By Jeff Cohen via Common Dreams

If you get your foreign policy news today from CNN or MSNBC or NPR or similar outlets, then you’re bombarded hour after hour with the idea that the United States has the absolute right to impose sanctions on country after country overseas if they violate human rights or are not democratic.
To give just one example: On Sunday, CNN anchor Dana Bash grilled Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on why the White House is not imposing yet more sanctions on Russia (and China) and why Team Biden was “giving in to Russia” on the gas pipeline to Western Europe. Sullivan was emphatic in insisting that sanctions had been imposed and more were on the way – boasting that Biden had grabbed even more presidential power to sanction Russia through an executive order.

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Posted on June 22, 2021

By It Takes A Village Family Of Schools

Village Leadership Academy (VLA), Chicago’s very own premier K-8 independent social justice school, is excited to announce the BET television debut of Change the Name, a short documentary highlighting their students’ work to change the name of Stephen Douglas Park in Chicago’s North Lawndale community to Anna and Frederick Douglass Park.
The “Change the Name” campaign, which began more than four years ago as one project of the VLA social justice GrassRoots Campaign curriculum, garnered much attention as VLA students refused to back down from the Chicago Park District’s silent dismissal of their proposals to change the name of the park, which celebrated a slave-owning family in a historically Black neighborhood.

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Posted on June 16, 2021

By Julie Hollar/FAIR

To mark the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin, the New York Times put together a special opinion section reflecting on what has changed and where the country is now on race and police violence. One piece described and analyzed the rise and fall of support for the Black Lives Matter movement: “Did George Floyd’s death catalyze support for Black Lives Matter? If so, for how long and for whom?”
Looking at data from online polling firm Civiqs, the authors concluded that “Republicans and white people have actually become less supportive of Black Lives Matter than they were before the death of George Floyd.” Indeed, after a gradual increase in support for BLM among both whites and Republicans following the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, and then a more marked rise that began around the release of the video of the vigilante murder of Ahmaud Arbery in May 2020, support plummeted from early June through late September.

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Posted on June 10, 2021