( Tomdispatch.com ) – Donald Trump was the worst president for Black people in the modern era, if not the nation’s history. Given a life of unremitting racial animus, under no circumstances should he receive a single vote from the Black community or other communities of color. After all, he’s never moderated his white nationalist sentiments and count on this: he never will.

Yet, somehow, he has indeed managed to win support from a sliver of the Black community. In 2016, he captured 6% of its vote and that rose to 8% in his losing effort four years later. No, those weren’t the large numbers he claimed he would win, but given who he is and what he’s done his entire life, including during his presidency, far more than he deserved. In 2024, it’s still likely that he’ll only receive single-digit backing, despite earlier polls showing Black support of anywhere from 15%-20% or more, particularly among men.

An early October poll of Black registered voters in battleground states from Howard University’s polling service, the Howard Initiative on Public Opinion (HIPO), exposed Trump’s lie that he’s winning Black voters in large numbers. HIPO (in which I participate) found that 84% of those polled said they planned to vote for Vice President Harris, while only about 8% would vote for Trump, with others undecided or leaning toward a third-party candidate. That’s hardly a great number for the former president, but even a tiny shift toward him or away from Harris might be just enough to give him an Electoral College victory.

Trump has indeed been endorsed by a number of marginalized Black rappers and celebrities. Some were pardoned or given clemency by him, including former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kirkpatrick, rappers Kodak Black and Lil Wayne, and Death Row Records founder Michael “Harry O” Harris and now the political bill has come due. Black members of Congress like Senator Tim Scott and Representative Byron Donalds have also become ubiquitous on Fox News and other stations praising Trump as the second coming of the Lord almighty. Self-interest goes a long way in explaining support from that crowd, but not from those who haven’t been in the spotlight.

How is it possible that a buffoonish bigot who seems to be deteriorating daily has convinced some African Americans he deserves their vote? The trick lies in Trump’s flimflam talents.

He certainly has a knack for diverting attention. His vulgar, ceaseless racist statements and provocations — “shithole countries,” “They’re eating the pets,” and “fine people on both sides” — served the dual purpose of feeding his white base its diet of racial venom and diverting attention from the policies of his administration that caused generational harm to African Americans and other communities of color. And count on one thing: if he returns to the White House, even more racially devastating policies await.

The excuse given by some of his Black (and white) supporters, uncomfortable with his blatant racism, is that he might be crude, temperamental, and a global embarrassment, but his “policies” while in office were distinct positives for the Black community and the country as a whole. Such policy benefits, they assert, should outweigh any reservations about voting for him. In particular, the “Trump economy” is dangled as proof that he should be supported, no matter what.

Unfortunately, much of the media instantly heads for the latest shiny thing dropped by Trump. The more outrageous, the more the coverage steers away from his policies and the devastation they might cause to his behavior and his words. It’s time instead to take an honest look at Trump’s corporate-friendly, white supremacist record while in office as it impacted the Black community.

Trump’s Economy Did Not Do What He Claimed

It bears repeating that Trump took a good economy that he inherited from Barack Obama and ruined it, like so many of his businesses. Obama gave him 75 straight months of job growth. Trump left office as the only president since the Great Depression to depart with negative job growth. Even before the Covid pandemic, which Trump blames for his ineptitude, his job numbers were flailing compared to Biden’s. According to The Hill, “During Trump’s first 31 months in office, employment growth in the United States averaged 176,000 jobs per month. During Biden’s first 31 months in office, employment growth averaged 433,000 jobs per month.”

Trump argues that he had the lowest Black unemployment because, in August 2019, the rate fell to 5.3%, a record at the time. However, he couldn’t identify a single policy or initiative of his that led to that number. When he took office, according to Federal Reserve Bank data, the rate was 7.5% – thank you, Obama! – but as he headed out the door in January 2021, it was 9.9%.

Perhaps the biggest blow to Trump’s boast — and given his disdain for his successor, no doubt to his hyper-inflated ego — is that, in April 2023, after the Biden administration resuscitated the economy following the Trump-driven pandemic catastrophe, the Black unemployment rate fell to 4.8%, the lowest ever recorded.

Trump’s one big economic “achievement” was his 2017 tax cut. Not only was it wildly skewed toward the top 1%, but it also had a negative racial impact. As a New York Times headline announced, “White Americans Gain the Most from Trump’s Tax Cuts,” noting that they were receiving about 80% of the benefits, while African Americans and Latinos got just 5% and 7%. 

Notably, Trump did remarkably little to change the racial income gap, the racial wealth gap, and racial disparities in stocks and investments. Yes, he still sometimes shouts at rallies, “I love Black men,” but he did nothing to close an income inequity gap in which Black men with the same level of education earn only 72% percent of what white men do.

Housing Hell Under Trump

In the area of housing, Trump appointed noted surgeon Ben Carson to be his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Carson knew nothing about housing policy at any level, nor had he any experience in administering or managing a government agency or department. His scandal-ridden term as secretary included the questionable spending of department funds on furniture and conflict-of-interest problems with his son. Carson was exactly the kind of unqualified hire that he and other conservatives now blame on affirmative action and wokeness.

In terms of policy, one of his first initiatives was a proposal to raise rents on public housing residents. In April 2018, National Public Radio reported that he suggested, “Americans living on housing assistance to put more of their income toward rent and he wants to give public housing authorities the ability to impose work requirements on tenants.” In some instances, under the proposal, many of the poorest renters would have seen an increase to 35% of their gross income, affecting 712,000 renters. Overall, the changes Carson wanted would have impacted more than 4.7 million families.

Trump and Carson also eliminated two anti-discrimination policies put in place at HUD during the Obama Administration to foster fair housing policies and opportunities. The first codified the use of the legal concept of “disparate impact” — looking at racial outcomes rather than the more nebulous idea of racial intent when assessing if racial discrimination has occurred. The second was a rule that obligated local jurisdictions to “identify and dismantle barriers to racial integration.” President Biden reversed those decisions shortly after taking office. 

The racial homeownership divide persisted in the Trump years. By 2021, CNN noted that less than half of Black families, about 44%, owned their homes compared to 72.7% percent, of white families. In fact, in the Trump years, the gap had grown.

Criminal (In)Justice

Trump’s Black supporters ignore his long, racially biased record on criminal justice. They point to the First Step Act, a law sought for years by activists, which Trump signed but played no role in initiating. It provided prison sentence reductions and other needed reforms. After being criticized by both Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence for signing what they considered a “get out of jail free” law, Trump quickly stopped talking about it and there is no mention of the First Step Act on his campaign website where you can buy a “Black Americans for Trump” coffee mug for $25.00.

For the 2024 campaign, he’s returned to form by taking a hard line on criminal justice, while calling for the death penalty for drug traffickers and a return to stop-and-frisk. His fictional “migrant crime” wave is also thoroughly racialized and would, in a second Trump term, undoubtedly lead to sweeps of Black and Brown communities with little regard for due process or human rights.

And remember, under attorney generals Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, the Trump administration carried out policies deeply detrimental to the Black community, including reinstating contracts with private prison corporations, restarting federal executions, allowing police departments to once again obtain military equipment, and supporting “qualified immunity” that protected some particularly discriminatory police behavior.

Trump’s Justice Department also sided with voter suppression initiatives, policies, and laws coming from Republican state legislators and governors, including dropping opposition to a racially discriminatory Texas voter ID law, making it easier to purge voter rolls, and creating the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity that was rightly perceived as an effort to have the Trump White House corruptly get voter information it shouldn’t have had while promoting voter suppression. Even some Republican governors refused to cooperate with that commission.

The Attack on Black Health

The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, brought healthcare coverage to millions of Americans after it became law in 2011. It was despised by the far right and Republican leaders who derided it as government socialism. Yet it dramatically reduced the uninsured rate for poor and low-income Americans, including communities of color. According to a 2022 report by the Department of Health and Human Services, the number of uninsured African Americans fell by 40% because of the ACA, declining from 7.1 million in 2011 to about 4.4 million by 2019. Uninsured rates for African Americans remained highest in states that did not extend Medicaid coverage as an available option under the law. The 12 states that failed to do so, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, and Wyoming, were all dominated by Republican elected officials.

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Trump was unable to repeal the law — some Republican legislators and their constituents loved parts of the ACA — and so he tried to undermine it in other ways. As the Washington Post reported, he slashed “federal money for advertising, community outreach, and ‘navigators’ who serve as enrollment coaches.” If left to Trump, millions of African Americans and others would have had zero coverage and have been left to suffer the harshest consequences of an unaffordable healthcare system.

