Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Google, Apple and Amazon are playing catch up with Purism https://www.fastcompany.com/90349731/the-hardware-trend-google-amazon-and-apple-are-throwing-their-weight-behind #privacy #security

The Teacher Strikes Could Set Off a Private Sector Strike Wave—If We Dare

In the spring of 2018, teachers across West Virginia improbably shut down schools statewide, creating a political crisis that forced Republican Gov. Jim Justice and the GOP-led legislature to back down. Drawing inspiration from the West Virginia strikers, teachers in the red states of Arizona and Oklahoma soon followed suit by carrying out statewide strikes of their own.

It’s Not Progressive To Fund Medicare for All by Agreeing to a Bloated Military

House Progressives have fashioned what they may see as a pragmatic response to the unconscionable budgeting priorities of a U.S. government that pours money into the Pentagon while constricting public goods like housing assistance and education. The chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), proposed in April that spending caps for discretionary domestic programs should be raised in 2020 to match the discretionary military budget.

Pocan and Jayapal’s approach would, indeed, mark a departure from the modus operandi of Congress, which reliably sets higher ceilings for military spending than for domestic. But by tethering progressive programs to war spending, this plan abandons the moral priority to oppose U.S. imperial ambitions. Progressives cannot build domestic gains on the backs of the people of the Global South. No amount of domestic spending could justify the size of the Pentagon, the largest military empire humanity has ever seen.

Progressives are eager to find funding for bold, popular programs like a Green New Deal and Medicare for All, and are chafing at the constraints of the Budget Control Act of 2011, a compromise by the Obama administration: Republicans agreed to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for limits on discretionary defense and non-defense spending (which, in practice, has led to far more constraints on the latter). Lindsay Koshgarian, program director for the Institute for Policy Studies’ National Priorities Project, a budget-focused nonprofit, puts it this way, “Every couple of years [the act has] meant a deal with more Pentagon funding and a little more funding for everything else.”

The Congressional Progressive Caucus chairs are pitting themselves against centrist leaders in their own party, including Budget Committee Chair Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), who rallied Democrats behind a budgetary plan that would increase discretionary defense spending caps to $664 billion in 2020 and non-defense spending to $631 billionThe split came to a head April 9, in an episode the Washington Post called a “liberal revolt” by House progressives, when Jayapal and Pocan introduced an amendment to increase the domestic cap by $33 billion to bring it in line with the military cap. “Here’s a real opportunity to tell people we are investing in their future and not in a Pentagon,” Jayapal said.

But Democratic leaders rejected the amendment on the grounds that it wasn’t fiscally prudent, and ultimately canceled the vote.

To be fair, dollar-for-dollar parity between domestic and military spending wasn’t every progressive Congress member’s first choice. During the initial House Budget Committee hearings on Yarmuth’s proposal, Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.) put forward an amendment to freeze defense spending at 2019 levels, which gained the support of six other Democrats, but was voted down. Reps. Jayapal, Khanna and Ilhan Omar (Minn.) then voted against the Yarmuth plan, the only three House Democrats to do so. “This is a key philosophical moment for our party,” said Khanna. “We cannot be against endless wars and then fund those wars.”

But even if the Pentagon budget were frozen, it still constitutes, by far, the biggest military budget of any nation in the world—roughly the size of the next seven combined. Military spending has increased for four years straight, climbing from $586 billion in 2015 to $716 billion in 2019 (an inflation-adjusted increase of $85 billion, or 13%). The money funds a global empire, with 800 military bases, active and reserve troops stationed in at least 172 countries and territories, and U.S. commandos deployed in 75% of the world’s countries. According to one estimate, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq resulted in the death of 1 million Iraqi people. Since 2014, the U.S.-led military coalition against ISIS has killed up to 12,000 civilians in Iraq and Syria. U.S. military bases, for their part, erode nations’ self-determination, are associated with environmental harm and sexual violence, and fuel proxy wars, which can be ruthless.

