June 9, 2020

Uber Eats Is Waiving Delivery Fees for All Black-Owned Restaurants

The promotion will continue through 2020.

https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/uber-eats-waiving-delivery-fees-black-owned-restaurants



There are numerous ways to disavow the police brutality and systemic racism that plagues our nation. And while protests, donations, and petitions are essential for creating change, supporting Black-owned businesses is another actionable way to help a hurting community. Uber Eats is now incentivizing it, too -- by waiving delivery fees on all orders from Black-owned restaurants through the end of 2020, the company's CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced in an email to customers on Thursday. The app will provide a prompt so you can easily navigate on over to a list of available Black-owned restaurants in your area.

"I wish that the lives of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and countless others weren’t so violently cut short," Khosrowshahi wrote in the statement. "I wish that institutional racism, and the police violence it gives rise to, didn’t cause their deaths. I wish that all members of our Black community felt safe enough to move around their cities without fear."

In addition to slashing delivery fees and offering discounted rides, Khosrowshahi has promised to increase the company's diversity numbers. According to a company report dating back to 2019, 45% of Uber's US employees were white, 33% Asian, 9% Black, and 8% Hispanic. The company is also donating $1 million to the Equal Justice Initiative and Center for Policing Equity.

"We know this isn’t enough. It won’t be enough until we see true racial justice. But we plan to work day in and day out to improve, learn, and grow as a company," Khosrowshahi closed out the email. "Lastly, let me speak clearly and unequivocally: Black Lives Matter."

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June 9, 2020

An Art Benefit Exhibition Supporting Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and Other LA Organisations

https://viewingroom.nightgallery.ca/viewing-room/black-lives-matter#tab:thumbnails;tab-1:slideshow








Christine Wang, Assata Taught Me, 2016






Kandis Williams, Degradation: Erasure II, 2016






Marisa Takal, I’m Driving By, 2019






Andy Woll, Judicium, 2018






Awol Erizku, THIS IS A PIG. HE TRIES TO CONTROL BLACK PEOPLE, 2017
Original drawing by James Teemer






Andrea Marie Breiling, If Day Light Breaks, 2019-2020



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June 9, 2020

Trump Declared War On America...And Lost

Trump tried to take up arms against the people of the United States and failed spectacularly on every conceivable level.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/trump-declared-war-on-americaand



What if you threw an American military coup and no one showed up, including the military? That’s the question Donald Trump answered for posterity last week as he bravely hid in his bunker and tweeted his impotent rage to the world. Make no mistake about what happened; America was on the edge of the abyss. We were at the same inflection point we’ve seen in other countries right before they fell into despotism. Where the military ceased to be a force to prevent foreign incursion and instead became a weapon to coerce the civilian populace. Trump tried to take up arms against the people of the United States and failed spectacularly on every conceivable level.

What Happened?

The basics are clear: George Floyd was slowly asphyxiated to death over the course of almost ten minutes by a white cop who was clearly enjoying himself. Three other officers helped hold Floyd down while this murder was taking place, showing a depraved indifference to what was happening. The entire scene was recorded and it went viral, sparking large protests. The police in several locations around the country responded as the police are wont to do: poorly and with grossly unnecessary violence. There was tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper spray, and pepper balls; all of which was unloaded into crowds of unarmed protesters with reckless abandon. At the same time, a small number of protesters, overwhelmingly and curiously white, smashed windows, burned cop cars, and instigated looting. Unlike previous protests over police brutality that got violent, disproportionately little of the violence appears to have been carried out by the black community. For instance, here’s a totally not-at-all suspicious looking white protester smashing windows and then immediately leaving the scene. Nope. Nothing odd about this guy. Absolutely spontaneous. For sure.

https://twitter.com/keithboykin/status/1266132570980454400

This lends credence to various reports from authorities that white nationalist agitators were targeting the protests in order to kick off their long-awaited race war. Or maybe just a war against the government. It depends on which faction of the domestic terrorist right you belong to. Do you wear Hawaiian shirts to the second Civil War or do you wear camo? These questions matter, darnnit! Regardless of which group of white people started smashing things or why, the right blamed Antifa, the right’s favorite boogeyman not named George Soros or Hillary Clinton. This allowed them to clutch their pearls in fear and demand an increasingly violent response to the civil unrest. Trump, following his authoritarian instincts, wanted to use the military to stomp out the protests. But, as in most of his life, his natural cowardice prevented him from actually giving the orders. Instead, he tweeted about how he was going to send the military into cities and be super duper tough. Then he demanded governors carry out his super duper tough guy plan for him because, again, he was too cowardly to give the order himself. It was only after Trump hid in his bunker that he (or more likely someone on his staff) ordered the military into DC to quell the growing protests. That’s when Trump’s grand plan to lead a military takeover of the United States went off the rails at high speed.

If You Lead, They Might Follow. But First, You Have To Lead

Trump “leads” the same way a mob boss “leads”; he never gives the orders himself so he can claim innocence in a court of law. “It’s not my fault that military raid went wrong, blame the generals!” “It’s not my fault this pandemic spread, blame the CDC!” “I don’t take any responsibility at all.” This is why he was trying to get the governors to order the military in. It’s true a president legally needs their consent to use the military in American cities but Trump has nothing but contempt for the law. If he thought the military would obey his illegal orders, he would have given them without a second’s hesitation. But he didn’t know if the military would be his personal weapon so he wanted the governors to try it out first. If they had done so, Trump could take credit and he would know that the military would, in fact, deploy against the civilian population if he ordered them to start shooting protesters. If they refused to take up arms against civilians, he could blame it all on the governors for trying to force the military to break their oath, etc. etc. These kinds of tests are a regular occurrence in the Trump regime. Cross a line here, violate a political or ethical norm there. Who needs the Constitution when you have the most powerful military in the world to subdue the masses?

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June 9, 2020

Paul Krugman - America fails the marshmallow test

The marshmallow test is a famous psychological experiment that tests children’s willingness to delay gratification. Children are offered a marshmallow, but told that they can have a second marshmallow if they’re willing to wait 15 minutes before eating the first one. Claims that children with the willpower to hold out do much better in life haven’t held up well, but the experiment is still a useful metaphor for many choices in life, both by individuals and by larger groups. One way to think about the Covid-19 pandemic is that it poses a kind of marshmallow test for society.

At this point, there have been enough international success stories in dealing with the coronavirus to leave us with a clear sense of what beating the pandemic takes. First, you have to impose strict social distancing long enough to reduce the number of infected people to a small fraction of the population. Then you have to implement a regime of testing, tracing and isolating: quickly identifying any new outbreak, finding everyone exposed, and quarantining them until the danger is past. This strategy is workable. South Korea has done it. New Zealand has done it. But you have to be strict and you have to be patient, staying the course until the pandemic is over, not giving in to the temptation to return to normal life while the virus is still widespread. So it is, as I said, a kind of marshmallow test.

And America is failing that test.

New U.S. cases and deaths have declined since early April, but that’s almost entirely because the greater New York area, after a horrific outbreak, has achieved huge progress. In many parts of the country — including our most populous states, California, Texas, and Florida — the disease is still spreading. Overall, new cases are plateauing and may be starting to rise. Yet state governments are moving to reopen anyway. This is a very different story from what’s happening in other advanced countries, even hard-hit nations like Italy and Spain, where new cases have fallen dramatically. It now looks likely that by late summer we’ll be the only major wealthy nation where large numbers of people are still dying from Covid-19.

Why are we failing the test? It’s easy to blame Donald Trump, a man-child who would surely gobble down that first marshmallow, then try to steal marshmallows from other kids. But America’s impatience, its unwillingness to do what it takes to deal with a threat that can’t be beaten with threats of violence, runs much deeper than one man. It doesn’t help that Republicans are ideologically opposed to government safety-net programs, which are what make the economic consequences of social distancing tolerable; as I explain in today’s column, they seem determined to let crucial emergency relief expire far too soon. Nor does it help that even low-cost measures to limit the spread of Covid-19, above all wearing face masks (which mainly protect other people), have been caught up in our culture wars. America in 2020, it seems, is too disunited, with too many people in the grip of ideology and partisanship, to deal effectively with a pandemic. We have the knowledge, we have the resources, but we don’t have the will.

no link
via an email

June 9, 2020

Four numbers that show America's disdain for its most vulnerable people

Now, with a quarter of the population facing economic collapse, the need for a guaranteed income is magnified to a level last seen in the Great Depression.

https://www.nationofchange.org/2020/06/08/four-numbers-that-show-americas-disdain-for-its-most-vulnerable-people/



Hundreds of thousands of Americans have suffered “deaths of despair” from alcohol and drug abuse and suicides because they could no longer provide for their families. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, during a post-recession period when the economy and stock market were booming, the poorest 50% of Americans lost wealth. And now many of them have lost their jobs, their income, their livelihoods.

40%—The percentage of lost jobs that may be lost for good

Anywhere from half to three-quarters of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck. Now the paychecks are disappearing. Tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs, many of which will not come back. A recent paper out of the University of Chicago estimates that over 40 percent of jobs lost are gone for good.

$40 Trillion—The amount of wealth that went to America’s richest 10% in just ten years

The poorest 50% got nothing. Their wealth actually declined. Over three-quarters of our wealth is owned by the richest 10% of Americans. Over $40 trillion has surged up to these individuals since the recession, allowing them to more than double their wealth to an average of over $3 million, mainly by doing nothing while the stock market nearly quadrupled in value. That’s American prosperity being shifted upwards, a redistribution of wealth to households that were already wealthy. America has nearly 20 million millionaires—approximately one for every seven households. But four of seven households are living without savings.

$8.70—The amount of black household wealth for every $100.00 of white household wealth

The economic pain is greatest for black households, who have seen their median household income DROP over the past twenty years, while their total household wealth remains at about one-twelfth of white households. The pain and misfortune continue to pile up for the black community, which has suffered the greatest effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Because of their job losses and lack of savings and inability to maintain rent payments, they will be taking the brunt of an inevitable housing crisis; and, in perhaps the cruelest hit of all, the Trump administration is still considering cuts in the food stamp program.

One hour—The amount of work in a week to be qualified as ’employed’...........

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June 9, 2020

Trump on FUX News: "What's with the phony shock? Or loser, disloyal generals? When didn't I bash

agitators with shock & awe?”

Why have command over armed forces and federal marshals, tear gas and booming helicopters, if not to quell mass insurgency?

https://www.nationofchange.org/2020/06/09/trump-on-fux-news-whats-with-the-phony-shock-or-loser-disloyal-generals-when-didnt-i-bash-agitators-with-shock-awe/



President Trump is renowned for sticking to his guns and never apologizing, the rock-solid genius who nails every crisis with the same reactive media hammer. That take-no-prisoners nonchalance was on display last night on FUX News, as the president expressed bafflement his shock-jock tactics surprised anyone. Interviewed by Brawn N. Sannity, President Trump wondered why nay-saying haters, even in his own party, act like his norm-busting bravado is new. “What’s with the phony shock?” demanded the president, “Or loser, disloyal generals? When didn’t I bash all agitators with shock and awe? When thuggish rioters rule the street, you call in the military or prison riot commandos, which I did. Good message for the campaign, too. Double-down domination and we win.”

He went on, “We’ve got vicious dogs terrorizing major cities – ruining stores I ordered open for business right now. Why have command over armed forces and federal marshals, tear gas and booming helicopters, if not to quell mass insurgency? Know the difference between terrorists decoyed as protesters vs. inmates? Not all are in jail yet. My perfect gut instinct says make the harsh penalty fit the anti-American crime. Why else would I tell police to knock heads? Sure, pack grenades and chemical spray. Who cares if wimps say it’s a banned war weapon? Never forget who’s in charge. Hell, if I knew what habeas corpus meant, I’d suspender that, too.” “I forgot who said, ‘use the army you have,’ So I jailed illegals and put kids in cages. These looters remind me and my CEO buddies of Mexicans: bringing drugs, bringing crime, bringing gangs. Imagine outlaws daring to block my roads or access to my golf courses, even my emoluments, whatever they are. I’m doing a public service: looters invite shooters.”