Worse yet, Trump’s Covid response was a masterclass in what not to do. In the early days of the pandemic, he willingly and knowingly let hundreds of thousands of people die, a significant percentage of whom were Black and Latino, for his own selfish political interests. By the time Trump left office, more than 70,000 African Americans had died from Covid, a rate 1.8 times that of white Americans.

Environmental Injustice

Like other far-right conservatives, Trump denied the very existence of human-driven climate change and did all he could to weaken and undermine environmental regulations. His agenda included removing or reducing protections against air and water pollutants and other dangerous environmental toxins. No president in memory was as harmful or neglectful when it came to protecting the nation, environmentally speaking.

For example, as the Center for American Progress reported, he “gutted protections for clean water by weakening the Clean Water Act” and the Safe Drinking Water Act. As a result, “communities of color in particular are seeing slow and inadequate enforcement” leading to greater harm and risk.

African Americans and other communities of color are far more likely than whites to be located in areas disproportionately impacted by Trump’s repeal of the Clean Power Plan and his degrading of Mercury and Air Toxic Standards. The need for enforcement and protection is clear as Black Americans are “75 percent more likely to live in close proximity to an oil or gas facility than people of other races” and are “nearly 40 percent of those who live within three miles of a coal power plant” along with other communities of color.

Trump also wanted to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Justice, which had been created specifically to address the needs of communities of color related to uneven harm from climate change and corporate pollution. Failing in that effort, he unsuccessfully tried to cut its funding significantly in his last years in office.

Education

Trump falsely claims that he “saved historically Black Colleges and Universities” (HBCUs) because he signed legislation extending the years in which Congress would provide funding for them and other minority-serving institutions. Despite his statements to the contrary, his FUTURE Act provided more or less the same level of yearly funding as during Obama’s presidency, roughly $80 million to $85 million (out of a possible $255 million under the law). And that would prove a pittance compared to the Biden-Harris investment of at least $7 billion aimed at HBCUs. It should be noted that Harris graduated from Howard University, one of the nation’s oldest HBCUs. Trump appears to have only been on an HBCU campus once in his life, a visit to Benedict College in 2019 when students were told to stay in their dorms while he gave a talk to a handpicked, bused-in audience.

Otherwise, Trump generally attacked Black educational needs — from proposed cuts at the Department of Education to proposed orders to eliminate any funding for programs related to educational diversity and inclusion to his appointment of Supreme Court Justices who would vote to erase more than 50 years of racial progress by eliminating affirmative action in higher education.

Civil Rights

On September 4, 2020, only months before leaving office, Trump ordered the White House Office of Management and Budget to issue a memorandum that directed federal agencies “to begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on ‘critical race theory,’ ‘white privilege,’ or any other training or propaganda” that might suggest the United States is a racist country. The goal was to cut funding and cancel contracts related to programs or training supposedly employing such concepts.

That attack would have eliminated every program that sought to address the nation’s history of racial discrimination and exclusion. While president, Trump stated (and recently reiterated) that “we will terminate every diversity, equity, and inclusion program across the entire federal government.”

Trump Appointments

Trump’s judicial and other appointments while in power mirrored the tone and hue of his businesses: lily white. He had one of the worst records in terms of selecting judges of color at the federal level, including the Supreme Court. At the appellate level, Trump only did better than Ronald Reagan in the modern era. Reagan appointed seven Black judges, while the Trump administration could only find nine, unlike the administrations of Jimmy Carter (37), George H.W. Bush (11), Bill Clinton (61), George W. Bush (24), and Barack Obama (58). Overall, about 16% of Trump’s judges were people of color.

In terms of the Supreme Court, Trump had three appointments and chose folks who looked like him, two white men and one white woman. It’s rare indeed that any president gets three appointments, let alone in a single administration, but Trump did, due to the machinations of Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell. In short, a minority-elected president and a minority-elected GOP Senate majority claimed three Supreme Court seats and locked in a conservative majority on the court for a generation. 

Black Lives Didn’t Matter

From Election Day, November 3, 2020, until January 6, 2021, Donald Trump spent every breathing moment trying to disqualify millions of Black votes from Atlanta, Detroit, Madison, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. Now, he and his Black representatives have the stunning audacity to want those same voters to cast a ballot for him. Consider it a classic lie, a con, a grift. As my grandmother would have said, Trump is trying to sell ice cubes in the desert.

He never has and never will have the Black community’s interests at heart. He counts on lies, misrepresentations, and the hope that folks will forget his disastrous presidency. His rhetoric while in and out of office has been hateful and filled with racist dog whistles and blaring horns. But it’s not just his words that need to be criticized. His past policies and projected ones are a stew of far-right extremism, autocratic and bigoted, that will only send the nation backward into a hell on earth if he’s returned to office.

Don’t be bamboozled. The racism and authoritarianism that were infants in his first term will emerge as full-blown adults in a second one. His pledge of retribution and empowerment of the most extreme elements of his base will generate endless crises, chaos, and generational harm to communities of color.

The task on November 5th is simple. Hold accountable for his misdeeds, deceptions, racist sneering, and autocratic aims, the man whose former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said he was “fascist to the core,” whose former White House chief of staff called him “an authoritarian” who “admires people who are dictators,” and whose former press secretary said, “He has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth.”

Copyright 2024 Clarence Lusane

Via Tomdispatch.com

Douglass dedicated his life and work to celebrating and explaining freedom, equality, and justice for all while exposing the fundamental threat to the fulfillment of the American experiment: racism and its institutional arms, slavery and discrimination. He warned in a speech, “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”

Called a prophet of freedom, Frederick Douglass both challenges and inspires us to think and feel more deeply about the issues that absorbed him. He remains relevant for the twenty-first century, and the debates of his time are the debates of our political season.

Douglass asked: What is the purpose of America? How do we fulfill the hopes and aspirations of its citizens? What are the best tactics to make the claims of the U.S. Constitution real for all Americans?

This passionate and stubborn man offered unequivocal answers. He asserted as the motto for his first newspaper, The North Star, “Right is no sex. Truth is of no color. God is the Father of all, and we are all brethren.”

Millions still dispute these assertions, agitated and energized by the ascendancy of Barack Obama and Kamala Harris whose careers are mocked and derided by politicians and pundits using slurs and tropes all too familiar to Douglass.

If you think viciousness and cruelty are unique to our time, you should explore the political cartoons and commentary of the ninteenth century. Racial fear predominates, the fear of social equality and the presumed inevitable result: interracial sex denounced as “amalgamation,” that telling confluence of disgust and envy.

The language of racism and caste has a universal vocabulary; it targets those who are different: them, the other. And according to our past and present fearmongers, they will come after you; take what is yours; rape your wives; kill your children; eat your pets.

Douglass dedicated his life to exposing these perpetrators, becoming their worst nightmare: the supremely gifted black gentleman.

Sydney Morrison, Frederick Douglass: A Novel. (Portland, Or.: Hawthorne Books, 2024). Click here to buy.

  In 1869, when Southern states were systematically removing rights from black people granted by new amendments to the U.S. Constitution and using the KKK as an unofficial arm of local and state governments to terrorize people, Douglass offered an alternative, a grander vision of America and humanity. Douglass’ rhetoric is founded on the celebration of difference, a rejection of racial supremacy. He said, “The mission of America seems plain and unmistakable. Our geographical position, our relation to the outside world, our fundamental principles of government, world-embracing in their scope and character, our vast resources, requiring all manner of labor to develop them, all conspire to one grand end, and that is, to make us the perfect national illustration of unity and dignity of the human family that the world has ever seen.”

Immigration is good.

Difference will save us.

Unity is inevitable.

Douglass was not naïve; he knew the work of his career would never be easy. He famously observed, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will.”

This comment might suggest a grim, joyless tenacity that belies the essential optimism of the man, who said while slavery survived in 1855, “I long to have a future—a future with hope in it.”

And after the abolition of slavery, Douglass summarized one of the most valuable lessons learned by the struggle. It was “faith in man, faith in the rectitude of humanity, and faith in the all-conquering power of truth.”

This is my faith, my highest hope, and my novel is dedicated to the great possibilities within us all and our beloved land.

(Ohio Capital Journal ) – Sometimes the disgusting sewer of presidential year politics hits a little too close to home, and you end up watching a national conversation play out largely divorced from reality or the actual experiences of communities intimately connected to your own life.

That’s what happened to me Monday as I watched Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance lie about legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, and — displaying no sense of conscience whatsoever — make an abhorrent insinuation about them. His purpose, it appears, was a trollish attempt to mislead the public and prey on people’s hatreds and fears. I suppose he thinks that’s good politics.

Meanwhile, after last week using Haitians in Springfield baselessly to attempt to justify his claim that migrants are “terrorizing our communities,” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost followed up Monday by announcing court action to try to get a federal judge to limit migrants coming to Ohio.

