All posts by Janet Powe

Picket Labour Party NEC over anti-black racism and in solidarity with BLM – Tuesday 7th July

*Reminder: Raise *your* voices*!

Labour Black Socialist & Allies

‘Black Members Matter!’
In Solidarity & Unity with BLM

Come and join our Labour NEC Picket against Institutional & Systematic Racism in the Labour Party

ARE YOU:
ANGRY about the Lack of Opposition to Anti Black Racism (BAME) in Labour Party & Treatment of Black Members?
FRUSTRATED about the Labour Party’s SILENCE on All forms of Racism including Afriphobia, Islamaphobia?
OUTRAGED about Racism in the leaked Labour Report?
WORRIED about a Whitewash Leaked Report Inquiry?
FURIOUS at Starmer’s Dismissal of the BLM Uprising, their demands and Global Historical Importance.

Root out anti-Black racism in Labour

This is OUR MOMENT to Make Our Voices Heard

AT: LABOUR PARTY NEC EQUALITIES MEETING
Labour HQ 105 Victoria St, Westminster, London SW1E 6QT
ON: Tuesday 7th July 2020
AT: 10 am

#BlackLabourMatterMatter #BlackLivesMatter #RootOutRacismInLabour

In Solidarity & Unity with BLM,
Sophia, Liz and Joyce.

If you are interested:

  • Join our Socially Distanced Picket
  • Wear Masks
  • Bring Banners, Flags.

For more info contact Joyce Reid: [email protected]

Birmingham City fans march against racism and for Trevor Smith shot dead by police

From I Am Birmingham:

The anti-racist march was held to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, and in honour of local man Trevor Smith, who was tragically shot dead by armed police last year.

Despite the number of attendees estimated at around 300 by reporters and 2,000 by organisers, the event was a peaceful gathering of BCFC supporters from all backgrounds who joined forces to voice their solidarity against racism and hate.

Marc Gauntlett, who led the march with friends, hopes it will bring together football fans and former ‘hooligans’, “uniting people of all backgrounds against hate.”

Gauntlett was active in The Zulu Warriors hooligan firm which supports Birmingham City Football Club, and has left behind a life of violence related to hooliganism. Now reformed, he wants to show that football fans must rise beyond racist attitudes and challenge racism in the sport.

Pic Lensi Photgraphy

More

Wow! NFAC Black nationalist armed militia challenges far-right


Update: NFAC marches to downtown Louisville:

Latest – live feed from Courier Journal 25th July 2020:

NFAC rally in downtown Louisville

The group will march to Jefferson Square.

Posted by Courier Journal on Saturday, July 25, 2020

What is the NFAC?

The founder and leader of the NFAC – the Not Fucking Around Coalition – is Grandmaster Jay. His real name has not been confirmed at the time of writing.

The NFAC is thought to be an offshoot in part of the Black Hebrew Israelites.

There may also be some overlap with the New Black Panther Party. The NBP has no connection with the original Black Panthers, which was a revolutionary socialist organisation.

According to some information circulating online he has made antisemitic statements and ascribes to the “Illuminati” conspiracy theory.

[update – 10 July] However, in a video (see below) interview with Roland Martin Grandmaster Jay denies the group is anti-Semitic.

The groups aims are to create a black nation in Texas, following in the footsteps of the Black separatist tradition in the US in which similar demands have previously been made.

The economic foundation of the new state would be based on reparation payments from the US government.

NFAC says it is not affiliated with the US Black Lives Matter organisation or the wider movement.

Some reports suggest that the organisation has a number of white members. However, this is not readily apparent from the video footage seen by BLMM correspondents. Word from the avowed leader of the militia also contradicts those reports, given that Jay describes the militia as “100% Black”.

It is not known how homogenous the militia is beyond the vague black separatist impulses.

Roots of Black Separatism

Separatist politics dates back to African-American abolitionist and physician Martin Delany in the first half of the nineteenth century, and most successfully with the Garveyite movement of the 1920s, which created the first mass political organisation of black people in the US.

The strongest organisational footprint of the separatist tradition is represented by the Nation of Islam (NoI).

There are no known links between the politically conservative NoI and the NFAC.

Black separatism has developed as a reaction against white racism but the “Back to Africa” slogan – or the independent state idea (it was the Black Belt before the NFAC came up with Texas) on the territory of the US – was more an ideological crutch than a serious realisable goal; it was a way of signalling a rejection of white America and the systemic and violent racism American society perpetuated.