And yet, at a time when aspirational, socialist-leaning programs are taking the national stage, left demands to reduce the U.S. military footprint have nowhere near the same momentum. This puts us in danger of repeating a long history of liberal and left chauvinism—a belief in the superiority of one’s compatriots that enables domestic progressivism and imperialism to go hand in hand.

 The last significant outburst of progressive reform—Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty,” beginning in 1964—saw the creation of Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and the National Endowment for the Humanities, with aspirations for what Johnson called “The Great Society.” From 1965 to 1968, the U.S. budgeted $2.64 billion in new local welfare programs—a 25% increase over 1962 levels. The U.S. also budgeted an increase of 30% for the Defense Department budget, to $76.5 billion.  

Those additional billions financed military expansion—and mass atrocity. As Johnson declared war on poverty, he also greenlit tens of thousands more U.S. troops into Vietnam. With the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Johnson went all in on a war that between 1965 and 1974 would leave an estimated 1.7 million Vietnamese dead.

According to Margaret Rung, professor of history at Roosevelt University (and board president of In These Times), Johnson “wanted to take the Great Society and export it to the rest of the world, especially parts of the world that might turn to Communism. In [Johnson’s] mind, they were all part of the same project.” In a 1965 speech, Johnson laid out plans for economic development in Vietnam, including a Mekong River Delta Project, inspired by the Tennessee Valley Authority. Three years later, that delta would be the site of the U.S. military onslaught “Operation Speedy Express,” which took the lives of more than 10,000 Vietnamese people and gave U.S. Major General Julian Ewell the epithet, “Butcher of the Delta.”

Similarly, Pierre Laroque, considered the “father of social security” in France in the aftermath of World War II, argued for a "universal welfare state" that incorporated French colonies, from Algeria to Senegal, providing ideological fodder for ongoing violent colonization. A decade later, Socialist Prime Minister Guy Mollet would bring a wave of progressive domestic reform to France at the same time that he escalated the war to crush Algeria’s struggle for independence, deploying 200,000 more troops who engaged in systematic torture.

Today, the liberal ruling class still displays chauvinist priorities. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), a 2020 presidential hopeful, showcased them on Wednesday when she tweeted, “Climate change is real, it’s worsening by the day, and it’s undermining our military readiness.”

Domestic and military spending caps remain unresolved in ongoing budget negotiations. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has yet to release its annual People’s Budget, where it has the opportunity to draw a hard line against military spending. Support for a program like Medicare for All should stem from the principle of solidarity—that an injury to one is an injury to all. The same solidarity should be extended to the lives of the tens of thousands of Yemeni people dying in a U.S.-backed war.

We need to oppose war spending with the same gusto we push to expand public goods, on the grounds that lives beyond U.S. borders matter just as much as those within. By failing to root domestic demands in anti-imperialist principles, we risk repeating the horrors of the past—and present.

European telcos want the right to perform "deep packet inspection" on our data https://boingboing.net/2019/05/15/dpi-nein.html

Write Black Americans a Check Already

This piece is a response to "Universal Policies, Not Reparations, Are Needed To Counter Racism's Effects" and "The 2020 Candidates Are Dodging the Reparations Question."

Universal, race-neutral policies are insufficient to repair the past and ongoing harms of racial injustice. Whether or not reparations are “divisive,” they are the right and necessary thing to do. Indeed, the moral act is frequently divisive. Opposition to slavery was divisive.

Reparations for native black Americans must fulfill three objectives: The U.S. government must admit its wrongs (acknowledgment), restore the injured parties to the condition they might have attained had the harm never occurred (redress) and reach an agreement with the injured that the debt has been paid (closure).

The historic harms against black Americans are many—from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration. The recipients of reparations should be those who can establish they have at least one ancestor who was enslaved in the United States, and who identified as black, African-American, Negro or the equivalent for at least 10 years before the reparations program begins. This is the group that most directly bears the cumulative effects of centuries of oppression.

