Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar
The dull, the ignorant, the loud, the haters, and the traitorous came for Judge Ketanji Jackson Brown this week… she who had the temerity to have put herself in the position that she could be offered the nomination to the SCOTUS, and the audacity to accept! Racial hatred, hypocrisy, and gaslighting tried their best to overshadow and overpower Black excellence, professionalism, beauty, and Black Girl Magic. Frothing, grandstanding members of a party that is home to donald-effing-trump, “Gym” Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Roy Moore, and other assorted scums-of-the-earth put on a show that was worthy of their slave-owning fore-parents.
But this is 2022 and not 1822. Amidst the sound and the fury of the criminally impotent and the reticence of the Democrats, a hero stepped forward. Nope, there’d be no lynching on his watch. This Black woman was not going to be left out there to fight all by herself. Not this time. Senator Cory Booker, who made absolutely no attempt to hide his great love and admiration for Judge Ketanji Davis Brown, would have his say...for the record.
At the end of the day, it will not be racist white men showing their racist arses that will define this hearing. It will not be the bitchiness, incoherent ramblings, and superior air of Marsha Blackburn that people will be talking about 10 years from now… Cory Booker made damn sure of that.
Senator Booker had a mission on Wednesday. He understood his assignment and he met the moment. He made the soon-to-be Justice cry, and he had me and Black women around the nation bawling our eyes out.
Transcript (done by yours truly):
You got here how every Black woman in America who has gotten anywhere has done, by being like Ginger Rogers said, “I did everything Fred Astaire did but backwards in heels.” I wanna tell you when I look at you, this is why I get emotional...I’m sorry, you’re a person that is so much more than your race and gender. You’re a Christian. You’re a mom. You are an intellect. You love books. But for me, I’m sorry...I...it’s hard for me not to look at you and not see my mom. Not to see my cousins...one of whom had to come here and sit behind you. She had to have your back! I see my ancestors and yours.
Nobody is gonna steal the joy from that woman in the streets. Or those calls I’m getting, or the texts. Nobody is gonna steal that joy. You have earned this spot. You are worthy. You are a great American. That is the story of how you got to this desk. And so you faced insults here that are shocking to me…well actually, not shocking. But you are here because of that kind of love and nobody’s taking this away from me. So you got five more folks to go through! Five more of us! And then you can sit back and let us have all the debates. And I’m gonna tell you, it’s gonna be a well-charted Senate floor. Because it’s not gonna stop. They are gonna accuse you of this and that. Heck, in honor of the person who shares your birthday, you might be called a communist! But don’t worry, my sister. Don’t worry. God has got you. And how do I know that? Because you’re here, and I know what it’s taken for you to sit in that seat.
Today you are my star. You are my harbinger of hope. This country is getting better and better and better. And when that final vote happens and you are sent onto the highest court in the land, I’m gonna rejoice. And I’m gonna tell you right now, the greatest country in the world, the United States of America, will be better because of you. Thank you.
A thing of beauty. Thank you, Senator Booker.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The Oscar-nominated director of Attica keeps showing us the real America. VOX: Stanley Nelson’s 3 decades of telling Black stories
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I was a teenager when I watched Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon, and I had no idea what Al Pacino was yelling about outside that bank. “Attica! Attica!” made me curious, but there was nothing about it in my high school textbooks and not that much in the library. I’d have to wait many years to understand more about the largest and deadliest prison insurrection in United States history.
Amidst a conservative crusade to criminalize the teaching of that history, there may not have been a better time for documentarian Stanley Nelson’s Attica to emerge.
During much of the three decades Nelson has spent making films, he has told stories about Black life in America. His films have shed new light on everything from the 1921 Tulsa pogrom to the fight for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s, with films such as Freedom Summer and The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution. Now, the 70-year-old documentarian has received his first Academy Award nomination for his feature-length look at one of the most pivotal events in the history of American criminal punishment.
Co-directed by fellow nominee Traci A. Curry (a friend and former colleague of mine), the documentary begins with the inception of the rebellion — an explosion of the frustration building up in the men imprisoned at Attica Correctional Facility. The persistently poor treatment they were receiving ranged from insufficient medical care to a lack of showers and toilet paper. The disrespect and dehumanization by the all-white roster of guards may have been at the top of the list. The prison’s population has a heavy majority of Black or brown men so, as one interviewee asked sardonically early in the film, “What could go wrong?”
One answer to that question came on September 13, 1971, five days after the standoff began. State police retook the prison, using gunfire. Thirty of the 33 incarcerated men who died that week were killed by law enforcement. Though a cover story emerged that alleged the prisoners were responsible for all 10 deaths of Attica prison guards during the insurrection, medical examiners quickly determined that authorities killed nine of them.
