United States
Mumia Abu-Jamal: A New Day
The events of last week continue to reverberate throughout national consciousness.
The unprovoked killings by cops in the streets of America’s Midwest, and the subsequent killings of cops in Texas, show us that a new stage has been reached in America’s longest internal war, and that no one knows how it will end.
The problem of police violence, of course, isn’t new.
When Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led anti-segregation protests in Selma, Alabama in the 1960s, cops didn’t ‘assist’ protestors; they beat them, savagely, for violating the unjust laws of white supremacy. They beat men and women, indiscriminately, to protect white privilege. The Edmund-Pettus bridge became slick with Black blood.
Participatory Democracy Drives Anti-Gentrification Movement in New York’s El Barrio
Members of Movement for Justice in El Barrio at a press conference denouncing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “luxury housing” rezoning plan. (Photo courtesy of Janice Aredondo)
By Jessica Davies, Truthout.
Eleven years ago, in an area known as El Barrio in East Harlem, New York, community residents of 15 immigrant families, all of them women of color, came together to seek dignified housing in their community. They were struggling against gentrification and displacement, and the abuses of a private landlord who was trying to force them out of their homes in order to attract wealthier tenants and transform the neighborhood they lived in and loved. These women had no previous organizing experience, but they listened to and supported each other, and in December 2004, they formed Movement for Justice in El Barrio (Movement).
Astonishingly, Movement now has 954 members in 95 building committees. Eighty percent of the members are women, and it is the women who are the driving force behind the organization. The membership consists of low-income tenants who are immigrants and people of color; many are also Indigenous. Forced by poverty to leave their beloved native countries, they have built a strong community in El Barrio, and are determined not to allow themselves to be displaced again. They understand clearly that their fight is against the neoliberal system represented by the abusive landlords, property speculators, multinational corporations, politicians and government institutions that seek to displace them from their much-loved community.