Sannity then asked the president about racial equality. “Well, I think it’s great thanks to me. Perfect, like that Ukrainian phone call. When was there evermore freedom for poor people to serve rich people, just like the good old days? Nobody’s ever done more to the black community top to bottom than what I’ve done. Look at all those new jobs. Keeps them off the streets.” “How can someone without a racist bone dislike blacks? Sure, fear of bad Negroes put me in the White House. But I know so many good Negroes and they don’t want riots in their front yards any more than me. How about law-abiding Mexicans who clean up disgusting stuff at my resorts white guys wouldn’t touch? Hey, I can’t stand lots of white people too, especially pro-impeachment haters. So I like dominant white people who like dominant white people, many serving in the police. It’s human nature and disloyal not to stand with your own people.”

Shifting to America having to clean up the “Chinese” pandemic mess, Sannity asked why they went after the U.S., causing our world-breaking death rate. “Ask my tricky friends in China,” Trump snapped, “and why some bad, bad virus experiment conveniently went awry. The insecure have to cheat against their betters. China must have figured this modest little flu would take us down – not that it ever did. Eventually, my team and Yankee brainpower will right the ship. How sad: those who can’t beat us fair and square send bad germs – on our own planes from Europe. Very devious. Very oriental. Facedown bullies like I did with those genius tariffs. The small pain they cause is the price to pay not having “loser” stamped on your kisser. Never give a sucker – or a competitor – an even break.” “Look, the courts and the Constitution give me unlimited power, rubber-stamped by my latest attorney general, what’s his name,. He says Nixon was right: if a president does it, it’s legal. If you’ve got power, I say, flaunt it. Just compare me with that weakling Nixon, ran away, tail between his legs, terrified by the mere threat of impeachment. I crushed the impeachment farce and triumphed over backfiring Democratic schemes. We’re in the battle of our lives so I say fire the big guns. I love the batta boom batta bing of big guns! I only have big guns. And big everything else.”

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P.S. Disclosure: While sources verify the spirit of these comments, not every satiric word has been independently verified. Trust your gut.

June 9, 2020

Today's Big Stuff. 6.9.20

Happy Tuesday. There are 147 days until the presidential election. Barr busts Bunker Bitch, a deranged man declares war on a senior citizen because Sputnik told him to and an official welcome to the U.S. recession.



https://us3.campaign-archive.com/?u=95243b67bc6530fa81420f617&id=98ba20cce9

Note: Hey y’all! The last several days have meant so much to us. We have seen the true spirit of America alive and well and filling the streets with calls for justice and equality. As such, we’ve been trying to be a little more high-minded and positive and encouraging since so many have raised their voices and sang to us a song of hope. But can we talk for a second about what absolute fucking gutter trash the Trump kids are? First of all, there is no question that Don Jr, Eric and Ivanka were all birthed through Satan’s asshole and shit on this great land as a curse, an insult and a way to stop them from fucking up Hell worse than it already is. So there they were, tiny demon butthole babies, with a cruel orange moron for a father and a series of European models who slapped them if they even thought of using the word mom. We don’t normally get biblical, but these monsters are just that awful. Did you see Ivanka saying her speech was canceled because of cancel culture? Look here, Daddy’s Little Love Interest, if cancel culture was real you and your family would be marooned on a desert island where we never had to fucking hear from you or your so-called brothers again. Or shot off into space with Elon and the Fox and Friends. Anyway, we aim to get back to hope and change and good feelings soon, but today we wanted to remind everyone that Ivana and Donald must be brother and sister who had sex in a haunted mansion while being jabbed with Voodoo pins because that’s the only way you explain kids who are that awful. As Rodney Dangerfield so eloquently said in Caddyshack, “Now I know why tigers eat their young.” More: New York Times

Note two: Sometimes we feel bad about cussing so much. And then we remember walking and talking genital warts like this are referred to as religious leaders. More: Washington Post

Note three: Please give this one a read. More: Houston Chronicle

Note four: These two stories kind of tell us everything we need to know. One headlines is “Trump hasn’t met with protesters or visited Minneapolis despite precedent.”