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On Wednesday, the Supreme Court issued an astonishing decision throwing out Wisconsin’s new legislative districts as a violation of the equal protection clause. The majority accused a Republican justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court of greenlighting a “racial gerrymander” by creating one more majority-Black district in the state Assembly. Wednesday’s unsigned decision, issued through the shadow docket, hands Wisconsin Republicans an unexpected victory in their quest to reduce Black representation in the legislature. It also alters the law of redistricting in fundamental yet cryptic ways that might, to a cynic, seem designed to disadvantage Democrats in every single case.
Wisconsin Legislature v. Wisconsin Elections Commission is an unusual case. It arose because the state’s Democratic governor and GOP-controlled legislature could not agree on new maps following the 2020 census. The Wisconsin Supreme Court stepped in to referee the dispute, allowing parties to submit draft maps for its consideration—including Gov. Tony Evers and legislative leaders. A majority declared that it would abide by a “least change” rule, selecting the map that made the fewest changes to the current plan. Applying this standard, the court adopted Evers’ map in March. Notably, Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative Republican, authored the majority opinion. His decision largely preserved the current Republican gerrymander, but also increased the number of majority-Black Assembly districts in Milwaukee from six to seven.
This outcome was, objectively, quite sensible. The Supreme Court has held that the Voting Rights Act bars states from diluting racial minorities’ votes—by, for instance, splitting them up into a bunch of different districts. But it has also held the equal protection clause forbids the use of race as a “predominant factor” in redistricting. Evers believed that, due to the growth of Milwaukee’s Black population over the decade, the current map diluted minority votes in violation of the VRA. Black residents were now packed into too few districts, and the creation of a seventh would restore their political power. The Wisconsin Supreme Court did not rely on this reasoning in choosing Evers’ map; again, it just picked the most minimalist plan. But in his majority opinion, Hagedorn did assess potential conflicts with the VRA and the equal protection clause. He concluded that there were no evident legal flaws, but noted that plaintiffs could still challenge the map in the future.
Republicans appealed Hagedorn’s decision, arguing that it constituted an illegal “21st-century racial gerrymander.” On Wednesday, SCOTUS agreed. The majority admitted that it wasn’t sure whether to fault Evers or Hagedorn for adopting the seventh district, so it blamed both of them. First, it claimed that Evers put forth insufficient evidence demonstrating that, without a seventh majority-Black district, the plan would violate the VRA. Second, it faulted Hagedorn for failing to consider “whether a race-neutral alternative that did not add a seventh majority-black district would deny black voters equal political opportunity.” So it overturned the legislative maps and ordered the Wisconsin Supreme Court to either adopt a different plan (with less Black representation) or justify Evers’ plan with “new analysis” that complies “with our equal protection jurisprudence.” (Because state law requires three Assembly seats nested within each Senate seat, a new map will require substantial adjustment of multiple districts.)
As Justice Sonia Sotomayor explained in a dissent joined by Justice Elena Kagan, this decision is “unprecedented,” “extraordinary,” and “unnecessary.” One fundamental problem is that, until now, no party raised an equal protection challenge to the legislative map. So Hagedorn had no opportunity to conduct a full constitutional analysis. Instead, in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Republicans agreed that the VRA required multiple majority-Black districts in Milwaukee. They then ambushed the courts with last-minute complaints about an alleged racial gerrymander. SCOTUS rewarded their behavior, accusing Hagedorn of failing to undertake an analysis that no party asked him to undertake. There is “no precedent,” Sotomayor wrote, requiring a court “to embark on an independent inquiry into matters that the parties have conceded or not contested.”
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Thursday marked Day 4 in the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. It was not as fiery and emotional as Day 3, where Senator Cory Booker came to the defense of Judge Jackson following what many considered racial and sexist attacks by Republicans against Jackson who is poised to become the first Black woman Supreme Court justice.
As previously reported by theGrio, Jackson shed tears at Wednesday’s hearing during Senator Booker’s stirring speech in which he declared to the circuit court judge, “You are worthy!”
“Don’t worry my sister…today you are my star,” said Booker, referencing the star Harriet Tubman looked to as she freed the enslaved.
Booker called out the mistreatment of Jackson, a Black woman, amid an overwhelmingly white male-dominated arena and spoke to the broader hardships of Black women in the United States.
“Yesterday, we saw what happens when a strong African American woman under unimaginable scrutiny in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s proverbial lions’ den is publicly affirmed,” Bishop Vashti McKenzie, the first woman bishop in the AME church told theGrio.
“Tears glistened on the cheeks of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. The tears did not diminish her brilliance. They enhanced it.”
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A new offshore oil discovery could be a godsend—or disaster—for one of Africa’s most unequal countries. Foreign Policy: Can Namibia Avoid the Resource Curse?
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As oil and gas prices surge following sanctions against Russia, Africa may be well-positioned to become a global energy production hub. But a large majority of African countries are feeling the economic pain as net importers. This has prompted governments to begin accelerating oil and gas exploration.
