Congrats David Lammy!
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver Velez
Was delighted to see that in the Labour sweep of elections in the UK, that one of the results is that David Lammy is now the new Foreign Secretary,
From Lammy’s bio:
David was born in Tottenham on 19th July, 1972, one of five children raised by a single mother. At eleven years of age, David won a scholarship as a chorister to attend a state choral school at The Kings School in Peterborough. He came back to London in 1990 to study law at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Law School. Admitted to the Bar of England and Wales in 1994, David became the first Black Briton to study a Masters in Law at the Harvard Law School in 1997.
David returned to England and stood as a Labour candidate for the newly created Greater London Assembly, securing a position as the GLA member with a portfolio for Culture and Arts. Following the sad death of Tottenham’s longstanding MP Bernie Grant, David was elected as Labour MP for Tottenham at the age of 27 in June 2000.
Jenny Gross just wrote for The New York Times: Who Is David Lammy, Britain’s New Foreign Secretary?
Mr. Lammy has deep ties to the United States and campaigned for former President Barack Obama.
David Lammy, the son of Guyanese immigrants who grew up poor in working-class London, on Friday became Britain’s chief diplomat, taking the lead on British foreign policy at a time of significant challenges.
Mr. Lammy, 51, has deep ties to the United States, having spent summers with relatives in Brooklyn and Queens and earning a master’s degree at Harvard Law School.
He met Barack Obama 20 years ago at a gathering of Black Harvard alumni, and this year he had dinner with the former U.S. president when Mr. Obama visited London. Mr. Lammy canvassed in Chicago for Mr. Obama during his first presidential campaign, and he has developed a deep network of contacts within the Democratic Party.
I wrote about him here, in a story about the Windrush Generation: 'If you lie down with dogs, you get fleas': MP blasts Brit Home Secretary over 'Windrush Generation'
“Labour Party MP David Lammy’s impassioned speech in Parliament has resounded far and wide. Here is a link to the text of Lammy’s speech. Read an excerpt below:”
Can I say to the Home Secretary that the relationship between this country and the West Indies and Caribbean is inextricable.
The first British ships arrived in the Caribbean in 1623. And despite slavery, despite colonisation, 25,000 Caribbeans served in first world war and second world war alongside British troops. When my parents and their generation arrived in this country under the Nationality act of 1948, they arrived here as British citizens.
It is inhumane and cruel for so many of that Windrush generation to have suffered so long in this condition, and for the secretary of state only to have made a statement today on this issue.
Can she explain how many have been deported? She suggested earlier that she would ask the high commissioners. It is her department that has deported them. She should know the number.
Can she tell the house how many have been detained as prisoners in their own country? Can she tell the house how many have been denied health under the National Health Service? How many have been denied pensions? How many have lost their job?
This is a day of national shame, and it has come about because of a hostile environment policy that was begun under her Prime Minister.
Let us call it like it is. If you lie down with dogs, you get fleas and that is what has happened with this far-right rhetoric in this country. Can she apologise properly? Can she explain how quickly this team will act to ensure that the thousands of British men and women, denied their rights in this country under her watch in the home office are satisfied.
Lammy is not known for biting his tongue. Laura Kelly just wrote this for The Hill:
UK’s new foreign secretary once called Trump ‘a neo-Nazi-sympathizing sociopath’
“Trump is not only a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathizing sociopath. He is also a profound threat to the international order that has been the foundation of Western progress for so long,” he wrote in Time. “It is because I cherish and champion those values that this Friday, I will march with London against Donald Trump.”
Lammy criticized Trump as slandering and insulting London for political benefit, and that “Trump has barely concealed his racist attacks on the U.K.”
[...]
Lammy is described as an outspoken and prominent advocate for social justice and minority issues. He is described as the “first black Briton to study at Harvard Law School” and wrote a 2020 book exploring his African heritage.
He has said lately that if Trump is elected, he will work with him (fingers crossed that doesn’t happen).
From his memoir, Out of the Ashes: 'As I passed the charred remains of two police cars and a bus, the scale of the damage became clear – the devastation surpassed anything I had seen in Tottenham as a kid…'
The fish-and-chip shop that fuelled my office during the general election campaign had had its windows smashed in. The post office where I spent hours as a child queueing to cash my parents' child benefit cheque had been gutted by fire. There was the putrid smell of burning rubber and plastic emanating from the shell of the building. The devastation surpassed anything that I remember seeing as a kid.