One major effect is racial wealth disparity. Data from the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances indicates that the mean black net worth per household was $138,000, while mean white net worth was $934,000, a difference of close to $800,000.

Zaid and Leighton point out that the Latino-white wealth gap is similar. Its causes, however, are not the same. We encourage Latinos (or any group) to develop their own claim for reparations, if they so desire, based upon their unique historical relationships to the U.S. government. But these claims should not be collapsed onto the black American claim.

Nor can universal programs (such as “baby bonds”) substitute for reparations. For one, they are not near enough to erase the $800,000 wealth gap. And the specific injustices toward black American descendants of the enslaved require a specific process of acknowledgment, redress and closure.

Several Democratic presidential candidates have said that reparations, if undertaken, should be something other than “cutting a check.” However, other injured groups have received reparations in the form of direct payment, including Japanese Americans unjustly incarcerated during World War II and Holocaust victims and their families. We wonder why, when the subject is native black Americans, there is a sudden aversion to “cutting a check.”

We agree that a reparations fund, once assembled, may be used for a variety of purposes beyond payments to individuals, including institution building (e.g., payments to historically black colleges), neighborhood improvement efforts, or subsidies for higher education or business development. But funds used this way may miss their intended targets; funding for a historically black neighborhood, for instance, may end up primarily benefiting white families due to gentrification.

Ultimately, a sound program of reparations for black Americans must include a substantial direct payment to each eligible recipient. (At least some of this payment, too, should take the form of illiquid assets that can build long-term wealth.) The nation must “cut the checks.”

Finally, we come to closure. If a comprehensive program of reparations eliminates the racial wealth gap and other legacies of slavery, legal reforms undo housing, pay and other ongoing discrimination, and no new race-specific injustices arise, native black Americans will make no further race-specific claims on the U.S. government. Only then will the accounts of American history have been settled.

Embracing Failure as an Intrinsic Part of Science #Failtales - Digital Science https://prismo.xyz/posts/91cca629-8652-4558-9409-8f8d4242c7ab

The Crackdown on Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange Is About Protecting U.S. Empire

On April 11, the U.S. unsealed a year-old indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. That same morning, Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno revoked Assange’s asylum. London Metropolitan Police entered the Ecuadorian embassy where Assange had lived for seven years and arrested him. While he was initially arrested for skipping bail in the UK, the U.S. was seeking his extradition. This was the culmination of a nearly decade-long vendetta against WikiLeaks.

The indictment against Assange does not pertain to sexual assault allegations in Sweden or the publishing of Democratic National Committee emails that had become a point of inquiry in the Mueller probe. Instead, the indictment stems from the publishing of a trove of U.S. secrets turned over by whistleblower Chelsea Manning. WikiLeaks from 2010 to 2011 worked with news outlets spanning the globe, including The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spegel, Le Monde and Al Jazeera, to publish the leaked information. The increased connections of Assange and WikiLeaks to the Right, as well as allegations that WikiLeaks worked to assist the election of Donald Trump, have both given fodder to critics and alienated some long-time supporters. But as Diane Abbott, a senior figure within the UK Labour Party who objects to his extradition, said, Assange “is being pursued because he has exposed wrongdoing by U.S. administrations and their military forces.”

Far more is at stake than the fate of one person. The U.S. is targeting an individual for publishing information of public interest. Assange is not a U.S. citizen, and his “crime” did not take place on U.S. soil. The U.S. is asserting the right to track down and imprison anyone in the world who exposes its crimes. Assange’s prosecution sets not just a precedent against press freedom domestically, but the world over

Criminalizing journalism

Press freedom groups have long feared that Assange would be charged under the Espionage Act. No journalist has ever been prosecuted under this act for publishing classified information, as it is widely presumed that doing so would be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has previously ruled that journalists cannot be held criminally liable for publishing information illegally obtained by third parties, so long as they themselves did not play a part in illegally obtaining it. The Obama Administration balked at charging WikiLeaks under the Espionage Act. Even though the Obama Administration oversaw a record number of prosecutions of whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, it viewed prosecuting a publisher of classified information as being too  threatening to press freedom. As the general counsel for the New York Timespointed out, any precedent allowing the government to prosecute WikiLeaks would also apply to legacy publications that print similar information. With Trump at the helm, many feared his administration did not share such reservations.

Unexpectedly, Assange has been charged not under the Espionage Act, but with conspiring with whistleblower Chelsea Manning to crack a password on a Department of Defense computer. This was not so that Manning could gain access to new files, but to help her make it harder to identity her as the source. (The attempt also appears to have failed.) After requesting extradition, the U.S. has 65 days to bring addition charges, which may be forthcoming against Assange. The law of extradition generally forbids bringing new charges after a party is extradited.

While the charge may appear on its face to be about computer crimes, it is very much about silencing those who publish information the U.S. government does not like. Pressfreedomgroups have argued that elements of the conspiracy, such as counseling Manning on the significance of Guantánamo detainee assessments, constitute newsgathering practices. By making newsgathering part of the “conspiracy,” the U.S. is criminalizing journalism. (Full Disclosure: This author works for Defending Rights & Dissent, a free expression organization that opposes the use of the Espionage Act against whistleblowers and the prosecution of Assange.)

An Espionage Act indictment would not only have posed significant constitutional issues, it would have been a hurdle to extradition. Political offenses are excluded from extradition, and espionage is historically considered a political offense. But as journalist Kevin Gosztola argues, the indictment itself reads very much like an Espionage Act indictment. James C. Goodale, one of the Pentagon Paper lawyers, has lambasted the computer-cracking charges as a “snare and a delusion” designed “to divert attention from the basic fact that this indictment punishes the publication of truthful information.”    

Exposing the crimes of U.S. empire

The publications the U.S. is using to pursue Assange date back nearly a decade ago. In 2010, army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning realized she couldn’t stay silent anymore. Stationed in Iraq, she became disturbed by the dehumanization of Iraqi life that is inherent in protracted military occupations. She also had access to a massive trove of documents that showed how, in Chelsea Manning’s words, “first-world countries exploited third-world countries” through “crazy, almost criminal political backdealings.” Manning believed that if she could get this information to the U.S. public, she would reveal “the true nature of twenty-first century asymmetric warfare.” Her intent was clear: to expose the truth and spark a public debate. Manning tried to take her secrets to the Washington Post, The New York Times and Politico, but they weren’t interested. Manning turned to WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks first released a video of a July 12, 2007 airstrike filmed from an Apache helicopter gun-sight. The strike killed at least 12 people, including two Reuters reporters. Provocatively, WikiLeaks titled the video “Collateral Murder,” a clear commentary on the euphemism “collateral damage,” which U.S. officials use to describe civilian deaths. Soldiers fired on a van rescuing the wounded, injuring children in the process. One of the pilots responded, “Well it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.” Reuters had filed Freedom of Information Act requests about the incident, but never received the video. The Pentagon was reportedly taken by surprise at its release.

If the Pentagon was taken off-guard by the release of Collateral Murder, one can only imagine how they took what happened next. In the largest leak in U.S. military history, WikiLeaks released internal military logs from Afghanistan. The Afghan logs didn’t stay the largest leak for long. They were quickly surpassed by WikiLeaks' release of similar logs from the Iraq War. Next came releases of State Department cables and the U.S. Guantánamo Bay detainee assessments.

The Iraq and Afghan War logs expose the reality of U.S. occupations. According to Dahr Jamail, who had reported from Iraq, “[t]he WikiLeaks cables from Iraq displayed the brutality of U.S. policies that were ongoing throughout the occupation.” Phyllis Bennis, a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, wrote that the Afghan War Logs “were crucially important,” as they showed “Afghanistan was and is a real country where hundreds of thousand, millions of people with no connections to 9/11, would be killed or see their lives and families destroyed.”