The Black Hebrew Israelites have been blamed for inspiring the racist attacks on Jewish people that have taken place in New Jersey and New York.

Reports from the interactions of NFAC militia members with regular BLM protesters in the park to which the militia marched, suggest that the Black Hebrew Israelites are not influential, among the rank and file at any rate.

NFAC (Not Fucking Around Coalition) militia formed up at Stone Mountain, Georgia, the site of the reformation of the terrorist KKK in 1915.

The site is hallowed ground for America’s white supremacists and their cheerleader Donald Trump.

At 1,000 strong, the NFAC threw down the gauntlet to the far-right militia groups, but they were in Gettysburg to stop a flag-burning that turned out to be a hoax but they were too stupid to realise.

From Newsweek:

NFAC Founder Grand Master Jay told Newsweek via phone Sunday that the militia members at Stone Mountain on Saturday were “100 percent black” and they are not affiliated with Black Lives Matter. “We are a black militia. We aren’t protesters, we aren’t demonstrators. We don’t come to sing, we don’t come to chant. That’s not what we do,” he said.

The emergence of this Black militia group has certainly got people talking. None more so perhaps than Terry Crews.

Judging by his recent tweets and an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon, Crews seems to have mistakenly decided that the Black separatist world view of the NFAC leadership, such as it is, is dominant in the BLM movement.

NFAC leader denies group is anti-Semitic or that it wants Texas.

Latest developments – NFAC headed to Louisville Kentucky, 25th July

BLM activist Summer Taylor murdered by Trump-empowered vigilante

BLM activist Summer Taylor was 24 years old, an animal lover who worked full time at a veterinary clinic in Seattle.

Summer was a trusted ally of Black Lives Matter in Seattle and was brutally killed last night when a man literally barreled over people with his car on an empty road that police had blocked off for protestors. ⁣

Protestors were literally joyfully dancing to the Cupid Shuffle when a man driving a white Jaguar sped right through the crowd, sending Summer and others flying into the air. ⁣

He then drove for miles, having just killed Summer, and injured others, until he was finally stopped. ⁣-Shaun King. RIP Summer. ?? #whitelivesthatstandwithblacklivesmatter#blacklivesmatter #blm #summertaylor

updated 7 July 2020 11:28 BST

Details of the driver have been released. He is named Dawit Kelete and his motive is not established at this time.

Dawit Kelete

Johnson & Johnson ordered to pay $2.1 billion to African-American women it targeted with ads for Asbestos-tainted baby powder

Johnson & Johnson knew for fifty years that their talc powder contained asbestos. As the dangers became more widely known, they deliberately shifted marketing effort to target black women.

From Democracy Now:

Johnson & Johnson has been ordered to pay $2.1 billion to a group of women who developed ovarian cancer after using talcum powder contaminated with asbestos.

Johnson & Johnson heavily marketed the powder to African-American women despite warnings that the products could cause cancer.

Six of the plaintiffs in the Johnson & Johnson case died before the trial started. Five more of the women have died since 2018.

We get response from M. Isabelle Chaudry, senior policy manager at the National Women’s Health Network, who says the company must ban the products globally and do more to address the harm it has caused, particularly to communities of color.

“They have a history of engaging in racist practices,” she says. more

Hundreds turnout for Colchester BLM rally and march

About 400 in Castle Park Colchester for this mornings BLM protest followed by a good 600 to 800 on the march – including powerful stop outside Town Hall for mass chant of “Black Lives Matter!”.

Pics and words by Anthony Sullivan

BLM Colchester rally in Castle Park, Colchester
BLM march through Colchester, Essex.
Speakers included Colchester Stand Up To Racism and Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Ban Tasers – Scrap Section 60 stop and search law – protest Sat 4th July

End stop & search – Ban Tasers. Protest – Sat 4 July 12 noon Ducketts Common Turnpike Lane N8 #justiceformarkduggan #justiceforcynthiajarrett #justiceforjoygardner #justiceforrogersylvester #justiceforjermainebaker #BlackLivesMatterUK #LDNBLM #BLMUK #NoJusticeNoPeace ✊✊?✊?✊?✊?✊?

David Starkey has been allowed to empower genocidal racists for too long

Starkey is not a very good historian of British history, so to expect him to know much about anywhere else in the world is stretching it.