Why is this all so disturbing to me?

Three generations of my family called Springfield home, and it’s played a huge role in my life. My parents both grew up in Springfield and I’ve been visiting my whole life. Two sets of my great-grandparents raised their families there. I had one grandfather who retired from International Harvester and another who was an insurance agent in Springfield for decades. I had one grandmother who was a librarian at North High School and another who worked for the local bank. Both of my parents (and two of my grandparents) graduated from Wittenberg. Mike and Rosy’s Deli, Cassano’s Pizza, fishing at the C.J. Brown Dam, family parties at the Polo Club, trips down to Young’s Jersey Dairy or Clifton Gorge, these are all staples of my childhood. I have nothing but love for Springfield and the whole area.

Meanwhile, my partner’s parents are Haitian immigrants who moved to America in their teens and have led such impressively successful lives it blows me away. They’ve shown me nothing but love and kindness and have also played a huge role in my life. Haitian food has become something I can’t go without. I have jars of epis and pikliz in my fridge at all times. I am obsessed with diri kole ak pwa and griot and boulette. I have been working on learning both Spanish and Haitian Creole for several years now; I read every book I can find on Haitian history; and have danced the night away with the most kind and loving people I can imagine more times than I can remember. I have nothing but love for them and their whole family.

Even though they’ve never lived in Ohio, this is what makes this conversation about Haitians in Springfield so difficult for me to stomach. Both the Haitian community and Springfield community live in my heart, and I’m disgusted by the politics being played on both of them.

Using people’s lives and communities as a political cudgel to stoke fear and hatred and outrage with lies and innuendo is a low, base, nasty, reckless, destructive thing to do, and I do not understand what is in the hearts of politicians who indulge in it.

So let’s just clear away the muck before we can proceed to a more adult conversation: Vance keeps incorrectly claiming the Haitian community in Springfield are illegal immigrants. They are not illegal immigrants. They are legal immigrants. They are lawfully in the country. Some are newly arrived legal migrants with work permits, some are fully naturalized U.S. citizens.

What Vance insinuates about “pets” is indefensible. It’s sad that the Springfield News-Sun even had to fact-check it. It’s a disgusting racist lie from the extremist right-wing internet, and Vance perpetuated it to millions of followers. Shame on him.

As for Vance’s claim that Haitians are “causing chaos all over Springfield,” and Yost pointing to Haitians in Springfield as an example of migrants “terrorizing our communities,” I have no idea what they’re talking about. Go to Springfield and tell me where to find the chaos and terror, because every time I’ve been the last four years, I haven’t seen it.

Something extraordinary has happened in Springfield since the pandemic though, with the influx of thousands of Haitian immigrants. The actual number is hard to pin down. City officials have estimated up to 20,000, but estimates of 10,000 and 15,000 have also been made.

“By most accounts, the Haitians have helped revitalize Springfield,” the New York Times reported last week. “They are assembling car engines at Honda, running vegetable-packing machines at Dole and loading boxes at distribution centers. They are paying taxes on their wages and spending money at Walmart. On Sundays they gather at churches for boisterous, joyful services in Haitian Creole.

“But the speed and volume of arrivals have put pressure on housing, schools and hospitals. The community health clinic saw a 13-fold increase in Haitian patients between 2021 and 2023, from 115 to 1,500, overwhelming its staff and budget.”

The Times details how, after decades of shrinking and uncertainty, Springfield was able to attract new manufacturing and business with a strategic plan, and by 2020 had drawn in food-service firms, logistics companies, and a microchip maker, among others:

“But soon there were not enough workers. Many young, working-age people had descended into addiction. Others shunned entry-level, rote work altogether, employers said. Haitians who heard that the Springfield area boasted well-paying, blue-collar jobs and a low cost of living poured in, and employers were eager to hire and train the new work force. The Haitians had Social Security numbers and work permits, thanks to a federal program that offered them temporary protection in the United States. Some had been living for years in places like Florida, where there is a thriving Haitian community.”

So what, in fact, do we have going on here?

We have a large population increase over a short period of time; we have a language barrier that can cause various strains; we have housing, schooling, and health services that need adequate resources to deal with a massive and rapid adjustment.

We also have an eager, dutiful, law-abiding, and peaceful workforce helping revitalize a city and helping local businesses thrive; we have a city’s population swelling instead of declining; we have an influx of new taxpayers and consumers filling blue-collar jobs, paying property taxes, shopping at local stores, and contributing to their community.

Are there struggles? Absolutely.

Is it chaos and terror? Absolutely not.

Is there opportunity for both the city of Springfield and the Haitian community to thrive together? Without a doubt.

“Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024.

Will it all be easy? No. Will it be worth it in the long-run? Yes.

Serious people should discuss serious solutions to serious issues. Politicians using dangerous rhetoric to whip people up into a frenzy of misinformed anger and viciousness is not needed and not helpful.

With Nazis already marching through downtown Springfield, I’m sickened that statewide elected leaders would instigate and inflame the situation even further.

We must be better than that, and we must demand better than that from our elected officials.

To any Haitians new to Springfield, “Sak pase, zanmi m. Mwen akeyi ou!”

And to my friends and family in Springfield, I hope you will welcome the stranger, too. In them you’ll find some of the kindest, warmest, most remarkable people you will ever meet.

Some are revising these policies to include swift consequences for those who dare to follow what have been student protest norms for decades. Similar threats loom for university staff and faculty – not only those who protest, but even some who simply speak out. 

Such policies will ultimately hamper universities from accessing a path towards their own goals of diversity and inclusion. 

In recent months, I visited more than half a dozen pro-Palestinian college encampments in North America, from the US Midwest, to the West Coast, to Canada. As an anthropologist, I was interested to observe that each called itself the “liberated zone”. 

At one encampment, I heard a participant laugh at the notion of university policies on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), saying: “It should be DIE, not DEI. They’re using it to justify killing us.” 

The camper articulated a common frustration regarding the increasingly performative function of DEI initiatives on college campuses across the country. What does this term mean without liberation?

Protesters themselves seem to be doing a better job of upholding such ideals. At the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, during the Jewish holiday of Passover, campers held a Seder meal and welcomed everyone at the encampment to join in the celebrations. 

They did not interfere with a group of opposing protesters who gathered nearby, holding pro-Israel signs. It struck me that even in the context of allowing space for peaceful dissent and opposition, the encampment was liberated. 

‘We keep us safe’

From what I observed, these protest encampments aim to live by the ideals they are protesting for: freedom and justice for all, without the racially and economically infused hierarchies that dominate the world. 

At the University of California, Los Angeles, which was attacked by external Zionist agitators, campers protected each other while police stood by. The officers did not intervene, and the campers did not call on them. “We keep us safe,” campers chanted.

The morning the Ann Arbor encampment was raided and forcibly dismantled, Muslims had just completed the Fajr prayer and an interdenominational Christian worship service was in progress when officers moved in.

Several encampments I visited also observed Indigenous rituals, including a Cree tobacco ceremony – exactly the type of event one imagines taking place on a college campus. During meals, campers made an effort to include kosher, halal, vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options.

Being in a community together is the healthiest way for students to learn about, and from, each other, without objectifying or essentialising norms that might be unfamiliar to some. 

The encampments also featured diverse activities, from film screenings, to holiday celebrations, to topic teach-ins with expert guest speakers. One professor who lived more than an hour away from the encampment he was visiting told me: “I will drive down here if the students host an organising workshop. What they’re coordinating here is unbelievable.” 

Such sentiments were shared with me by many others from coast to coast. 

“Protest,” Digital, Dream / Dreamworld v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Endless cycle

After I was hired in 2017 in the first cohort of a fellowship that was a part of my university’s five-year DEI 1.0 plan (we are now on DEI 2.0), I asked a school official who was guiding the project to explain the use of the term “inclusion”.

What does it mean, I asked, for the institution to pursue inclusion, when this very concept entails a hierarchy, ie, one superior group gets to be the “includer”, while another inferior group is excluded until the former allows them in?

To his credit, he did not articulate a defence of this term, suggesting instead that we view it as a “placeholder”.

The administrations have aligned themselves with far-right interests, at the expense of the very cause of inclusion for which they’re supposedly fighting

Still, the concept itself remains a pursuit. Like past efforts to foster “multiculturalism” and “tolerance”, it seems that liberal-left initiatives to address histories of marginalisation and racism just can’t quite get it right. Higher education institutions have become the epicentre of both the responses to address these historic struggles for equality, and the critiques of these responses – an endless cycle. 