These publications empowered anti-war veterans to speak up. After the release of Collateral Murder, two members of the unit involved went public. Ethan McCord could be seen in the video trying to rescue the children. He struggled psychologically as a result of what he witnessed. He didn’t initially know a video existed. But its release allowed him to publicly speak about the events of the day and against the brutality of the war. Josh Stieber had also been in the same unit depicted in Collateral Murder. Like McCord, after its release he publicly spoke out against the war. Stieber toldDemocracy Now in April 2010,“if we’re shocked by this video, then we need to be asking questions of the larger system, because, again, this is how these soldiers were trained to act.” Stieber would call on Congress to investigate the crimes exposed by WikiLeaks.  Both McCord and Stieber would publicly apologize to those impacted by the airstrike.

The Guantánamo leaks revealed that the U.S. government knowingly held 150 innocent men. The U.S. also held Sami al-Hajj, an Al-Jazeera journalist, at Guantánamo, in part to learn about his employer. The massive, sprawling nature  of the State Department cables makes it impossible to cover in its entirety. But with Venezuela currently in U.S. crosshairs, it’s worth noting the cables reveal a particular fixation with Venezuela. In order to destabilize the Bolivarian process, the U.S. pursued tactics such as working to support  the opposition, foster divisions within Chavismo and isolate the country internationally.

In the crosshairs of the U.S.

This massive insight into the U.S. foreign policy apparatus essentially showed “the world according to U.S. empire.” But exposing the U.S. empire comes at a cost. Manning was subjected to a pretrial detention that a UN expert said constituted cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment—and possibly torture. While Obama commuted her 35-year sentence after seven years, she still spent more time in prison than anyone in U.S. history for leaking information to the media. (Manning recently spent 62 days in jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury against Assange. As she has been subpoenaed yet again to testify about the same information, it possible she may be jailed again.)

When Swedish authorities sought Assange’s extradition from the UK as part of a preliminary investigation into sexual assault allegations, Assange argued it was a ruse to have him extradited to the U.S. Believing threats from the U.S. to be credible, Ecuador granted Assange political asylum. With the UK guarding the embassy around the clock and threatening to arrest Assange, he was trapped in the embassy. Assange’s critics have disputed the characterization that Assange was an involuntary prisoner in the embassy, instead arguing that Assange’s fate was of his own choosing. However, a UN Working Group found both the UK and Sweden to have arbitrarily detained Assange. Even after Sweden dropped its investigation, the UK still threatened to arrest Assange for skipping bail. (Swedish authorities reopened the rape investigation on May 13, 2019.)

While western media has focused on how Assange was a bad houseguest who wore out his welcome with his Ecuadorian host, they’ve missed a larger story. Assange’s asylum came at the height of the Pink Tide, when left-leaning Latin American nations asserted their sovereignty against the U.S. It was President Rafael Correa who granted Assange asylum. Correa has blasted his successor for permitting the arrest of Assange, calling Moreno the “greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history.” The current president is embroiled in a corruption scandal. Ecuador’s interior minister has accused one of Moreno’s chief political opponents, Ricardo Patiño, of conspiring with WikiLeaks to destabilize the Ecuadorian government. Moreno’s revocation of  Assange’s asylum comes on the heels of a $4.2 billion IMF loan, leading critics such as former Ecuadorian foreign minister Guillaume Long to assert the two were connected.

The U.S. government has fought to keep secret its program of disappearances and torture, detention sites, and even what countries it bombs. But it isn’t just official secrecy that has helped obscure the nature of U.S. wars. Evidence of the human toll of U.S. wars isn’t hard to find.  It’s certainly not a secret to those in other countries who live it daily. But for much of the mainstream U.S. media, there is little if any true reckoning with the civilian cost of war. WikiLeaks is currently in the crosshairs of the U.S. government, because it challenged this secrecy head on. Its fate will impact all those who wish to shine light on the U.S. empire.