The other is about how Biden met with Geoge Floyd’s family. Let’s not screw up this obvious choice, America. More: CNN, LA Times

Note five: Wanna see some kickass journalism? More: Washington Post

Note six: Amid all the awful yesterday, we genuinely LOLed when Trump pulled out the worst pollster in the world to try and debunk all the polls that show him losing. Even for a fucking loser like Trump, this was pathetic. WaPo’s Philip Bump mocked it perfectly. More: Washington Post

Note seven: We love y’all. Have a great day and please be safe.

Bunker Bitch busted by Barr!

We have some bad news. It turns out the president of the United States was lying to us all when he said he only went down to the bunker during the day, for a few minutes and only for an inspection. We know. We know. It’s crushing. It was just so believable. But, in an effort to justify his own scummy actions -- namely teargassing peaceful, innocent protesters -- Barr confessed on Fox that Trump went to the bunker at night and because of protesters, like the cowardly chickenshit that he is. Bunker bitch is a terribly inartful term. Frankly, we prefer to avoid the b-word despite all our cussing. But we’ve stuck with this mostly because it makes his idiot supporters super mad. Well, that’s what you get for thinking a gameshow host who’s afraid of the rain is a goddamn tough guy. More: Bloomberg

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June 9, 2020

America Is Giving Up on the Pandemic

Businesses are reopening. Protests are erupting nationwide. But the virus isn’t done with us.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/06/america-giving-up-on-pandemic/612796/



After months of deserted public spaces and empty roads, Americans have returned to the streets. But they have come not for a joyous reopening to celebrate the country’s victory over the coronavirus. Instead, tens of thousands of people have ventured out to protest the killing of George Floyd by police. Demonstrators have closely gathered all over the country, and in blocks-long crowds in large cities, singing and chanting and demanding justice. Police officers have dealt with them roughly, crowding protesters together, blasting them with lung and eye irritants, and cramming them into paddy wagons and jails. There’s no point in denying the obvious: Standing in a crowd for long periods raises the risk of increased transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. This particular form of mass, in-person protest—and the corresponding police response—is a “perfect set-up” for transmission of the virus, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a radio interview on Friday. Some police-brutality activists (such as Black Lives Matter Seattle) have issued statements about the risk involved in the protests. Others have organized less risky forms of protests, such as Oakland’s Anti Police-Terror Project’s massive “caravan for justice.”

The risk of transmission is complicated by, and intertwined with, the urgent moral stakes: Systemic racism suffuses the United States. The mortality gap between black and white people persists. People born in zip codes mere miles from one another might have life-expectancy gaps of 10 or even 20 years. Two racial inequities meet in this week’s protests: one, a pandemic in which black people are dying at nearly twice their proportion of the population, according to racial data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic; and two, antiblack police brutality, with its long American history and intensifying militarization. Floyd, 46, survived COVID-19 in April, but was killed under the knee of a police officer in May. Americans may wish the virus to be gone, but it is not. While the outbreak has eased in the Northeast, driving down the overall national numbers, cases have only plateaued in the rest of the country, and they appear to be on the rise in recent days in COVID Tracking Project data. Twenty-two states reported 400 or more new cases Friday, and 14 other states and Puerto Rico reported cases in the triple digits. Several states—including Arizona, North Carolina, and California—are now seeing their highest numbers of known cases. These numbers all reflect infections that likely began before this week of protest. An even larger spike now seems likely. Put another way: If the country doesn’t see a substantial increase in new COVID-19 cases after this week, it should prompt a rethinking of what epidemiologists believe about how the virus spreads.