One of the biggest oil and gas discoveries on the continent was made last month by TotalEnergies and Shell off the coast of Namibia. It is thought the offshore deposits could hold about 3 billion barrels of oil in total and provide an estimated $3.5 billion annually in royalties and taxes for the Namibian government.
But Namibia’s energy ambitions clash with a global export market that is increasingly opposed to fossil fuel investments. In neighboring South Africa, legal action led to a temporary blocking of seismic hydrocarbon searches while activists lobbied against an East African crude oil pipeline that will run from oil fields in Uganda to a port in Tanzania.
[snip]
“Everywhere, there are minerals; there are wars,” Shikongo said, particularly when communities remain impoverished. Namibians hope that their government learns from the experience of Africa’s biggest oil producer, Nigeria, and ensures the entire population benefits rather than a small elite.
One of the ways the government can do that is to require open contracting, suggests Graham Hopwood, executive director of the Institute for Public Policy Research based in Windhoek, Namibia. The country could also adopt some of the new measures introduced by South Africa, where new mining rights applicants must have a minimum of 30 percent Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) shareholders, suggests Kennedy Chege, a researcher and doctoral candidate at the University of Cape Town.
The Namibian government is keenly aware of the challenge ahead. One of the youngest countries on the continent, it also has one of the most unequal wealth distributions in Africa—second only to neighboring South Africa using the Gini ratio as a measure of inequality. Around 70 percent of Namibia’s farmland is owned by white people; Namibia’s government only owns a 10 percent stake in projects involving the country’s natural resources.
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Jamaica Prime Minister Andrew Holness has told Prince William and Kate that the British commonwealth intends to become fully independent in an unexpected announcement that comes as other countries consider cutting ties with the monarchy. ABC: Jamaica PM tells royal couple island will seek independence
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Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness told Prince William and Kate on Wednesday that the British commonwealth intends to become fully independent in an unexpected announcement that comes as other countries consider cutting ties with the monarchy.
Holness also noted that there are “unresolved” issues as he greeted Prince William and Kate in front of a media scrum.
“We are moving on,” he said. “We intend to...fulfill our true ambitions and destiny as an independent, developed, prosperous country.”
The former British colony would become only the second Caribbean island to sever relations with Queen Elizabeth II in recent years, with Barbados doing so in November.
The royal couple, who flanked Holness on either side when he made the announcement, did not immediately react except for only a couple of brief head nods.
The announcement surprised many on the island of nearly 3 million people and unleashed a flurry of text messages and phone calls.
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New Orleans is recognized around the world as the birthplace of jazz. You can barely walk down the street in the French Quarter without hearing trumpets blaring and seeing bands march through the streets. It’s the place where great jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong, Trombone Shorty and Wynton Marsalis were born. But because cranky old Karens have been trying to steal our Black joy for centuries, there was a little-known law on the books that wanted to keep the music the city is known for out of its public schools. But 100 years to the day after the ban was imposed, the school board voted to let the music play.
At a school board meeting on March 24, 1922, a woman by the name of Mrs. Adolph Baumgartner made a motion to abolish jazz music and jazz dancing in the New Orleans public schools. The cantankerous fun-stealer was afraid of the influence the rhythmic music would have on students. “Jazz music and jazz dancing in schools should be stopped at once,” Baumgartner said at the meeting. “I have seen a lot of rough dancing in school auditoriums lately.” But she didn’t go as far as saying she wanted to ban music and dancing altogether. She was perfectly fine with making a carveout for music that was a little less lively, saying “they can dance the one-step, two-step and the waltz.” Baumgartner’s motion went on to pass with little objection.
Despite her best effort, Mrs. Baumgartner wasn’t able to remove jazz from the schools completely. Jazz is taught in many New Orleans public schools, and school jazz bands are popular fixtures of Mardi Gras celebrations. But the antiquated law was still on the books, and the school board wanted to get rid of it forever. The law was brought to the board’s attention when Ken Ducote, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Collaborative of Charter Schools, read the book, “Chord Changes on the Chalkboard: How Public School Teachers Shaped Jazz and the Music of New Orleans,” by historian Al Kennedy. Kennedy compares the jazz ban to the efforts to ban books that deal with race and sexual identity that are spreading across the country today. “It seems like they were more afraid of it being a bad influence than anything else,” he said.
But school board members think a ban on jazz in New Orleans is absurd. “It’s like if Colorado passed a rule banning students from looking at the Rocky Mountains,” Ducote said. Current board member Carlos Zervigon introduced the motion to reverse the ban at a March 22 school board committee meeting. And in a March 24 vote, the Orleans Parish school board voted to officially reverse the band. When addressing the committee before the vote, school board President Olin Parker pointed out that the law was “rooted in racism.” He went on to express his appreciation for students and school faculty who participate in bands across the district.
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