For years, I have studied how diversity’s self-contradictory reality in higher education institutions can lead to self-exclusion. Some campuses have grappled with this by substituting other words for the standard DEI label. New York’s Cornell University whittled their office name down to “Belonging at Cornell”.

What I didn’t predict when I began this journey more than a decade ago was the accompanying attack on DEI at universities and beyond by the far right, leading some states to restrict funding for DEI work at public colleges. 

Thinking about it more deeply, this move shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. DEI work is centred on identity politics, and for obvious reasons, it doesn’t make space for identities that are not marginalised, which has spurred some to revolt. 

This situation also puts critical progressives in a corner: do they continue to critique DEI, or pivot to defend it from right-wing attacks as the primary vehicle in higher education aiming to address histories of systemic bias and discrimination?

Valuable lesson

Amid this backdrop, I have been stunned by the response of most higher education institutions to the encampments on their campuses. 

Colleges are imagined to be sites of free speech and expression, intellectual inquiry, and encountering differences. For many, they form a bridge towards independence as adults. Most colleges have spent the better part of the new millennium ramping up their investments in DEI work.

But today, at a moment when students have united to erect encampments that have organically achieved – even amid their internal disagreements – pluralistic communities that welcome people from myriad backgrounds, universities are not embracing them, but rather treating them as a threat. 

Instead of joining the encampment communities and trying to learn from their students about how to foster a culture of liberation, most university administrations have at best kept them at arm’s length, or worse, violently dismantled them. Thus, the administrations have aligned themselves with far-right interests, at the expense of the very cause of inclusion for which they’re supposedly fighting.

Rather than continuing to target students and tear down encampments, university administrations should go out and witness liberation in action. Perhaps then it could dawn on them that to centre DEI without centring liberation is a futile endeavour, resulting in DEI initiatives being viewed as performative by the very communities they claim to serve.

Liberation should not be complicated. It is most definitely possible on university campuses and around the world, if people believe in it rather than fearing it. The student encampments, at the very least, have taught us that.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Reprinted from the Middle East Eye with the author’s permission.

(The Conversation) – A new conceptual tool is required to fully understand the most recent rhetorical strategies of far-right activists and politicians, including former U.S. President Donald Trump. This is precisely what the concept of “intersectionality of hate” aims to do.

Analysts and academics have been talking about the intersectionality of hate for several years now. In doing so, they draw on the notion of intersectionality developed by African-American law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw to designate a reality shaped by sexism, racism, classism and other categories (there are some 30 in all).

Crenshaw points out that African-American women have always been aware of this complex reality. Mary Church Terrell, a Black suffragist, declared around 1920 that “a white woman has only one handicap to overcome, that of sex. I have two: sex and race.”

While researching anti-feminism and discourses of men’s victimhood related to a so-called crisis of masculinity, I became aware of how the new concept of intersectionality of hate makes it possible to understand the interweaving of hateful discourses. The French historian Christine Bard, with whom I have the good fortune to collaborate, rightly points out that “anti-feminism practises intersectionality, but it’s the intersectionality of hate,” which brings together sexism, racism, antisemitism, xenophobia and homophobia.

This interweaving of hate speech can also be viewed from different points of view, for example, from the racist and xenophobic or “anti-gender” and transphobic movements.

Conceptual innovation

The popularity of the concept of intersectionality no doubt explains the synchronous appearance of the intersectionality of hate on both sides of the Atlantic.

The article “How Trump Made Hate Intersectional” appeared in New York magazine on November 9, 2016, the day after Trump’s election. It was signed by the African-American intellectual Rembert Browne, who explained how the Republican candidate federated voters. “Trump won the presidency by making hate intersectional. He encouraged sexists to also be racists and homophobes, while saying disgusting things about immigrants in public and Jews online.”

Hatred is mixed here with the fear of being robbed of one’s country, institutions and personal achievements, and with anger at not having what one thinks one is entitled to simply by virtue of being a heterosexual white male. This attitude is reminiscent of that of the “Angry White Men” that was much talked about just a few years ago: it is no longer limited to blaming a single group for real or imagined personal problems but blames all minority groups. That means there is no longer a single scapegoat, but a whole herd.

At the same time, in France, Bard, who has shown that anti-feminism and lesbophobia are intertwined and mutually reinforcing, analyzed 1,367 articles dealing with women, gender and sexuality published in the far-right weekly Minute.

MSNBC: “‘He’s broke’: AOC roasts Trump for hosting a campaign rally in the Bronx”

She found that “the intersectionality of hate is practised, associating feminism, homosexualism, Islamism and immigrationism.” She notes that political and media figures are targeted with particular intensity if they are women, and also if they are Jewish, Muslim or of African origin. The historian concludes that this intersectionality of hate runs counter to any egalitarian or inclusive perspective.

Attacks on progressives

Shortly afterwards, the journal Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, and Social Justice devoted a short special report to the intersectionality of hate, associating it with the far right, which attacks progressives and accuses them of imposing their values and defending “minorities.”

In addition to racist and sexist attacks, there are also virulent accusations against “cultural Marxists” (or “wokes”) who allegedly control the State in order to develop “positive discrimination” programs and influence the education system to be able to indoctrinate young people with “political correctness.”

Each attack is an opportunity to point out that the essence of the United States is European, Anglo-Saxon, Christian, heterosexual, capitalist and meritocratic. The attacks also serve to distract attention from the elite that really dominates the country, which is made up of multi-billionaires in the White House, as well as heads of big business and media.

The intersectionality of hate is disseminated by influential traditional (Fox News) and web (Daily Stormer and Daily Wire) media, think tanks like the National Policy Institute and polemicists like Christopher Rufo and Ben Shapiro.

Terrorism

The notion of intersectionality of hate is taken up again in the analysis of hate speech and those associated with terrorist attacks. For example, a study in Europe, Intersectional Hate Speech Online, concludes that “Women remain the group of people most often targeted by intersectional hate speech […], for example Muslim women, Roma women or Women of Colour. […] Another target group for intersectional hate speech is women in public positions.”

Europol also mentions the intersectionality of hate in its 2020 Terrorism Situation and Trend Report. The agency presents a list of attacks motivated by anti-feminism, racism and xenophobia. It gives the example of the one perpetrated in 2011 in Norway by the Nazi Anders Breivik, who claimed in his manifesto to be defending Christian European civilization, and who massacred 76 young socialists.

Europol also mentions Elliot Rodger, who committed one of the first mass murders associated with involuntary celibates in California in 2014, and who also expressed sexist and racist hatred in his manifesto.

“I was anti-everything,” answered a former French gendarme when the court asked him if he was homophobic, during a trial for having planned attacks on several targets. The defendant had also written a neo-Nazi manifesto celebrating Breivik.

Other Islamophobic attackers had planned to attack feminists. The one who targeted the Québec mosque in 2017 was interested in feminist groups at Laval University, and the one who decimated a Muslim family in Ontario, in 2021, had scouted abortion clinics.

Finally, British journalist Helen Lewis points out in her article “The Intersectionality of Hate”, published in The Atlantic, on a mass killer who targeted Buffalo’s African-American community in 2022, that his manifesto included antisemitic cartoons.

Victim rhetoric

So, the intersectionality of hate works by superimposing similar analytical frameworks that systematically deduce the same dynamics from reality, and always lead to the same conclusion: the white heterosexual male is a victim of “minorities” he must resist.

This rhetoric helps to legitimize even the most obvious abuses, such as voting for the would-be dictator for a day Trump, or imposing one’s vision of things through terrorist violence.

The intersectionality of hate also targets progressives and reflects the refusal to recognize that the “majority” of white heterosexual men is, in reality, a minority whose claim to superiority, or even supremacy, is well and truly contested in the name of social justice.

Francis Dupuis-Déri, Professeur, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Consider Donald Trump to be in a racial bind when it comes to election 2024. After all, he needs Black voters to at least defect from Joe Biden in swing states, if not actually vote for him. Yet, more than ever, he also needs his white nationalist base to believe that a second Trump term will be even more racist than the first and he’s been openly claiming that he’ll address the ghost of anti-white racism. Not surprisingly, his evolving strategy for the Black vote has been high on empty symbolism and viral moments, but distinctly low on specific promised policy benefits for the Black community.

Milkshakes and far-right policies are all the presumptive Republican presidential candidate has recently offered Blacks. Take his orchestrated photo op at a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta a preview of things to come. The event was organized by Black MAGA supporter and Republican operative Michaelah Montgomery, who recruited some young African Americans, probably students from nearby historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), to cheer for Trump when he entered the place. He proceeded to buy milkshakes for everyone. Montgomery herself gave Trump a picture-perfect hug and, to the glee of MAGAworld, stated, “I don’t care what the media tells you, Mr. Trump. We support you.”