But as the pandemic persists, more and more states are pulling back on the measures they’d instituted to slow the virus. The Trump administration’s Coronavirus Task Force is winding down its activities. Its testing czar is returning to his day job at the Department of Health and Human Services. As the long, hot summer of 2020 begins, the facts suggest that the U.S. is not going to beat the coronavirus. Collectively, we slowly seem to be giving up. It is a bitter and unmistakably American cruelty that the people who might suffer most are also fighting for justice in a way that almost certainly increases their risk of being infected. The protests have led to unusually agonized public-health communication. They have not been met with the stern admonition to stay home that has greeted earlier mass gatherings. Given the long-standing health inequities that black Americans have experienced, hundreds of public-health professionals signed a letter this week declining to oppose the protests “as risky for COVID-19 transmission”: “We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States,” they wrote. Yet the protests are indisputably risky, and officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have warned the gatherings might “seed” new outbreaks.

Protesters themselves are not necessarily ignoring the pandemic. In videos of marches taken this week, many if not most, of the demonstrators appeared to be wearing masks. Photos and videos of protests show both large, tightly packed crowds and some demonstrators attempting to adhere to some form of social distancing. Protesters carrying hand sanitizer and water pass through the crowd in many cities. But the evidence does not reveal universal compliance with public-health guidelines. Protesters lay close together on the ground in many cities for nearly nine-minute-long “die-ins,” evoking the length of time that Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer, knelt on Floyd’s neck. Many protests have involved some form of shouting, chanting, or singing, which research suggests can be especially effective modes of transmission for the virus. Earlier this week, near the White House, a mostly masked crowd loudly sang “Lean on Me.” Protesters and public-health officials alike may be taking into account what The New York Times called “a growing consensus” that being outdoors mitigates some risk of transmission. The virus appears to perish quickly in a sunny, humid environment, even at room temperature, according to research conducted in April by the Department of Homeland Security. (Viral particles may survive for hours longer in drier conditions, and epidemiologists do not believe that these climatic effects alone will dampen the outbreak.) The virus also seems to be more difficult to transmit outside, especially during the day, though scientists still do not know enough about the virus to say confidently that large outdoor gatherings are completely safe. The number of protests over the past week means that researchers will soon have a much better understanding of the risks of outdoor transmission.

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June 8, 2020

American traumas

English version of a Swedish article

The US used to work for some, particularly the white working and middle classes, but now it only delivers faith in the future to tech billionaires and other plutocrats. It no longer works.

https://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/a/aw6zWL/rasismen-och-facebook-blir-slutet-for-usa

In 50 years, will the United States still exist? Or will the union have been pulled apart—in a peaceful or, at worst, a violent and bloody process? This scenario seems entirely possible. That is how weakened the country is and how brutal are its conflicts—although there better words than ‘conflicts’: oppression, exploitation, discrimination. When Martin Luther King was murdered, Esquire magazine interviewed James Baldwin, who in his writing clearly and painfully described the consequences of racism—for the oppressed as well as the oppressor. How can we get black people to cool it? the newspaper asked. It is not for us to cool it, Baldwin replied. The year was 1968. Two months after King’s assassination, the Democratic party’s presidential candidate, Bobby Kennedy, was killed. That summer, protesters met brutal police violence during the Democrats’ convention in Chicago. It is possible to mirror the present in what happened then. The backdrop to the unrest and uprising in 1968 was also intense political conflict, violence on the streets and death on a mass scale, hitting as unevenly as brutally. In 1968 the proximate cause was the Vietnam war; now it’s the virus. More than 100,000 Americans have died and the class aspects of both those who die and those who lose their livelihood, health insurance and hope for the future are crystal-clear and inexorable. It’s the poor, and it’s black Americans. Add to this the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. And then a history of police brutality that has always existed but is becoming more visible than ever, thanks to smartphone cameras. How can anyone be surprised at what is happening now?