Exxon Predicted 2019’s Ominous CO2 Milestone in 1982
https://earther.gizmodo.com/exxon-predicted-2019-s-ominous-co2-milestone-in-1982-1834748763 #climatechange

Librem 5 App Design Tutorial – Part II

https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-app-design-tutorial-part-ii/

Israeli espionage firm hacks WhatsApp. Can install spyware with missed call.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/13/whatsapp-urges-users-to-upgrade-after-discovering-spyware-vulnerability

My advice: dump WhatsApp today and start using Wire (https://wire.com/en/products/personal-secure-messenger/). Tell your friends and family to do the same. (It’s a simple, free download on all app stores. Easy to use, doesn’t require your phone number, and their business model is based on charging for commercial use and for pro accounts.)

You can find more alternatives on @switchingsocial (https://switching.social/ethical-alternatives-to-whatsapp-and-skype/)

#WhatsApp

#Britain risks heading to #US levels of #inequality, warns top economist | Inequality | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2019/may/14/britain-risks-heading-to-us-levels-of-inequality-warns-top-economist

#UK

About the project - #WhoTargetsMe

Received information about this today from the #OpenRightsGroup.

https://whotargets.me/en/about-who-targets-me/

Are Reparations the Solution to the Racial Wealth Gap?

Every 2020 Democratic presidential candidate has had to answer whether they support reparations for descendants of enslaved people in the United States. Many talk a good game. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) endorsed reparations back in February, saying, “We must confront the dark history of slavery and government-sanctioned discrimination … undermining the ability of Black families to build wealth in America for generations.”

This case has been made time and time again by proponents from the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association to the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, to the more recent Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) and American Descendants of Slaves (coalescing around the Twitter hashtag #ADOS). Although proponents don’t all agree on how and to whom reparations should be distributed, there is no doubt that chattel slavery and its byproducts—Black Codes, debt peonage, lynch mobs, land theft, Jim Crow, redlining and mass incarceration—warrant compensation for Black Americans.

Most agree that the next step is a reparations study bill like H.R. 40, which former Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) introduced each session from 1989 to 2017, only to have it die in committee. Now, presidential hopefuls are lining up in support.

This is a very different story from 2016, when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) came out against reparations and Hillary Clinton dodged the question. Also in 2016, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) told BYP100, a national organization of young Black activists and organizers (of which I am co-director), that he would never support reparations legislation because it would be too divisive and unlikely to pass. Yet on April 9, Booker introduced a reparations study bill in the Senate that mirrors H.R. 40. Perhaps that shouldn’t be a surprise from the only descendant of enslaved African-Americans in the race (the other Black candidates, Sen. Kamala Harris and Wayne Messam, are of Jamaican ancestry), but it’s a big statement at a politically weighty moment.

So, what prompted this political shift? A recent Business Insider poll found that, while 3 out of 4 white Americans oppose reparations, the idea has the support of 54% of self-described liberals, and 64% of Black Americans—important Democratic constituencies. Thanks to the work of Ta-Nehisi Coates, M4BL, #ADOS and others, the national conversation has changed, and the candidates are reflecting that change.

While Democratic presidential hopefuls seem far more likely to embrace reparations in 2019 than they were in 2016, they often go on to advocate something that is … not quite reparations. As economist Darrick Hamilton says, a reparations policy must include compensation and an acknowledgment of specific wrongs. Yet Booker has posited his proposed baby bonds plan (which Hamilton helped work on) as a form of reparations. Every U.S. newborn would get a $1,000 savings account, with annual deposits of up to $2,000, depending on family income, until they turn 18. The fact that children in poverty are disproportionately Black doesn’t make a proposal to give more money to poor children reparations. It makes it good class-conscious policy that fails to explicitly acknowledge and fully atone for the impacts of slavery.