Naturally, while there he made false claims about what he had done for Black folks while president. It wasn’t quite a speech, but he more or less mumbled that he had great support in the area because “I have done more for the people of Atlanta than any other president by far. I have done more for the black community than any other president since Abraham Lincoln and maybe including Abraham Lincoln, but since Abraham Lincoln. And it looks like our polling is very good in the state of Georgia overall. We are very happy about it. We have had — you see the support. It’s been really something.”

Note to Trump: You had such great support in Georgia in 2021 that the GOP lost two Senate seats in run-off elections there (while you were trying to overthrow the government). And that was primarily because of the turnout of Black voters who, the previous November, had voted for President Biden and returned to vote Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock into office.

Without actually engaging the students at Chick-fil-A, and speaking in his usual broken fashion, Trump boasted: “That’s really nice. We took care of the — black colleges, university. They are taken care of. Biden did nothing for them. I did everything.”

Note to Trump: The Fostering Undergraduate Talent by Unlocking Resources for Education Act (or FUTURE Act) you signed ensured that permanent funding for HBCUs would remain at essentially the same level as during the Obama administration (about $85 million). The Biden administration, on the other hand, has invested over $7 billion in HBCUs. That includes “$3.6 billion for HBCUs through the American Rescue Plan and other COVID relief,” “$1.6 billion in capital finance debt relief for 45 public and private HBCUs,” and “$1.7 billion in grant funding to expand academic capacity and provide support for low-income students.”

MAGA and HBCUs

Michaelah Montgomery is steeped in contemporary MAGA politics. She has ties to the Blexit Foundation, a group started by far-right provocateur and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens to sway African Americans from the Democratic Party. Montgomery states on her LinkedIn page that she was Blexit’s city director for the Atlanta metro region. She is also the founder of Conserve the Culture, a group apparently devoted to converting young African American students to conservative, that is, Trumpublican, politics.

In interviews with the right-wing media, she made it appear that Trump had encountered a group of everyday young Black people at that Chick-fil-A who spontaneously expressed their love for him. In fact, it was a handpicked group that did not represent most HBCU students or the Black community more generally.

Buy the Book

If she really thought Trump had developed significant popularity among Black students, why didn’t she schedule him to speak at an HBCU? Montgomery later said: “The media will definitely have you thinking that if [Trump] were to show up to our neighborhood… that an angry mob of some sort would form or a riot would ensue.” She can pretend otherwise, but if Donald (“the Black people like me”) Trump actually ever showed up to spew his usual lies to any HBCU audience or Black community in the nation, there would indeed be massive protests.

While he claims he’s had great relations with HBCU presidents, he only visited one of those schools during his presidency and it turned into a scandalous Trumpian event. In 2019, he gave a talk at Benedict College in South Carolina to crow about his criminal justice reform policies. However, Benedict students were asked to stay in their dorms, where they were essentially imprisoned for an hour and served lunch while Trump bloviated. The faculty, too, were requested to stay away. According to USA Today, only seven students were allowed to attend the event and they were not allowed to ask questions.

Black and Far Right

Trump’s Black supporters continue to propagate the false notion that he’s going to make a historic breakthrough in voter support in the coming election. Polls are one thing, election results another. While his campaigns in 2016 and 2020 were wish-casting that he would get 15% to 20% of the Black vote, he only won 6% and 8% respectively.

And it should be noted that Trump desperately wants to dump Black votes not cast for him. The Big Lie that he won in 2020 was premised on his contention that voting in Black-dominated cities was corrupt and that millions of votes should have been discounted. Accepting that “reality” is the price of admission to Trumpworld, whether at the Trump-colonialized Republican National Committee or for any prospective vice-presidential candidate.

And worse yet, his African American sycophants continue to drink the Kool-Aid. South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott humiliated himself recently on NBC’s Meet the Press when he clumsily refused six (yes, six!) times to state that he would accept a Trump defeat in the fall. Repeatedly asked, he demonstrated that his desire to stay in Trump’s good graces and potentially become his running mate took priority over the most basic stance for maintaining a constitutional democracy.

In the service of Trump, Scott also launched a video series, “America’s Starting Five,” a weekly discussion between him and the other four Black Republicans in Congress, Representatives Burgess Owens (UT), John James (MI), Wesley Hunt (TX), and Byron Donalds (FL). The goal: to convince Black voters that the GOP and Trump are the only way to go if African Americans want to get ahead.

The first episode, however, didn’t focus on policy differences between the Democrats and Trump, but on two ill-advised and well-criticized statements by Joe Biden. In 2019, he said that “poor kids are just as bright and talented as white kids,” implying it was a given that white kids were bright and talented. He immediately recognized his mistake and tried to clean it up with gibberish. (“Wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids, no, I really mean it, but think how we think about it.”) In 2020, as he was finishing an interview with the popular Black radio host Charlamagne tha God, Biden said, “Well I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” At the time, criticism flowed from across the political spectrum in the Black community, chastising the president for seemingly attempting to police Black racial identity.

Scott and the others used those statements to draw a conclusion about Biden’s bigotry and then extend that critique to the Democratic Party. This required, of course, burying decades of Trump’s racist statements and behavior in a memory hole that went deep into the center of the earth. It was an act of epic historical revisionism. They functionally erased the fact that he gave succor to white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, attacked voting rights, expressed a desire to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters, demanded that there be less immigrants from “shithole” nations and more from Norway, defamed black prosecutors, judges, and district attorneys with racist verbal attacks, insulted Harriet Tubman, and so much more during his presidency.

The Racial Storm Is Coming

Yet consider Trump’s first term nothing but an appetizer, should he be reelected. According to his campaign website, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and Project 47, he will unleash a program of racial authoritarianism unseen since the worst days of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. And he’ll be emboldened and enabled by a constitution filled with ambiguities and undemocratic provisions, by an increasingly reactionary Supreme Court he helped appoint, and by millions of his supporters (many of whom have shown a propensity for using violence to meet their idea of his agenda).

Trump’s second-term racial program is already emerging. He stated while president and recently reiterated that “we will terminate every diversity, equity, and inclusion program across the entire federal government” and end Biden’s “Marxist executive order that seeks to impose racist and woke sexual ideology across the federal government.”

Believe him.

And it won’t just stop at the federal level or in the public sector. As the Guardian recently reported, MAGA forces are planning to go after all efforts at inclusion (whether related to racial, gender, religious, or sexual-orientation), including in the corporate sector and the non-profit world. Trump’s former adviser Stephen Miller’s America First Legal group and other far-right actors have already filed suits against Fearless Fund, a venture capital business founded by Black women; Hello Alice, which provides grants to small Black business owners; and the George Floyd Memorial scholarship program at Minneapolis’s North Central University, among other initiatives. America First Legal has been on a hyper mission to end diversity efforts, all of which it perceives as harmful to white Americans.

In a broader context, Trump has stated, “But if you look right now, there’s absolutely a bias against white and that’s a problem.” First and foremost, Trump sees himself as a victim of racism by Black public authorities and has been signaling that he’s all in on a campaign of overt white nationalism. It couldn’t be clearer where he’ll focus the resources of the White House and federal government should he return to power.

And one thing is guaranteed: he’ll have support for his actions. As USA Today noted, citing a CBS November poll, “Most white voters supporting Trump believe that racial minorities are favored over white people.” About 58% of Trump voters (as opposed to 9% of Biden ones) believe “racial minorities” are favored over “white people.”

And his plans (as well as those of his GOP allies) to get back into office include not only voter suppression tactics like closing polling sites, ending early voting, and questioning mail-in or drop-box ballots, but attempting to employ an army of Election Day militias who will look for “irregularities” and “illegal” behavior. Is there any doubt where those 100,000 election watchers will be sent (or what they will look like)? And by the way, there has been stone-dead silence from Trump’s Black supporters on the plan to send hardcore MAGA troops to Black and Latino communities in swing states.

Absurd to the End

Trump has said to his Black backers, “I’m being indicted for you, the Black population.” That’s his way of attempting to link his own misconduct and corruption to his conviction that the Black community is overwhelmingly filled with criminals. Even worse, he has insultingly compared himself to South African leader Nelson Mandela, one of the most famous prisoners in the world for nearly three decades. Of course, he knows absolutely nothing about Mandela or what sent him to prison, only that he was famous for it. Mandela became a global hero to tens of millions who fought for years for his freedom.

You undoubtedly won’t be surprised to learn that, according to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, The Donald had a remarkably low opinion of Mandela. Cohen wrote in Disloyal: A Memoir that, after Mandela died in 2013, Trump told him, “Mandela f—ed the whole country up. Now it’s a s—hole. F— Mandela. He was no leader.”

