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Can We Tell a Different Story?
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In a widely shared piece on recent events that have "ripped at the heart of America," our Director john a. powell urges us to reach for a new story. He wrote, "This story requires a new language that is not binary. A language that can hold respect for the police while challenging structures that do not serve us well. This requires dropping the impossible demand that blacks must first prove that their lives matter. This requires being willing to ask more of the black community, but not the impossible.This requires asking more of the white community, but not the impossible. This requires recognizing that the black, white, brown, Asian, Native American, and mixed race communities are all our America. This requires that we be willing to do things differently, whether it’s in how we fund and populate our schools and police departments to how we approach guns and violence in our society." Read the article.
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Dog Whistles in Politics are Becoming Audible
A feature on dog whistle politics by Ian Haney López, director of our Racial Politics Project, was featured on BillMoyers.com immediately following Senator Elizabeth Warren's speech at the Democratic National Convention. Warren's speech highlighted how coded language was being used to divide the country's citizens to prevent progress.
López wrote, "Trump’s use of dog-whistle politics in 2016 is egregious, bordering on open demagoguery and deepening the racial wounds in our country. But exactly because it is so obviously central to Trump’s frightening success, his blatant racial pandering provides the best opportunity in half a century to confront and defeat the manipulation at the heart of American electoral politics. Warren is pioneering that message. 'When we turn on each other, we can’t unite to fight back against a rigged system.' We should amplify it." Read the article.
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Echoes of the Past: Police Violence and Civil Disorder
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In a timely new piece by Assistant Director Stephen Menendian, he highlights the parallels between civil unrest in the past and the fight for civil rights and justice in today's social and political climate.Unfortunately, the past doesn't look too different from the present, and a winter of collective discontent simmers beneath.
Menendian wrote, "As the Kerner Commission observed, '[a]lmost invariably, the incident that ignites disorder arises from police action.' This was also true of the 1968 Democratic Convention. Importantly, however, the Commission noted that, among the incidents it investigated, '[d]isorder did not typically erupt without preexisting causes… Instead, it developed out of an increasingly disturbed social atmosphere, in which typically a series of tension-heightening incidents over a period of weeks or months became linked in the minds of many in the Negro community with a shared reservoir of underlying grievances.' In particular, the Commission cited discrimination, segregation, disadvantaged conditions, and police harassment and abuse, as underlying causes. These inciting incidents then became the trigger, 'culminating in the eruption of disorder at the hands of youthful, politically-aware activists.'" Read the article.
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From Protest to Power, Thinking Ahead with Steve Phillips
"How can we move from protest to power?" seasoned political advocate and author Steve Phillips at the first event in the Thinking Ahead discussion series. “We have the numbers, we have the ability—the disconnect is that too much of today’s politics does not speak to the intensity of pain that people feel. It does not speak to their needs and dreams.”
In front of an audience of 60+ people, Phillips briefly walked the audience through a timeline of racial discrimination in the United States: slavery, Jim Crow, the consistent exclusion of people of color from access to critical legislation like certain New Deal reforms and the federal GI Bill, lack of access to home loans and good schools, and much more.
Phillips then pivoted to the future, offering an optimistic assessment for the progressive movement. There are more progressive whites than thought, he argued, and a coalition of white progressives and people of color creates a majority coalition that can move the country away from the fear-based rhetoric and policy “solutions” we see today, and towards policies that dramatically better the lives of even those who vote against them. Read more.
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Expanding the Circle of Human Concern
"Take a Look at Yourself"
For the making of Take a Look at Yourself, an award-winning youth-produced music video with a positive message, Alex Sorto recalls, “We talked about racism, bullying, and stereotypes, and in our video, there are three African Americans and me, a Latino from Honduras. We decided to write about our own experiences growing up, and how the media stereotypes African Americans, Muslims, Latinos, and LGBTQ people. Read the story and watch the video.
Precarious Lives, Portraits of Women We've Lost
Daisy Rockwell shares with us her series of portraits of women of color who have died in police custody.
"As I painted, I felt an urge to memorialize. I welcome more information about any of these women or others. My hope in the future would be to show them all together and auction them as a benefit for their families, many of whom have difficult legal battles ahead, as they try to learn what happened to make their daughters or their mothers or their sisters take their own lives in police custody or die suddenly when no medical attention was proffered." Read her story.
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Have you read our new Othering & Belonging journal?
Combining research, editorials, the arts, and other projects, pieces, and reflections on creating an more inclusive society, the Othering & Belonging journal is a fresh look at where we are and where we want to go.
This first issue features pieces such as "Racism and the Narrative of Biological Inevitability," "The Problem of Othering: Towards Inclusiveness and Belonging," "Migration, Austerity, and Crisis at the Periphery of Europe," and more. Read and share.
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john a. powell was an invited guest on CCTV's "The Heat." Alongside Mary C. Curtis, a columnist for Roll Call and Richard Fowler, a political activist and radio talk show host, he discussed the state of race relations in the United States. They talked about police accountability, the systemic inequities of the criminal justice system, and the discourse that is happening now and how that conversation is playing out in the media and on the streets. Watch part one and part two.
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Agroecological Fellows Program
The UC Gill Tract Community Farm (UCGTCF) is excited to announce the launch of our new Agroecological Fellows Program (AFP) for current UC Berkeley students for the Fall 2016–Spring 2017 academic year. Through the creation of four paid fellowship positions for undergraduate and graduate students, the AFP offers a year-long opportunity for students to develop their leadership skills and deepen their knowledge and experience of solving issues in the food system, from chemical-dependant production to inequitable distribution. The main goal of the AFP is to provide valuable experiential learning opportunities for the growing number of students interested in: food justice, agroecology, urban farming, community-based organizations, non-profit administration, and equitable economies; allowing them to become successful change-makers.
Each fellowship position is for 10 hours per week, with a remuneration of $12/hour for undergraduate students or $15/hr for graduate students. The fellowship starts in September 2016 and ends in April 2017.
Fellows Positions: Farm Management, Campus and Community Partnership, Outreach and Communications, Fundraising. Details of the application and each position, in our website.
Application Deadline: Monday August 29, 2016, 5:00 PM.
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Africans Food Sovereignty Working Group
August 2, 5:00 pm
460 Stephens Hall, UC Berkeley
What Role do Female Farmers Play in Africa's Food Systems?
Female farmers make up close to 50 percent of the agricultural workforce across the African continent, yet they are often excluded from access to land, credit, extension programs, and other valuable resources made available to male farmers. Since the agricultural sector can be a powerful vehicle for poverty reduction, this imbalance has direct consequences on gender equality, household food security, climate change resiliency and rural incomes. Come join us in conversation as we discuss the challenges African female farmers face and how these obstacles can be overcome. We will be showing a short clip from a lecture by Dr. Brylyne Chisunge, an internationally acclaimed expert on sustainable agriculture, facilitator of the Nigeria-South Africa Group on Agriculture and advocate for small-scale farmers in her native South Africa. More details.
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Thinking Ahead Speaker Series with Paul Pierson
August 11 at 12:15 pm
Paul Pierson
American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper
Venue: Citizen Engagement Lab, 1330 Broadway, Third Floor, Oakland. RSVP Here.
Paul Pierson is the John Gross Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. Pierson’s teaching and research includes the fields of American politics and public policy, comparative political economy, and social theory.
haasinstitute.berkeley.edu/thinkingahead
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