Similarly, Harris said that she supports reparations and would support H.R. 40. But, when asked about reparations, she pointed to her proposed LIFT Act, which would give a tax credit to all working families. Although she estimates it would lift 60 percent of Black people out of poverty, the LIFT Act is still not reparations.

Sanders has altogether been reluctant to endorse reparations as policy. In a March appearance on The View, he said he didn’t support reparations if it meant “just writing a check.” He later added that he’d “of course” sign a reparations bill if one crossed his desk as president—but doesn’t seem particularly interested in putting in the work to get it there. While Sanders acknowledges wealth, health and environmental disparities between Blacks and whites, he maintains the need to focus on everyone, saying in response to a question about reparations, “What we have got to do is pay attention to distressed communities—Black communities, Latino communities and white communities all over this country.” This uncomfortably mirrors the logic of “all lives matter,” which assumes that to acknowledge and address a particular group’s unique disadvantages and suffering is to discount or ignore others’. But it has long been Sanders’ M.O. to be colorblind in his policy proposals, focusing instead on class. Ask any Black farmer, domestic worker or veteran how they fared under the New Deal—a colorblind policy meant to “lift all boats” that explicitly excluded them, at the behest of Southern whites.

Warren, for her part, has remained positive but vague, declining to say if she supports financial compensation. She’s also maintained that Native Americans should be part of the conversation, too. (I agree with Warren that a reparations conversation is warranted for Native Americans; I just think it’s a different, separate one.)

Marianne Williamson seems to be the most straightforward and clear-headed in her stance on reparations, saying she would allocate $200 to $500 billion over a 20-year period to “educational and economic projects” chosen by an “esteemed council of African American leaders.”

But a set of clear, concrete reparations proposals already exists in M4BL’s Vision for Black Lives, a detailed policy platform published in 2016. Passing H.R. 40 would allow us to weigh such proposals and move forward on implementation.

M4BL’s platform includes calls for restitution for Black people, such as access to free lifetime education, and a universal basic income with a higher rate for Black people for a set time. The platform also includes acknowledgment of wrongs through mandated public school curriculums that critically examine the impacts of colonialism and slavery, and cultural assets and monuments to commemorate sites of Black collective struggles and triumphs. These cultural reparations are necessary to tell the stories of African Americans that have been untold, downplayed or whitewashed. They would serve as a permanent reminder of the white supremacist terror to which Black Americans were subjected, while also honoring our resilience.

The platform demonstrates that reparations isn’t just a check, nor is it a blanket policy that benefits more Black people as happenstance. Reparations is both backward-and forward-looking in its mandate to repair harm done. Whether candidates embrace that principle will show how well they measure up on their political will to make amends for the sake of Black futures.

For a response to this piece, see "Universal Policies Can Close the Racial Wealth Gap."

CO2 levels are the highest since humanity began
https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/13/co2-levels-415-ppm-highest-human-history/ #climatechange

#MondayMotivation 'New EU legislation will prolong the lives of popular household items and dampen demand for new ones.' via @PositiveNewsUK@twitter.com
Great to see the progress 🙌 As we've always said: if you can't open it, you don't own it 🔝📱#WeAreFairphone https://bit.ly/2YqVCg5

[Essay] Is Poverty Necessary? by Marilynne Robinson | Harper's Magazine https://prismo.xyz/posts/2d6afbd7-7ace-4611-9da2-d38e20d17150

“The End of Ice” takes you on a journey through the impact, science, and emotions of the climate apocalypse. https://interc.pt/2Jm6mZ3 #climatechange

Posted on #Diaspora* by tigerlily@framasphere.org

Nearly all the world's countries sign deal to prevent plastic waste – except US - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/10/nearly-all-the-worlds-countries-sign-plastic-waste-deal-except-us I'm sorry, #murica, but you're a disgrace...