Of course, Trump knew little and could have cared less about Africa, or South Africa in particular. There is almost no record of him discussing or tweeting about South Africa. The one time he did, based on a news report by far-right commentator Tucker Carlson, he tweeted a white supremacist talking point, falsely claiming that there were “large-scale killings” of white farmers in that country. From former Klan leader David Duke to hard racist websites like the Daily Stormer, white supremacists naturally celebrated Trump’s tweet.

In 2016, every white nationalist and supremacist in this country supported Donald Trump. In 2020-2021, in the wake of the Charlottesville riots, immigration cruelties, and the January 6th insurrection, they supported him again. And now, as the 2024 election looms, and Trump fights “anti-white” racism, he has once more earned their love and their votes.

Singer and activist John Legend who, along with his wife Chrissy Teigen, has battled Trump for years, summed up the former president best. He said: “He’s done very little for us and he is at his core, truly, truly a racist.”

Welcome to the 2024 election season and a world in which Black MAGA is still MAGA to the core.

Copyright 2024 Clarence Lusane

Tomdispatch.com

Hebrew University made this announcement on Wednesday, reinstating Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian:

In a meeting held today between the Rector of the Hebrew University, Prof. Tamir Sheafer, and Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian clarified that as a critical feminist researcher, she believes all victims and does not doubt their words, and that she did not deny the fact that on 7.10 there were cases of rape in the South. After this clarification, the Hebrew University will allow Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian to continue teaching at the School of Social Work and Social Welfare.

Prof. Sheafer stressed that the Hebrew University strongly condemns inciting words and threats against students, lecturers, individuals and groups, and calls on all members of the University community to maintain a safe and respectful study and research environment.

Before this announcement the following letter had been sent:

Prof. Asher Cohen, President
Prof. Tamir Sheafer, Rector
Prof. Asher Ben-Arieh, Dean
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
24 March 2024
Dear President Cohen, Rector Sheafer, and Dean Ben-Arieh,

Prof. Asher Cohen, President Prof. Tamir Sheafer, Rector Prof. Asher Ben-Arieh, Dean The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 24 March 2024

Dear President Cohen, Rector Sheafer, and Dean Ben-Arieh,

We, the undersigned Palestinian faculty (current and former) at Israeli institutions of higher education, find your recent suspension of our dear colleague, Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, highly alarming and disturbing. Your decision does not only amount to an assault on her personally, and on her internationally esteemed scholarship, but also on all members of the academic community in Israel who aim to think freely, unrestricted by state agendas and ideologies.

Universities must aim to uphold the universality of knowledge, and this requires an unwavering commitment to liberty, equality, and justice. Academic institutions must provide open and safe spaces for the free and equal exchange of ideas and evaluate them according to merit as established within the rigors of academic disciplines. Scholarly discussions can only be fruitful and meaningful within these conditions.

Regrettably, your letter of 12 March 2024 addressed to and about Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian, as well as other prior public announcements, show that Hebrew University, under your leadership, is failing to adhere to these fundamental academic principles. You would do well to recall Hannah Arendt’s observation that when pervasive thoughtlessness runs rampant, immoral acts become the norm.

Your decision serves to censure Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s voice, along with the voices of other scholars and students who legitimately and rightfully question Israel’s policies and actions. Such critical voices participate in important conversations with academics, legal experts, humanitarian organizations, and NGOs around the world. As a world-renowned expert on state crimes and genocide, Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian holds particular legitimacy in expressing her researched opinions. Your decision to suspend Professor Shalhoub- Kevorkian sets a dangerous precedent, perilously undermining academic freedom at your institution, and potentially at other institutions as well – signaling a warning to those who might dare to speak against the state.

Instead of fulfilling your duty to protect Professor Shalhoub-Kervorkian’s academic freedom, you are encouraging voices that support the Israeli state in its massive assault on tens of thousands of civilians. Your statements and actions work to further inflame tensions at a time when hate speech of vocal professors and students at Israeli universities, including at yours, is escalating and ultimately escaping sanction. Dissenters and Palestinians are the members of the university community whose safety, and whose right to speak freely, requires your vigilant defense today.

We, the undersigned, request that you publicly withdraw your statements regarding Professor Shalhoub- Kevorkian, and that you work to ensure a safe space for students and faculty at the Hebrew University. Such a step would send an important message to the international academic community that universities must preserve academic freedom first and foremost.

Sincerely,

Michael Karayanni The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ميخائيل كرين 1.
Asʻad Ganim University of Haifa أسعد غانم 2.
Ahmad H. Sa’di Ben Gurion University of the Negev أحمد سعدي 3.
Manal Totry-Jubran Bar-Ilan University منال توتري-جبر ان 4.
Jeries Khoury Tel Aviv University جريس خوري 5.
Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder Ben Gurion University of the Negev رساب أبو ربيعة 6.
Nidaa Khoury Ben Gurion University of the Negev نداء خوري 7.
Marwan Dwairy Oranim College of Education مروان دويري 8.
Maurice Ebileeni University of Haifa موريس عبلّين 9.
Raif Zreik The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute رائف زريق 10.
Ameed Saabneh University of Haifa عميد صعابنة 11.
Honaida Ghanim Independent هنيدة غانم 12.
Nadeem Karkabi University of Haifa ر كننديم كر 13.
Jihad El-Sana Ben Gurion University of the Negev جهاد الصّانع 14.
Samer Swaid University College London سامر سويد 15.
Fadia Nasser Tel Aviv University فادية ناص 16.
A’as Atrash Independent عاص أطرش 17.
Amira Daher Zefat Academic College أمبر ة ضاهر 18.
Rawia Aburabia Sapir Academic College راوية أبو ربيعة 19.
Ahmad Igbaria Tel Aviv University أحمد إغبارية 20.
Arin Salamah-Qudsi University of Haifa عرين سالمة-قدس 21.
Manar Makhoul Tel Aviv University منار مخّول 22.
Salwa Nakkara University of Haifa سلوى نقارة 23.
Maha Sabbah-Karkabi Ben Gurion University of the Negev مها صبّاح-ركنكر 24.
Abeer Otman The Hebrew University of Jerusalem عثمان ر عبب 25.
Adeem Massarwa Ben Gurion University of the Negev أديم مصاروة 26.
Faisal Azaiza University of Haifa فيصل عزايزة 27.
Ramzi Sulieman University of Haifa رمزي سليمان 28.
Nadim Rouhana Tufts University نديم روحانا 29.
Ahmad Abu Akel University of Haifa أحمد أبو عقل 30.
Rassem Khamaisi University of Haifa راسم خمايس 31.
Bashir Bashir The Open University of Israel ر بشب ر بشب 32.
Mohammad Massalha The Open University of Israel محمد مصالحة 33.
Fuad Iraqi Tel Aviv University فؤاد عراق 34.
Heba Yazbak The Open University of Israel هبة يزبك 35.
Wael Abu-’Uksa The Hebrew University of Jerusalem وائل أبو-عقصة 36.
Taghreed Yahia-Younis Tel Aviv University ر تغريد يحن-يونس 37.
Suleiman Abu-Bader Ben Gurion University of the Negev سليمان أبو بدر 38.
Suheir Abu Oksa Daoud Coastal Carolina University أبو عقصة داود ر سهب 39.
Sarah Abu-Kaf Ben Gurion University of the Negev كف سارة أبو 40.
Mansour Nasasra Ben Gurion University of the Negev منصور نصاصة 41.
Hisham Jubran Beit Berl College هشام جبر ان 42.
Nihaya Daoud Ben Gurion University of the Negev نهاية داوود 43.
Rami Aqeilan The Hebrew University of Jerusalem رام عقيالن 44.
Abdalla Mashall Ben Gurion University of the Negev عبد هللا مشال 45.
Edriss Titi Weizmann Institute of Science إدريس تين 46.
Johnny Mansour Beit Berl College جون منصور 47.
Manal Gabour Beit Berl College منال جبّور 48.
Khalid Ghanayim University of Haifa خالد غنايم 49.
Ahmad Natour The Hebrew University of Jerusalem أحمد الناطور 50.
Yousef Jabareen Tel-Hai Academic College يوسف جبارين 51.
Ibrahim Geries University of Haifa إبراهيم جريس 52.
Ibrahim Taha University of Haifa إبراهيم طه 53.
Hassan Khalilih University of Haifa حسن خليلية 54.
Mahmoud Yazbak University of Haifa محمود يزبك 55.
Tawfiq Da’adli The Hebrew University of Jerusalem توفيق دعادلة 56.
Adel Manna The Hebrew University of Jerusalem عادل منّاع 57.
Areen Hawari The Hebrew University of Jerusalem عرين هواري 58.
Ula Aweida The Hebrew University of Jerusalem عال عويضة 59.
Muhammad Haj-Yahia The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ر محمد حاج يحن 60.
Muhammad Al-Atawneh Ben Gurion University of the Negev محمد العطاونة 61.
Abed El Qadir Kanaaneh Tel Aviv University كناعنة عبد 62.
Muzna Awayed-Bishara Tel Aviv University مزنة عويد-بشارة 63.
Issam Aburaya Seton Hall University عصام أبو ريا 64.
Zahiye Kundos Independent زهية قندس 65.
Nabih Bashir Independent ر نبيه بشب 66.
Muhammad Amara Beit Berl College محمد أمارة 67.
Elinor Saiegh-Haddad Bar-Ilan University اليانور صايغ-حداد 68.
Khawla Abu-Baker Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education خولة أبو بكر 69.
Aida Fahmawi-Watad Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education عايدة فحماوي-وتد 70.
Maram Masarwa Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education مرام مصاروة 71.
Hanna Bishara Tel Aviv University حنا بشارة 72.
Raja Giryes Tel Aviv University رجا جريس 73.
Ayman Agbaria University of Haifa أيمن إغبارية 74.
Muhammad Abu Samra The David Yellin Academic College of Education محمد أبو سمرة 75.
Areej Mawasi Technion أري ج مواس 76.
Nisreen Morqus Oranim College of Education نرسين مرقس 77.
Sylvia Saba-Sadi Gordon College of Education سيلفيا سابا-سعدي 78.
Ismael Abu-Saad Ben Gurion University of the Negev إسماعيل أبو سعد 79.
Wurud Jayusi Beit Berl College / Arab Academic Institute ورود جيوس 80.
Nihaya Wishahi Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education نهاية وشاح 81.
Khaled Abu-Asbe خالد أبو عصبة 82.
Raid Saabni The Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo رائد صعابنة 83.
Asharf Brik Technion ف إبريقرأرس 84.
Norman Metanis The Hebrew University of Jerusalem نورمان إميل مطانس 85.
Riad Agbaria Ben Gurion University of the Negev رياضإغبارية 86.
Saleem Zaroubi University of Groningen ر سليم زارون 87.
Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat Tel Aviv University فاتنة إبريق-زبيدات 88.
Warda Sada Independent وردة سعدة 89.
Loab Hammoud Bar-Ilan University لؤاب حمود 90.
Ahmad Masarwa The Hebrew University of Jerusalem أحمد مصاروة 91.
Amal Rouhana-Toubi Braude – College of Engineering آمال روحانا-رطون 92.
Samir Hajj Oranim Academic College and Beit Berl College حاج ر سمب 93.
Areej Sabbagh-Khoury The Hebrew University of Jerusalem أري جصباغ-خوري 94.
Khaled Furani Tel Aviv University خالد فوران 95.
Banna Shoughry-Badarne The Hebrew University of Jerusalem بانة شغري-بدارنة 96.
Yaqub Hanna Weizmann Institute of Science يعقوب حنا 97.
Manal Shalabi Independent ر منال شلن 98.
Nicole Khayat The Hebrew University of Jerusalem نيكول خيّاط 99.

