Trump’s coronavirus task force and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Congress on Tuesday that the strategy on testing wasn’t to slow down, but to increase the number of tests conducted daily in the U.S. in the coming weeks.
“I, as a member of the task force, and my colleagues on the task force, I know for sure, to my knowledge, none of us have ever been told to slow down on testing,” Fauci said. “That just is a fact. In fact, we will be doing more testing.”
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.


truthout--2020-06-24--Jamaal Bowman Is on Track to Score AOC-Type Win Over 16-Term Congressman Engel

Jamaal Bowman , a former educator and school principal from the Bronx in New York , appears to have defeated 16-term Rep. Eliot Engel Tuesday night in the Democratic primary for that seat in Congress .
Although votes were still being counted due to the large volume of absentee ballots , many news agencies were announcing Bowman ’ s win , and the candidate himself declared victory in a rousing speech that evening .
Addressing supporters , Bowman paid particular attention to the idea of poverty in the United States .
“ We live in a country where despite our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ millions of children still living in poverty , ” he said .
Bowman expanded upon the subject , noting that poverty was not something that happened as a result of a person ’ s actions , but was more institutional .
“ Poverty is not the result of children and families who don ’ t work hard .
Our children and families work as hard as anyone else , ” Bowman explained .
“ Poverty is by political design , and it ’ s rooted in a system that has been fractured and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the inception of America , especially over the last several decades .
“ Poverty , and the impact of poverty on our children , and dealing with issues of institutional racism , and sexism , and classism , and xenophobia , and everything that keeps the majority of us oppressed is what we designed this campaign to fight against , ” he added .
Bowman urged supporters to celebrate his victory as a “ movement designed to push back against a system that ’ s literally killing us.
” “ It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but it ’ s killing all of us , ” the congressman-elect said .
Bowman ’ s win over an establishment Democrat comes just two years after the historic win of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , also of New York , who defeated then-Rep. Joe Crowley , who had been viewed at the time as a possible successor to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi within the party .
Both Ocasio-Cortez ’ s win in 2018 and Bowman ’ s victory in 2020 may signal a shift in Democratic Party politics toward more progressive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bowman and Engel became more contentious as uprisings started up in late May and early June , in response to police killings of Black individuals across the country , including George Floyd , Breonna Taylor , and several others .
Engel faced severe criticism when , while speaking at an event to address those uprisings , he was caught on a “ hot mic ” expressing why he was there to begin with .
“ If I didn ’ t have a primary , I wouldn ’ t care , ” Engel could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now likely to win Engel ’ s seat in the general election in the heavily-democratic district , he has promised to continue working against policies that President Donald Trump has put forward , if Trump is still president next year .
“ Eliot Engel — and I ’ ll say his name once — used to say he was a thorn in the side of Donald Trump , ” Bowman said on Tuesday night .
“ You know what Donald Trump is more afraid of than anything else ?
A Black man with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is afraid of .
”

If elected to Congress, Bowman said he would put the focus on issues related to poverty in the United States.
Jamaal Bowman, a former educator and school principal from the Bronx in New York, appears to have defeated 16-term Rep. Eliot Engel Tuesday night in the Democratic primary for that seat in Congress.
Although votes were still being counted due to the large volume of absentee ballots, many news agencies were announcing Bowman’s win, and the candidate himself declared victory in a rousing speech that evening.
Addressing supporters, Bowman paid particular attention to the idea of poverty in the United States. “We live in a country where despite our financial wealth, we have tens of millions of children still living in poverty,” he said.
Bowman expanded upon the subject, noting that poverty was not something that happened as a result of a person’s actions, but was more institutional.
“Poverty is not the result of children and families who don’t work hard. Our children and families work as hard as anyone else,” Bowman explained. “Poverty is by political design, and it’s rooted in a system that has been fractured and corrupt and rotten from its core from the inception of America, especially over the last several decades.
“Poverty, and the impact of poverty on our children, and dealing with issues of institutional racism, and sexism, and classism, and xenophobia, and everything that keeps the majority of us oppressed is what we designed this campaign to fight against,” he added.
Jamaal Bowman, who has a lead in his primary against Eliot Engel, just spoke to supporters. "Our movement is designed to restore that faith, to restore that hope, to bring back the belief in what is possible, to root our values in everything we do." pic.twitter.com/wkt0E0gd6Z — Spectrum News NY1 (@NY1) June 24, 2020
Bowman urged supporters to celebrate his victory as a “movement designed to push back against a system that’s literally killing us.”
“It’s killing Black and brown bodies disproportionately — but it’s killing all of us,” the congressman-elect said.
