Month: May 2020

An Historian’s Thoughts on the Uprisings in Our Cities

By Mark Naison (May 30, 2020)

As an historian, I am am hardly surprised at the uprisings taking place in cities throughout the country.

The murder of George Floyd pushed people filled with rage at their position in Trump’s America over the edge.

It is not just that repeated murders of unarmed Black men and women, by police or self appointed security agents, had convinced many Black people that most whites signed off on policies that terrorized their communities, it is that they saw the rhetoric and policies of the Trump Administration as a daily assault on their safety and security.

In the minds of many people of color, it is wholly predictable– and profoundly infuriating- that a country that could elect a race baiting demagogue like Donald Trump would sign off on the murder of unarmed Blacks, and never send those responsible to prison

Think about it: you are living in country where gun toting, Nazi and Confederate flag waving whites are cheered on by the President while unarmed Black men and women are shot down in the streets and their own homes, and where immigrant children of color are put in cages.

If you think that experience wasn’t making people unbelievably angry, you are ignoring the lessons of history.

At some point, I suspected, that anger, which I know well because I feel it inside myself, was going to break loose. George Floyd’s death may have been the spark, but there were a long chain of grievances which have come to the surface in its wake

I do not know where these uprisings are going, nor how they are going to end.

I do know they have been a long time coming.

Anybody really LISTENING to what their Black/LatinX friends, colleagues,neighbors and family members have been saying over the last few years, in response to provocation after provocation, should hardly be surprised at what is taking place in the streets of our major cities.

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Public Transit is a Human Rights Issue Under Covid19

By Teka Lark (May 7, 2020)

More women take public transit than men, and more Black people are in car FREE households than anyone else. Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian American households are more likely to be in a car FREE household than white people. So it has always troubled me that upper-middle- and middle-class white men have continued to dominate this conversation. This conversation is intersectional. Open streets, human transit movement should be feminist. It should be Feminist with a capital F, but no it is far from that. The women in the human-centric transportation field seem to rather be viewed as the “cool girls” than stand up for other women and children. On Twitter, FB, in the media I keep hearing praises for carFREE BUSINESS initiatives that put people at risk and women at risk so that predominantly white business owners can make money. And I see women, with children co-signing on it, because of the pack dog mentality of movements that are male-dominated.

If you care about women and children, you need to speak up about the irresponsibility and selfishness of opening up businesses now —even if a bicycle is pasted on to it.

You need to say something about the vile new practice by urbanplanning/alttransit/bigdevelopment funded media trying to find the silver linings on opening up nonessential businesses, just because the streets are blocked off from cars. The workers that SERVE you and the public employees that bring them to work don’t live on the open street and often have to come on the train, the bus from FAR AWAY owing to redlining and racism to serve, work, so others can have fun.

There is no bright side to Florida (with horrible public transit) opening up because the streets with businesses happen to be blocked off from cars. The servers don’t live in the businesses, does that entire concept escape you?! If you’re Black, Latinx or white working class, you’ve probably experienced a two-hour commute for a piece of shit job, if you’re white, metropolitan and middle class, understand this: that is how the rest of us get to to work to serve you a coffee.

People are going to die because of this shortsightedness. Do people understand that people don’t live at their workplaces, that they have to travel, and all kinds of things can happen between home in East NY and serving a coffee on the Lower Eastside of Manhattan?

Men fine, I can see how middle-class white men don’t see this, but women in the carFREE movement–Black and Latina women are trying to eat, so I get why they are quiet, but white women — I’m not getting your silence on this madness? Being a feminist means sometimes being unpopular with guys.

This is a picture of Maryland of your essential retail workers getting to work, so maybe you can think about this before you co-sign on to some dude’s awesome idea of opening things back up.

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