Mayor slams op-ed as ‘bigoted’ and ‘Islamophobic,’ calls for increased police patrols in city

By: Jon King –

( Michigan Advance ) – Reaction to a Wall Street Journal opinion piece about Dearborn intensified through the weekend, as President Joe Biden and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer joined the chorus of condemnation. 

The WSJ op-ed, “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital,” alleged thousands of residents in the predominantly Muslim city, including “imams and politicians” are siding with “Hamas against Israel and Iran against the U.S.”

The op-ed was written by Steven Salinsky, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a group critics say often produces selective or inaccurate translations to negatively portray Muslims and Arabs. 

By Saturday morning, Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, a former House member, took to social media to lambast the piece.

“It’s 2024 and the @WSJ still pushes out this type of garbage. Reckless. Bigoted. Islamophobic,” said Hammoud, who called Dearborn “one of the greatest American cities in our nation,” noting that not only was it the home of the Ford Motor Co., but the fastest-growing city in Michigan, as well as  among the most diverse.

But within about two hours, he came back to X to note the negative impact the WSJ piece was having. 

“Effective immediately –  Dearborn police will ramp up its presence across all places of worship and major infrastructure points,” said Hammoud. “This is a direct result of the inflammatory @WSJ opinion piece that has led to an alarming increase in bigoted and Islamophobic rhetoric online targeting the city of Dearborn. Stay vigilant.”

Requests for comment on the nature of those threats were sent by the Michigan Advance to both Dearborn Police and Michigan State Police, but have yet to be returned.

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“Dearborn police on high alert after WSJ opinion article”

CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid said the group welcomes “the proactive approach taken by Mayor Hammoud to protect the Muslim community from potential attack based on the false claims in this inaccurate and inflammatory commentary.” The Washington, D.C.-based CAIR reports that the groups received 3,578 complaints during the last three months of 2023 — a 178% increase compared to a similar period in 2022.

Almost exactly 24 hours after Hammoud’s post, Biden also posted to social media his criticism of the WSJ op-ed.

“Americans know that blaming a group of people based on the words of a small few is wrong,” said Biden. “That’s exactly what can lead to Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate, and it shouldn’t happen to the residents of Dearborn – or any American town. We must continue to condemn hate in all forms.”

State Rep. Alabas Farhat (D-Dearborn) said he’ll be introducing a resolution in the House on Tuesday condemning “vile rhetoric.” 

“Glad to see the President condemning the hateful bigoted piece published by @WSJ,” he wrote. “Let’s not forget that dehumanizing words and policies lead to the rise in hate crimes we’re seeing.” 

Whitmer also issued a post on Sunday.

“Dearborn is a vibrant community full of Michiganders who contribute day in and day out to our state. Islamophobia and all forms of hate have no place in Michigan, or anywhere. Period,” she said.

Residents in Dearborn have organized and held multiple protests of the war against Hamas by Israel, jointly condemning the administration, and Biden specifically, for not embracing a cease-fire in Gaza, where more than 27,000 Palestinians have died since the Oct. 7 surprise attack by Hamas that killed as many as 1,400 Israelis, most of them civilians.

Most recently, groups held a rally last Wednesday at Fordson High School in Dearborn, protesting the ongoing Israeli military action. It took place on the eve of Biden’s campaign visit to Michigan — which also drew protesters, as the Advance previously reported — and about a week after several Arab American leaders, including Hammoud, declined to meet with Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez.

While Biden administration officials have affirmed Israel’s right to respond to the attack, they have increasingly demanded more attention to minimizing civilian casualties.

“Israel must do more to stop violence against civilians in the West Bank and hold accountable those responsible for it,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last Thursday on sanctions levied by Biden against four Israeli settlers in the West Bank, part of an effort to curb civilian casualties in the region as the Israel-Hamas war continues. Negotiations on a ceasefire continued Sunday.

Critics of the WSJ op-ed said that protesting against American foreign policy, and even an American president, should not be used to indict an entire community, especially on ethnic or religious lines.

“Bigotry.  Hatred.  Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim.  If the headline was about any other minority — with the worst stereotype of that group — it would have never gotten through the editors at the WSJ,” said U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly), who is Jewish.

Fellow Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Ann Arbor), who lived in Dearborn for nearly 40 years, called it “another example of hate directed at a community that is already hurting, resulting in fear, vitriol, and threats of violence.”

Dingell said her “neighborhood and friends were supportive, caring, and dedicated, and concluded by stating that “We cannot let hatred of any kind, Islamophobia, antisemitism, destroy people. We must stand up to hate everywhere and anywhere we see it.”

 

Jon King

Jon King is the Senior Reporter for the Michigan Advance and has been a journalist for more than 35 years. He is the Past President of the Michigan Associated Press Media Editors Association and has been recognized for excellence numerous times, most recently in 2022 with the Best Investigative Story by the Michigan Association of Broadcasters. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Cleary University. Jon and his family live in Howell.

 

Michigan Advance

Published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

He’s also provided some of America’s favorite headlines and jokes, even for progressives like me. As one fictional mom quipped in a Saturday Night Live skit at the end of his term in office, “If he’s gone, what am I supposed to do? Focus on my kids?” She was also mockingly lamenting the possibility that startling headlines like “‘Grab ‘em by the pussy” would disappear from our all-American world.

It turns out she needn’t have worried! It seems the media is far more eager these days to cover the former president’s endless missteps (or are they just steps?) than highlight the investments made by President Biden’s administration, which have finally started to pay off in terms of higher wages, more jobs, and lower carbon emissions. Big as we are on short-term gratification (or gloom) and the latest polls, we seem so much less interested in examining what presidents actually do.