His lies about the slave trade were just the latest in a long line of racist utterances.

During the 2011 riots, which involved more white people than black, Starkey claimed it was only happening because white kids “were turning black”.

People like Starkey – and fellow travellers such as ex-leftie Melanie Phillips, Rod Liddle, Toby Young etc – give cover to the fascists on the streets that like to attack and kill people who don’t look like them.

In case you missed Starkey’s latest vile racist diatribe here it is (from the Telegraph):

In an interview with the conservative commentator Darren Grimes, the historian said slavery could not be classed as genocide because of the survival of “so many damn blacks”.

“Slavery was not genocide,” he said. 

“Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain would there?

“An awful lot of them survived.”

Dr Starkey went on to discuss the relationship between slavery and the British Empire.

“As for the idea that slavery is this kind of terrible disease that dare not speak its name, it only dare not speak its name, Darren, because we settled it nearly 200 years ago,” he said.

“We don’t normally go on about the fact that Roman Catholics once upon a time didn’t have the vote and weren’t allowed to have their own churches because we had Catholic emancipation.”

Labour’s Starmer attacks BLM and then apologises to black journalists

updated Monday 6th July 13:45 BST: A picket of the Labour Party NEC meeting to call out the leaderships racism has been called for Tuesday 7th July at 10am. More details here.


Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, a former state prosecutor, has gone out of his way to ingratiate himself with the establishment and the media in this country.

In addition to bashing the left in his own party, he has been showing to the powers that be that they have nothing at all to fear from a Labour party led by him.

The Starmer way: soft on the Tories, hard on the left and anti-racists

This is what explains the Labour party’s supine response to the government mishandling of the pandemic response.

In fact at one point the Labour leadership was calling for the lifting of the lockdown even before the Tories were.

But the attitude that Starmer (who is after all pretty much a member of the establishment given that he is a knight of the realm) has taken to Black Lives Matter has shocked many in the black community.

Starmer when asked about the movement basically said BLM was a bit of a joke, that the issues were all about the US, inferring that all was good here in the UK in respect of racism, and that the movement wasn’t a movement at all and, again by inference, would presumably soon be over.

In case you missed the full horror show of an interview, watch and listen carefully carefully chosen words of the lawyer. His reversal of the oft-quoted remark of protesters that his is a ‘movement not a moment’ is reversed by Starmer.

Labour alienating black supporters

The remarks from Starmer come on the back of his refusal to tackle racism in the Labour Party of to discipline staffers who racially abused black women MPs

A report by the Huffington Post (see link below) recently drew attention to the tin ear the warmed-over Blairite leadership has when it comes to racism against its black members:

Exclusive: Labour Is Losing Black Members Over Allegations Of Anti-Black Racism

The Labour party has already done a good job in alienating a fair chunk of its working-class support and now it is in danger of driving away a key constituent of hitherto loyal support.

Starmer’s comments haven’t sat well with many of his own MPs.

Another Labour MP, Florence Eshalomi, said his “choice of words [was] wrong”.

That probably explains why Starmer is now on a belated damage limitation operation.

Yesterday he did e a Q&A with black journalists at which he said: “This is not a moment for not standing with the Black Lives Matter movement and the injustice that is being exposed.”

https://twitter.com/The_Crox/status/1278689948275703808?s=20

Thanks for that Keir but the damage has been done.

Starmer visited Tottenham not so long ago and a Labour Party member sent us a photograph of the gathering of locals – remember this is Tottenham.

Here’s a game to play with your Blairite friends: spot the black person.

Actually Starmer was proud of his work in Tottenham – he posted it on Facebook. Again, remember, this is Tottenham!

A pic from Keir Starmer’s Facebook account

You can send complaints to the Labour Party at the emails below (yes we could complain to the Conservative Party about their racism too but, seriously, why bother):

Labour East – laboureast.org.uk
East Midlands Labour – eastmidslabour.org.uk
London Labour – labourinlondon.org.uk
Labour North – labournorth.com
Labour North West – labournorthwest.org.uk
Labour South East – laboursoutheast.org.uk
Labour South West – laboursouthwest.org.uk
West Midlands Labour – westmidlandslabour.org.uk
Yorkshire and the Humber Labour – yorkshireandhumberlabour.org.uk

You can fill in the complaint form here: