Not sure who the cartoonist is to credit. If someone can help please contact BLMM…
What do you want to be when you grow up? Alive
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
Wow! NFAC Black nationalist armed militia challenges far-right
Update: NFAC marches to downtown Louisville:
Latest – live feed from Courier Journal 25th July 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.
Latest developments – NFAC headed to Louisville Kentucky, 25th July
BLM London protest for Breonna Taylor and all the dead in the US and UK – 11th July US embassy
BLM protest and march for Breonna Taylor and all the innocent black people murdered by the police in the US and UK.
We are marching against institutional racism!!!
Assemble US embassy 2pm and march to Parliament Square.
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.
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
Block party policing is racist: Covid laws excuse by riot police to terrorise London estates
Updated 14:38 BST
Black community leaders on the ground in London say an uprising is inevitable if police and their political masters continue with their oppressive policing of young black people at block party gatherings
A series of incidents across London are seeing tensions between the community and the police boils over.
One law for Black youth, another for middle-class white people
This comes against the background of mounting concern about the racist nature of the contrast between how black youth are dealt with in the Covid pandemic as opposed to white sunbathers on beaches, or mostly white people gathering in large numbers in cramped conditions in and around pubs, such as in Soho Square in London’s West End yesterday.
In those locations there is not a policeman to be seen but as soon as black youth organise their own cheaper forms of entertainment there’s a visit from the Metropolitan police’s Tactical Support Group (riot police).
In addition to the panoply of stop and search laws the police already use to harass black people – such as under PACE, Section 60 and anti-terrorism legislation, there is a new weapon in their locker: the Covid Act.
This was made clear not long into the pandemic when black people were soon shown to be disproportionately more likely to be stopped and fined by the police.
“There’s an explosion coming if the police carry on like this with the TSG”
Ken Hinds
Ken Hinds, who runs a police monitoring group based in Tottenham, north London told BLMM: “Why don’t they come and talk to the community and the elders so we can supervise our own events instead of sending in riot police?”
“There’s an explosion coming if the police carry on like this with the TSG [Tactical Support Group].”
The rising tension has seen young people push back against police intimidation and wanton violence.
Block party clampdown: a “general anti-police conflagration” coming?
BLM activist Gary McFarlane echoed those sentiments: “After weeks of being told by the Tory politicians and others who should know better, that there was nothing to be fighting about here in the UK concerning racism – we see on display in this racist policing of block parties the full extent of the institutional racism of the police, and the government and politicians who encourage them.
“This comes after numerous cases of police racist violence and profiling, such as around the death of Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry.
“Then there’s the appalling treatment of Andrew Boateng and his son and the most recent outrage that has just come to light of Ryan Colaço, who has been repeatedly stopped by racist police -– one time after coming back from a Channel 4 interview about police harassment. Enough is enough.”
McFarlane continued: “The Met should know that more of this brutal discriminatory policing will see localised fight backs turn into a general anti-police conflagration across London. Is that what they really want?”
BLM fuels Black youth fightback
After months of being confined in flats with no gardens and with little money, the Black Lives Matter movement has given black (and white) working-class youth greater confidence to challenge racist policing practices.
Parties have been held in Streatham, Brixton, Tottenham, Kensal Town to name just a few areas of London, where videos of riot police have gone viral.
However, if you are a middle class white person partying and spending £5 on a pint of beer in Soho in crowded conditions that break all Covid social-distancing rules, that’s just fine. Not a cop in sight.
Raise your voice against the criminalisation of Black youth
Make a complaint to the Mayor’s Office For Policing and Crime (MOPAC)
Complain direct to the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) and Independent for Police Conduct (IOPC):
MPS
Directorate of Professional Standards
Complaints Support Team
22nd Floor, Empress State Building
Lillie Road
London
SW6 1TR
IOPC
Independent Office for Police Conduct
PO Box 473
Sale
M33 0BW
This story will be updated throughout the day
North London says no to Tasers, scrap Section 60 stop and search
Three hundred people came to Turnpike Lane today to protest against the use of Tasers by police and draconian Section 60 stop and search laws.
The protest was organised by Haringey Stand Up To Racism and supported by local Black Lives Matter groups.
Speakers included deputy leader of Haringey Council Seema Chandwani, and Andrew Boateng who’s case was recently reported by the national media after he was stopped with his son and handcuffed while on a charity ride for a community-police relations charity.
The cases of two black men (Millard Scott and Jordan Walker-Brown) tasered by police in Tottenham have come to light in recent weeks.
This follows incidents in the North, particularly in Manchester where Desmond Ziggy Mombeyarara was tasered while holding his 5-year-old child.
A rising number of cases are being recorded as police use Tasers as an offensive weapon, and not for defence as originally intended.
Section 60 is increasingly being used by police to stop and search black youth without having to give a reason. Although most stops are still under PACE (Police and Criminal Evidence Act), the number is falling because of campaigning against it.
In response however, police are routinely turning to the more severe public order legislation that provides police with more draconian powers.
At the request of senior officers, entire boroughs – often several at the same time – can be put under section 60 and any individual stopped and searched.
These laws are being abused to widen the oppressive overpolicing of black communities – seen most recently in the ongoing unnecessary use of force to shut down block and street parties in London and elsewhere, while allowing sunbathers to congregate in huge numbers unmolested by the authorities.
Introducing Tribe Named Athari (TNA), formerly LDNBLM – chopping up TNA
Seeking cohesive collective impact
LDNBLM (TNA) are some of the young people in London who were involved in helping to organise the largest London protests. Here some members introduce themselves and talk about the IMPACT they want to make.