Among Us

With the 2024 election heading toward us the way that asteroid hurtled toward the dinosaurs, while our sensationalistic political culture shows little sign of changing anytime soon, I’d suggest that we turn the conversation from the crazy stuff “Orange Jesus” loves to say to the fact that Trump and his supporters are, for the foreseeable future, going to be among us. Isn’t it time, imagining the worst to come, to start talking about what an anti-Trump resistance would look like?

To do so, we’d first have to take a closer look at what some of his most influential supporters are planning for the next time around. You may have noticed that a set of conservative think tanks and scholars, who call themselves Project 2025, have drafted a nearly thousand-page blueprint for a hypothetical Trump second term. It’s a document labeled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (though all it really purports to conserve is an abiding American focus on funding our military-industrial complex). The document covers everything from how a Trump administration ought to handle federal staffing to how it could restructure military and federal law enforcement agencies to its own benefit. Let me flag a few parts of that document that I find particularly concerning and suggest small ways in which you and I might act to preserve democratic values in a country that seems either to take them all too much for granted or care about them less and less.

“Taking the Reins of Government”

When it comes to the plans of Trump’s advisers to reshape the executive branch in an autocratic fashion, should he be reelected, the title in the relevant section of their document — “Taking the Reins of Government” — perfectly catches the top-down approach to power they envision. For years now, the Orange Jesus has made no secret of his urge to launch retribution against those in the Washington bureaucracy who opposed him and ensure that tens of thousands of career public service positions in federal agencies and the White House will, in (his) future, be held by people vetted for their loyalty to him (and only him!). So reads the first major section of that Mandate, which outlines how a second Trump administration would assert far more direct White House control over this country through the federal bureaucracy.

In fact, the document’s authors advocate that an incoming Trump administration circumvent the Vacancies Reform Act, which establishes standards for congressional vetting of temporarily appointed federal personnel. They suggest instead indefinitely using acting personnel in vacant positions, particularly ones the first Trump administration was hostile to like State Department diplomatic posts.

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Notably, the document is remarkably explicit about its recommendation to appoint acting personnel in departments already known for their abuse of American civil rights. (Think: Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials kidnapping Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland during the summer of 2020.) A chilling example is the Mandate’s discussion of how a Trump White House could appoint acting personnel at DHS from scratch to “guarantee implementation of a Day One agenda.” I can’t help thinking: Is this what Trump meant when he told a Fox News Town Hall that he would be a “dictator” only on day one? Ostensibly, he could make many of the worst decisions immediately and then leave his goons to carry out the rest of the dirty work, Putin-style.

Given such a topsy-turvy reality, if you were hoping that journalists would still be close at hand to help call out any disastrous lapses in integrity, think again. Because count on something else: serious journalists wouldn’t be allowed within a country mile of Donald Trump and his closest advisers. In fact, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that the authors of the Mandate suggest the White House should have a very different relationship with its press pool, if there even were to be one at all. In describing a future Trumpian White House Office of Communications, the Mandate reads, “No legal entitlement exists for the provision of permanent space for media on the White House campus, and the next Administration should reexamine the balance between media demands and space constraints on the White House premises.”

Right! A Trump White House undoubtedly wouldn’t have space for all too much. At another point, in a paragraph on how Trump’s future communications director would need to “navigate the mainstream media” to advance the president’s agenda, the authors write, “The new Administration should examine the nature of the relationship between itself and the White House Correspondents Association and consider whether an alternative coordinating body might be more suitable.”

An “alternative coordinating body” organized by Donald Trump and crew? What could possibly go wrong?

In fact, just imagine a Trumpian future in which those with the president’s ear on every topic will be chosen by and aligned with that very same unhinged person, while his administration attempts to transform the media into its own propaganda arm, while repressing anything that might prove hostile to him in any way. In a second Trump White House, supporting an independent media would mean more than just subscribing to the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and local newspapers that will undoubtedly come under existential threats. It’s also going to mean providing an actual safe space for journalists whose exposés of government abuse will make them prime targets for the Orange Jesus’s followers. Think, for an analogous example, of murdered Russian war correspondent Anna Politkovskaya, who exposed abuse by Russian security forces against Muslim minority communities in the south of that country.

Now imagine, in an unhinged second Trump presidency, what sorts of doxing and other nightmares writers and their families might have to endure. We’ll all have to be ready to let such figures (or their threatened children and spouses) into our homes, lock the doors, and tell no one that they’re there. Meanwhile, the rest of us would have to protest — and get others to join us – when journalists and other oppositional figures start to be arrested under bogus charges or attacked by thugs. In a second Trump era, it will be of crucial importance for the rest of us to stand with those who continue to insist on telling the truth, even if you don’t agree with them politically.

It will be no less important to elevate and celebrate the writing of people who describe acts of resistance and heroism, be it their own or of others. I’m thinking about people like Washington Post columnist and author Jennifer Rubin or former Republican politico (and truthteller) Liz Cheney, who have made a point not just of critiquing the fascists aligned with Trump but of describing how to build life-affirming new policies that would serve the very constitution a second Trump term would undoubtedly try to toss into the gutter.

“The Common Defense”

Those would-be Trump presidential advisers have been remarkably detailed in describing their hopes for how a second Trump presidency could transform the U.S. military, and that section of their Mandate, I must admit, initially sounded okay to me. After all, they seemed to want to keep this country out of yet more foreign conflicts, while making the Pentagon accountable for how it spends its money. They also want more employment and financial support to be offered to military families (like mine!). In other words, many of the things I’ve been writing about at TomDispatch for years.

I was even initially impressed that they claimed to want the military to deprioritize “manufactured extremism” — until I realized that what they’re evidently referring to is the Pentagon’s plan (largely stalled at this point) to screen new and existing servicemembers for alignment with Nazi-style and white supremacist ideologies. In fact — I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn — their blueprint goes on to describe a military remade in the very image of those Project 2025 leaders as white, cisgender, and heterosexual men, and they want to start ’em young, too. The Mandate recommends standardized testing in all federally funded schools to check kids’ aptitude for military service. They want, in other words, to offer the Pentagon increased access to children for the purpose of recruitment. And the proposal only gets “better” after that. In fact, Trump’s future would-be advisers go on to support expelling people with gender dysphoria from that very military.

How are we then to trust that the Department of Defense won’t be used against the American people, if our troops are distinctly shaped not to reflect our exploding diversity? In fact, The Donald has called the 2024 election “the final battle” and has already suggested that he might take out after his foes (“vermin”), even possibly invoking the Insurrection Act to use the military to do so. And then, it seems, the rest of us would have to live with a military that embraced the very types who sought to tear down our elected government on January 6, 2021.

Oh, and even better news! The Mandate writers also propose increasing the number and size of American companies producing munitions here in the U.S., funding arms acquisition and training at more universities, and increasing the power of the arms production industry even further.

They also propose — and what could possibly go wrong here? — that the government should enhance its ability to deploy special forces and conduct irregular (nonstate) warfare “across the spectrum of competition, crisis, and conflict.” Hmmmm…. It’s hard for me not to recall a recent response by a Trump lawyer to a question by a federal judge in which he claimed that a president should be immune from prosecution for ordering a special forces unit to assassinate a political opponent. Welcome to 2025 and Trump 2.0!

All You Need Is Love

If former President Trump listens to his all-too-well-prepared advisers — and many think he would be more disciplined in doing so a second time around — there would be far less of a buffer of reasonable civil servants loyal to the Constitution between him and the rest of us. Given that, I’m suggesting that those of us in military communities tell our loved ones to defy any orders to brutalize other Americans who pose no violent threat to the rest of us — those exercising freedom of assembly and speech, running for public office, writing the truth. And even though this may sound counterintuitive to some of you, get rid of your guns! If the Trumpian security state that might arise did everything its would-be advisers advocate, there would be no point in taking up arms against it. After all, civil wars are the bloodiest forms of human conflict, with the worst impact on civilians.

But don’t give up either. Make sure in every way you can that elections continue, and show up to vote. Volunteer to get people to the polls and inform them of their rights as voters. Become an election worker or volunteer. Do your damnedest to keep a non-Trumpian world alive.

Change is afoot, and it could be bad, but who knows? It’s also possible that election 2024 will prove to be white supremacy’s dying gasp. Think of how readily Trump’s supporters scuttle away when the candidates he endorses lose elections. And if our very own Orange Jesus is more decisively denied access to power through a jail sentence or another big election loss, maybe all the planning of his toadies won’t mean a tinker’s damn. But that will only be true if we all show up and act, starting now.

Copyright 2024 Andrea Mazzarino

Via Tomdispatch.com