Bowman’s win over an establishment Democrat comes just two years after the historic win of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also of New York, who defeated then-Rep. Joe Crowley, who had been viewed at the time as a possible successor to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi within the party. Both Ocasio-Cortez’s win in 2018 and Bowman’s victory in 2020 may signal a shift in Democratic Party politics toward more progressive stances and viewpoints.
The race between Bowman and Engel became more contentious as uprisings started up in late May and early June, in response to police killings of Black individuals across the country, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and several others.
Engel faced severe criticism when, while speaking at an event to address those uprisings, he was caught on a “hot mic” expressing why he was there to begin with.
“If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care,” Engel could be heard saying.
As Bowman is now likely to win Engel’s seat in the general election in the heavily-democratic district, he has promised to continue working against policies that President Donald Trump has put forward, if Trump is still president next year.
“Eliot Engel — and I’ll say his name once — used to say he was a thorn in the side of Donald Trump,” Bowman said on Tuesday night. “You know what Donald Trump is more afraid of than anything else? A Black man with power. That is what Donald Trump is afraid of.”
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.


truthout--2020-06-24--Trump’s Arizona Rally Confirms His COVID Policy Is Driven Only by His Ego

Pretend for a moment that I ’ m a Hollywood writer pitching a script to a producer .
It ’ s a tragic farce , I ’ d say , about the worst president in history allowing tens of thousands of his own people to die in a preventable pandemic because he thinks actually addressing the crisis will make him look bad on television .
The harshest scene in the movie ?
After one failed political rally in a hyperinfected state that saw thousands of people deliberately exposing themselves to infection and death , this calamity president holds another rally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pandemic is running wild , this time with mostly young people attending .
Many of them don ’ t protect themselves , either , because the evangelical megachurch hosting the rally says they have a magic machine that destroys the virus in ten minutes .
The name of this church ?
“ Dream City.
” … and out on my ass I ’ d go .
Not even Netflix would buy such a preposterous premise .
It is simply too absurd for the screen , be it big or little .
Look @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Dream City is all around us now .
It is the new name of the nation whose people have been murdered in order to fit a failed president ’ s eternally warped sense of his own indelible greatness .
It ’ s all too terrible for a Hollywood script , and exactly as real as your next breath .
There were 3,000 attendees at Trump ’ s Dream City Church gathering in Phoenix , Arizona , a state where infections have jumped 142 percent since Memorial Day .
Most of them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has been getting newly infected at such a dangerous rate that Anthony Fauci specifically warned about the phenomenon during congressional testimony yesterday .
Trump did not , does not , and will never care .
He devoted fewer than 10 minutes out of another rambling masterpiece of incoherence to actually discussing COVID-19 with those mostly unmasked , shoulder-to-shoulder young folks , choosing instead to shower that audience with the contents of his bloated spleen , again .
When Trump did nick the topic while in Arizona , it was only to lie about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wall , which doesn ’ t actually exist , stopped COVID ?
Trump preposterously said so , during a visit to one of the wall fragments his cronies have actually managed to construct .
It ’ s hard to know where to begin with this one ; when I try , the bearings in my mind seize and proceed to melt .
Suffice it to say that walls don ’ t “ stop ” viruses unless they fall on someone who is infected , and at that point you have a whole different @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Dream City ” Arizona campaign swing was preposterous from wheels-up to bedtime .
The AP photo of Trump examining that sliver of wall yesterday looks so much like the scene where the hominids behold the Monolith in 2001 : A Space Odyssey that I am almost completely undone by the comparison .
Trump ’ s pivot to the border wall and immigration is a return for him to the well-known political harbor of race-baiting that has ever been his go-to topic in times of trouble .
Immediately after the debacle in Tulsa , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Stephen Miller ’ s fascist immigration policy playbook in an attempt to change the topic and placate his unsettled base .
This is a script we have all seen before .
“ The number of new COVID-19 cases are spiking in several states , but President Trump did not announce new public health responses on Monday , ” reports Truthout ’ s Mike Ludwig .
“ Instead , he issued an executive order extending and expanding suspensions of immigration and guest worker programs until the end of the year .
The White House @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of the H-1B visa program , and it barred asylum seekers from gaining lawful employment for one year after filing a claim.
” These useless and callous actions will accomplish two goals : They will spread more misery , and they will make the racists within Trump ’ s base happy .
That ’ s it , that ’ s all , turn out the lights when you leave .
COVID-19 is exploding across a wide swath of the country as the first wave of the pandemic continues its long burn through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Oregon has seen a 234 percent jump in infections , Oklahoma has seen a 202 percent jump , and Florida ’ s rate increased by 155 percent , all since the Memorial Day holiday weekend when too many people listened to either our damfool president or their own damfool governors and failed to take proper precautions .
Speaking of damfool governors , Gov .
Greg Abbott of Texas — who led the way for states seeking to “ Reopen ” too soon — is facing a massive spike of infections as well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ … yet he has not summoned the will to even discuss a reinstatement of broader safety measures like some neighboring states are doing as their own spiking infection rates threaten to topple their fragile medical infrastructure .
Why the hesitation , even in the face of looming disaster ?
Just a guess , but Abbott has a Trump drone named Dan Patrick for a lieutenant governor , and Patrick would likely cut Abbott to ribbons if he deviates too far from established Trumpian orthodoxy on COVID .
This is not a good reason @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sicken and die , but it ’ s probably the reason why exactly that is going to happen .
How bad is it , really ?
The U.S. leads the world in COVID-19 casualties , with more than 2.3 million infections and over 121,000 deaths .
Other nations that endured similarly severe outbreaks have successfully labored to contain the pandemic , while rates of infection here break records daily .
Those numbers , bad as they surely are , are also below the actual infection rate because the Trump administration has deliberately dragged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regimen .
Trump admitted this on Saturday , and has confirmed it at least twice since .
On Tuesday , Fauci told Congress that more testing was desperately needed .
Trump ’ s response ?
“ The Trump administration is planning to defund a number of COVID-19 testing sites across the country , ” reports Truthout ’ s Chris Walker , “ and it remains unclear whether doing so might be part of a broad plan by the president to ‘ slow down on testing.
’ ” Trump is also giving serious consideration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ national emergency declaration , all so he can “ declare victory over the coronavirus ” in an election year , even as the bodies pile up around his feet .
As early as next week , the European Union ( EU ) may announce restrictions that would block Americans from traveling to Europe .
“ That prospect , which would lump American visitors in with Russians and Brazilians as unwelcome , is a stinging blow to American prestige in the world and a repudiation of President Trump ’ s handling of the virus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The New York Times .
Such a move would be a body blow to the EU ’ s own attempts at an economic recovery , but it is so bad over here that they may have no choice .
Meanwhile , it was announced today that New York , New Jersey and Connecticut will quarantine visitors from states with high coronavirus infection rates for 14 days upon arrival .
At present , those states are Alabama , Arkansas , Arizona , Florida , North Carolina , South Carolina , Texas , Utah and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ depending on circumstances .
Dream City , baby .
Where everything you want to be true comes true because you say so , and never mind the wailing in the hospital hallways .
It ’ s an ongoing nightmare for the nation .
For Trump , however , that dream will never die , even as so many of us do .

It’s all too terrible for a Hollywood script, and exactly as real as your next breath.
Part of the Series Despair and Disparity: The Uneven Burdens of COVID-19
Pretend for a moment that I’m a Hollywood writer pitching a script to a producer. It’s a tragic farce, I’d say, about the worst president in history allowing tens of thousands of his own people to die in a preventable pandemic because he thinks actually addressing the crisis will make him look bad on television.
The harshest scene in the movie? After one failed political rally in a hyperinfected state that saw thousands of people deliberately exposing themselves to infection and death, this calamity president holds another rally days later in yet another state where the pandemic is running wild, this time with mostly young people attending. Many of them don’t protect themselves, either, because the evangelical megachurch hosting the rally says they have a magic machine that destroys the virus in ten minutes. The name of this church? “Dream City.”
…and out on my ass I’d go. Not even Netflix would buy such a preposterous premise. It is simply too absurd for the screen, be it big or little.
Look out the window, friends. Trump’s Dream City is all around us now. It is the new name of the nation whose people have been murdered in order to fit a failed president’s eternally warped sense of his own indelible greatness. It’s all too terrible for a Hollywood script, and exactly as real as your next breath.
There were 3,000 attendees at Trump’s Dream City Church gathering in Phoenix, Arizona, a state where infections have jumped 142 percent since Memorial Day. Most of them were in the same young demographic which has been getting newly infected at such a dangerous rate that Anthony Fauci specifically warned about the phenomenon during congressional testimony yesterday.
Trump did not, does not, and will never care. He devoted fewer than 10 minutes out of another rambling masterpiece of incoherence to actually discussing COVID-19 with those mostly unmasked, shoulder-to-shoulder young folks, choosing instead to shower that audience with the contents of his bloated spleen, again.