Last time there were riots in Tottenham, I was 13. They took place in 1985 on the Broadwater Farm estate, just yards from our family home. My eldest cousin and her family lived there, and I'd spend most afternoons with them while my parents were at work. Neighbours and friends would drift in and out of trouble, getting into scraps with the police. Some were caught up in the riots that October, and it was a nervous wait before I could be sure that my own brothers were not. Like everyone else, I was shaken by the scale of the violence, but it was not a bolt from the blue. Tensions had been building for years.
My biggest fear growing up was that I would end up in prison. That was the fate of growing numbers of my peers. In schools, achievement was dragged down by a culture of low expectations. Work was scarce. Street life was tough. The police, meanwhile, often seemed less protectors and more an occupying force. Racism was rife and it was common to be stopped, searched and often humiliated. There was a real them-and-us mentality.
My X Factor moment came in May 1982. That month I auditioned for a scholarship to become a chorister at Peterborough cathedral and a boarder at the cathedral school, King's. This was my opportunity to rise above the canopy that was life back home. I was the only black boy in a whiter-than-white world and, like many black kids in that era, I learned to live with and shrug off playground insults as best I could. My mother's response was to tell me I had to work harder. "You have to be twice as good as the others," she'd say. "No one is going to hand this to you."
Here's a link to his book: Out of the Ashes: Britain After the Riots
In this clip he talks about being stopped and searched by the police:
He talks about representing Tottenham in this clip from four years ago:
I’ve been following Lammy on twitter, for some time — and listen to him on LBC — here was a memorable exchange with a racist caller:
This 2020 story brought a smile to my face:
“David Lammy: ‘Kamala Harris means my daughter can dream dreams that weren’t possible before'”
Labour MP David Lammy has hailed the election of US vice president elect Kamala Harris, after she became the first woman – and first woman of colour – to take the role.
Speaking to Yahoo’s White Wine Question Time podcast, Lammy said: “It makes me emotional because my six-yeasr-old can look at Kamala and dream dreams that weren’t possible before.”
Thank you, UK voters.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Handcuffed in the cramped lobby of the Lexington Police Department, standing eye-to-eye with the chief, Jill Collen Jefferson was given a choice. She had been arrested while filming a nighttime traffic stop in this county seat of roughly 1,500 people and four traffic signals. Pay a $35 processing fee, the chief said, and we’ll release you.
Days before, Jefferson had met with Justice Department investigators from Washington. She had hoped to turn their attention to this small-town police force, whose new, Black police chief, Charles Henderson, was accused of continuing the racist and discriminatory practices of the White commander he replaced.
Jefferson, 37, a Harvard-educated lawyer and former Obama administration speechwriter, declined Henderson’s offer to let her go if she paid the fee. Instead she stepped into the back of a police cruiser and traced the journey made by dozens of her clients — some beaten, some accused of infractions as minor as driving without insurance — past the town’s Confederate monument, to the county jail.
“I’m going to tell the world what you’re doing here,” she vowed to Henderson that day in June 2023.
Almost five months later, the head of the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division stood in the banquet hall of a Lexington church to make an improbable announcement: The agency would aim its mighty investigative resources at Lexington’s police force, which at the time had dwindled to about 10 officers and would soon shrink further.
Rural America is guaranteed the same rights as our largest cities, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke told those in attendance, some of whom were plaintiffs in the lawsuits Jefferson had filed alleging false arrests, excessive force and more.
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Purple Heart recipient Raffique Khan still can’t believe he was pulled over while driving his BMW in Brooklyn for no apparent reason — then arrested for carrying a legal gun.
Sadly, he says, he can only conclude he was charged because he’s Black.
Khan, 40, retired from the U.S. Army and now working as an armed federal environment protection specialist assigned to Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island, has filed a federal lawsuit alleging discrimination, wrongful arrest and a denial of his Second Amendment right to carry a firearm.
“There was no probable cause, to stop [Khan] other than he was a person of color operating an expensive late model vehicle…” said the suit, filed in Brooklyn Federal Court by his lawyer, Cory Morris, on May 21. A similar suit was filed by Morris June 14 in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.