Racist rage

The US social contract has always been based on the fact that white people come first. Yes, Barack Obama was elected president twice. But, as the author Ta-Nahesi Coates has noted, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 must largely be understood as a result of the racist rage which ensued. Trump’s victory has made many on the European left re-evaluate ‘the nation’ and contemporary ‘identity politics’—‘white working-class’ voters must be won back, it is said, at any price. But the blind spot in this analysis is that Trump’s policies have always been based on stoking and inciting racism. In Trump’s world, nationalism and racism are evermore part of the same story. And slavery and racial oppression are America’s original sins. They are not history but a continuing experience. They have never been ‘resolved’—not with the civil war, not with King and the civil-rights movement, not with Obama. When Trump tweets to undermine postal voting, the goal is to make sure black voters don’t exercise their democratic rights. It’s just one small example—there are so many. The judicial system and the police, as well as the housing and labour markets, systematically discriminate against African Americans. The political and economic system has eroded the living conditions of the middle class that still remains, while the American working class lacks basic security and prospects for the future. Poverty, despair and the opioid epidemic have caused average life expectancy to fall in many groups. Add to that the virus, and Trump’s catastrophic handling of the crisis.

Billlionaires and plutocrats

The ‘American dream’ used to work for individuals among certain strata, preferentially the white working and middle class. Today the only real beneficiaries are tech billionaires and other plutocrats. It doesn’t work any more—how could it? The United States is a democracy: its citizens have rights, on paper. But what matters in the long run is justice, and justice can only be attained through decent material conditions, actual life chances and dignity. Trump has been mediocre as a politician but as a propagandist he is a great success. Even now, during the worst crisis in the US since the 1930s, he maintains his core support. There is no common public sphere in the US anymore; there are no common truths. ‘I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters,’ Trump has said, and he is right. He understands how the information landscape works today—how anger, hatred and lies are what works best on ‘social media’. But he has done more than that: he has effectively schooled Facebook’s boss, Mark Zuckerberg, into being his messenger boy. In private meetings, Zuckerberg hailed Trump for being ‘No 1 on Facebook’ and Trump has been assisted by Facebook’s data analysts to optimise his election campaigns. Recently, Twitter censored one of Trump’s tweets for glorifying violence. Trump responded by threatening to regulate the social networks to make them responsible for what they publish. The threat is not serious—if it became reality it would primarily impede him and the other preachers of hate. As the sociologist and tech scientist Zeynep Tufekci has written, the threat against Twitter should however be seen as a message directed at an audience of one—Zuckerberg.

Empty arguments

Zuckerberg, who is in charge of a much bigger and more important platform, has used empty freedom-of-speech arguments to defend the rights of politicians to lie freely on Facebook. He knows it is Trump who lies most, and that the purpose of his lies is to incite white Americans’ fear and racism and to discourage black Americans from voting. That is how surveillance capitalism and Trumpianism overlap and reinforce each other. The pandemic has left 13 million Americans unemployed; during the same period Zuckerberg has increased his wealth by $25 billion. The US historian Jill Lepore has said that much of what we call ‘polarisation’ there is a consequence of people who were not previously part of democracy now claiming their place and their rights—the reaction is a backlash. That backlash is reinforced by a public sphere which foregrounds hatred and reinforces the most destructive inclinations of humankind. Racism and Facebook, in combination, are what will break the American republic. In 2016, Trump hesitated when asked if he was prepared to accept Hillary Clinton as the winner. The question is what he will do this autumn, if he loses. What happens if he rejects the election result? A society steeped in racism affects those exposed to it directly, through violence. But it also corrupts everything and everyone. But aren’t you the ones who are getting hurt the most? Esquire asked Baldwin. No, Baldwin replied. We are only the ones who are dying fastest.

June 6, 2020

13TH -Full length documentary exposes the heinous history of mass incarceration of African Americans

Combining archival footage with testimony from activists and scholars, director Ava DuVernay's examination of the U.S. prison system looks at how the country's history of racial inequality drives the high rate of incarceration in America.

This piercing, Oscar-nominated film won Best Documentary at the Emmys, the BAFTAs and the NAACP Image Awards.


13th (Film)

https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/free-educational-documentaries

The title of Ava DuVernay’s extraordinary and galvanizing documentary refers to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” The progression from that second qualifying clause to the horrors of mass criminalization and the sprawling American prison industry is laid out by DuVernay with bracing lucidity. With a potent mixture of archival footage and testimony from a dazzling array of activists, politicians, historians, and formerly incarcerated women and men, DuVernay creates a work of grand historical synthesis.