When Trump did nick the topic while in Arizona, it was only to lie about it. Did you know his border wall, which doesn’t actually exist, stopped COVID? Trump preposterously said so, during a visit to one of the wall fragments his cronies have actually managed to construct.
It’s all too terrible for a Hollywood script, and exactly as real as your next breath.
It’s hard to know where to begin with this one; when I try, the bearings in my mind seize and proceed to melt. Suffice it to say that walls don’t “stop” viruses unless they fall on someone who is infected, and at that point you have a whole different problem anyway.
Trump’s “Dream City” Arizona campaign swing was preposterous from wheels-up to bedtime. The AP photo of Trump examining that sliver of wall yesterday looks so much like the scene where the hominids behold the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey that I am almost completely undone by the comparison.
Trump’s pivot to the border wall and immigration is a return for him to the well-known political harbor of race-baiting that has ever been his go-to topic in times of trouble. Immediately after the debacle in Tulsa, he reached for White House senior adviser Stephen Miller’s fascist immigration policy playbook in an attempt to change the topic and placate his unsettled base. This is a script we have all seen before.
“The number of new COVID-19 cases are spiking in several states, but President Trump did not announce new public health responses on Monday,” reports Truthout’s Mike Ludwig. “Instead, he issued an executive order extending and expanding suspensions of immigration and guest worker programs until the end of the year. The White House is also moving to push lower-wage workers out of the H-1B visa program, and it barred asylum seekers from gaining lawful employment for one year after filing a claim.”
These useless and callous actions will accomplish two goals: They will spread more misery, and they will make the racists within Trump’s base happy. That’s it, that’s all, turn out the lights when you leave.
COVID-19 is exploding across a wide swath of the country as the first wave of the pandemic continues its long burn through the populace. According to NBC News, Oregon has seen a 234 percent jump in infections, Oklahoma has seen a 202 percent jump, and Florida’s rate increased by 155 percent, all since the Memorial Day holiday weekend when too many people listened to either our damfool president or their own damfool governors and failed to take proper precautions.
Speaking of damfool governors, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas — who led the way for states seeking to “Reopen” too soon — is facing a massive spike of infections as well, and sounds positively panicky about it… yet he has not summoned the will to even discuss a reinstatement of broader safety measures like some neighboring states are doing as their own spiking infection rates threaten to topple their fragile medical infrastructure.
Trump’s Dream City is the new name of the nation whose people have been murdered in order to fit a failed president’s eternally warped sense of his own indelible greatness.
Why the hesitation, even in the face of looming disaster? Just a guess, but Abbott has a Trump drone named Dan Patrick for a lieutenant governor, and Patrick would likely cut Abbott to ribbons if he deviates too far from established Trumpian orthodoxy on COVID. This is not a good reason for Abbott to let his own constituents sicken and die, but it’s probably the reason why exactly that is going to happen.
How bad is it, really? The U.S. leads the world in COVID-19 casualties, with more than 2.3 million infections and over 121,000 deaths. Other nations that endured similarly severe outbreaks have successfully labored to contain the pandemic, while rates of infection here break records daily.
Those numbers, bad as they surely are, are also below the actual infection rate because the Trump administration has deliberately dragged its feet on establishing a national testing regimen. Trump admitted this on Saturday, and has confirmed it at least twice since.
On Tuesday, Fauci told Congress that more testing was desperately needed. Trump’s response? “The Trump administration is planning to defund a number of COVID-19 testing sites across the country,” reports Truthout’s Chris Walker, “and it remains unclear whether doing so might be part of a broad plan by the president to ‘slow down on testing.’”
Trump is also giving serious consideration to a dramatic scale-back of the COVID national emergency declaration, all so he can “declare victory over the coronavirus” in an election year, even as the bodies pile up around his feet.
As early as next week, the European Union (EU) may announce restrictions that would block Americans from traveling to Europe. “That prospect, which would lump American visitors in with Russians and Brazilians as unwelcome, is a stinging blow to American prestige in the world and a repudiation of President Trump’s handling of the virus in the United States,” reports The New York Times. Such a move would be a body blow to the EU’s own attempts at an economic recovery, but it is so bad over here that they may have no choice.
Meanwhile, it was announced today that New York, New Jersey and Connecticut will quarantine visitors from states with high coronavirus infection rates for 14 days upon arrival. At present, those states are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Washington, though the list may expand depending on circumstances.
Dream City, baby. Where everything you want to be true comes true because you say so, and never mind the wailing in the hospital hallways. It’s an ongoing nightmare for the nation. For Trump, however, that dream will never die, even as so many of us do.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.