“To be honest, I’m disappointed,” Khan, a native of Trinidad and Tobago, told the Daily News in an interview. “I never thought I would serve and come home to be treated in this manner. I love my country. I wasn’t born here but what better way to pay your country than to serve. i did it honorably.
“I could understand if I was arguing or trying to fight, being belligerent — but it was nothing like that.”
The criminal complaint — filed after Officer Matthew Bessen, who Khan described as white, arrested Khan last Nov. 26 in East New York — clearly indicates that the NYPD’s own database indicates Khan has a license to carry a firearm. The complaint said Khan can only carry the weapon while at work, but Morris said Khan has no such restrictions on his license.
The case was dismissed in February, but Khan said the damage is done.
“Besides the embarrassment, I don’t want to run into this situation again,” Khan said. “I thought I was doing everything the correct way. I don’t want to sound like a saint or anything but I always felt you do the right thing, good things will happen to you.”
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Discriminatory past shapes heat waves in minority and low-income neighborhoods. Associated Press: Scorched by history
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Ruben Berrios knows the scorching truth: When it comes to extreme heat, where you live can be a matter of life and death.
The 66-year-old lives in Mott Haven, a low-income neighborhood in New York’s South Bronx, where more than 90 percent of residents are Latino or Black. Every summer, the South Bronx becomes one of the hottest parts of the city, with temperatures 8 degrees (4.5 degrees Celsius) higher than on the Upper West and East sides — lusher, majority-white neighborhoods less than a mile away.
The heat isn’t just uncomfortable. It’s the top cause of weather-related fatalities nationwide, quietly killing an average of 350 New Yorkers each year, according to a city mortality report. As he took a break from his pool game at an apartment complex and older adult community center that serves as a designated cooling space, Berrios recalled a recent heat wave: “I lost two persons. They were close to me.”
Tens of millions of Americans are facing major heat waves, with temperatures consistently exceeding 90 degrees (32 degrees Celsius). But in big cities, the heat hits hardest for people of color and low-income residents. In New York, Black residents die from heat stress at double the rate of white residents.
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Brazil’s ministry of foreign affairs has been forced to apologise to the embassies of Canada, Gabon and Burkina Faso after three diplomats’ teenage children – all of whom are Black – were searched at gunpoint by police officers.
The incident emerged when the mother of a Brazilian boy in the group posted a security camera video online, prompting outrage – but also a weary recognition that such experiences are all too typical for Black youths in Rio de Janeiro.
The three diplomats’ children were in Rio for a five-day holiday with a white Brazilian friend, celebrating the end of the school year. All attend the same school in Brasília, where they live. It was their first trip without their parents.
Late Wednesday, they were returning from a day at the beach and were about to enter a building in the wealthy neighbourhood of Ipanema when a military police patrol car drew up. Two officers jumped out, ordered the boys to face the wall and searched them at gunpoint.
Rhaiana Rondon, the mother of one of the Brazilian boys, said the Black teens were singled out by the police officers during the search.
Rondon, who posted the video, said the footage made it clear that her son and his cousin were treated very differently from the Black foreigners.
“The officer guided my son much more gently because he is white, while the three Black youths had guns pointed at their heads,” she said.
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The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) said on Sunday the region risked disintegration and worsening insecurity after junta-led Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger made clear their intentions to leave the bloc by signing a confederation treaty. Reuters: West African bloc says it risks disintegration if junta-led states leave
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The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) said on Sunday the region risked disintegration and worsening insecurity after junta-led Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger made clear their intentions to leave the bloc by signing a confederation treaty.
The Alliance of Sahel States treaty, signed on Saturday, underscored the three countries' determination to turn their backs on the 15-member ECOWAS, which has been urging them to return to democratic rule.
ECOWAS commission president Omar Touray said freedom of movement and a common market of 400 million people were some of the major benefits of the near 50-year-old bloc, but that these were under threat if the three countries left.
Funding of economic projects worth over $500 million in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger could also be stopped or suspended, Touray told an ECOWAS summit in Nigerian capital Abuja.
"Considering these benefits, it is evident that disintegration will not only disrupt the freedom of movement and settlement of people, but it will also worsen insecurity in the region," he said.
The three countries' withdrawal will be a major blow to security cooperation particularly in terms of intelligence sharing and participation in the fight against terrorism, he added.
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