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Shoppers on Brixton High Street in South London. As in the United States, ethnic minorities are disproportionately falling victim to the pandemic.

Britain’s Ethnic Minorities Are Being Left for Dead

By COVID-19 (Coronavirus), News & Current Affairs

The government could have predicted, and perhaps prevented, many deaths. It did not. By Sonia Faleiro, NYT — In early April, Maruthalingam Thiyakumar, a 58-year-old employee of the corner shop in my neighborhood in South London, died from the coronavirus. While some of my neighbors and I were able to follow Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s injunction to “stay at home” and “save lives,” Mr. Thiyakumar continued to provide toilet paper and tea…

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Coronavirus (COVID-19) and the Movement for Black Liberation

By Black Family Summit News, COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

By National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) — The COVID-19 pandemic presently sweeping the world exposes the continuation of centuries-old, deeply entrenched racial inequities that are embedded in the very fabric of the United States and the world. NCBL’s mission is the dismantling of this structural racism by serving as the Legal Arm of the Black Liberation Movement. This pandemic has underscored the need for the United States’ federal, state…

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Ahmad Aubrey

It was a lynching in the 21st Century

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Sen. Hank Sanders — It was a lynching. It was a lynching on February 23, 2020. It was a lynching in Brunswick, Georgia. It was a lynching in the United States of America. It was a lynching in the 21st Century. The video is so graphic. It makes my whole body draw up. It makes my mind shiver. It makes my spirit whither. It challenges my hopes for Black people in…

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The Left must seize the opportunity to live our politics in public

Black Voters Are Ready. Are We?

By Editors' Choice

Bernie lost with Black voters, but the Left will win if we commit to deep organizing work to earn their trust. By Phillip Agnew, In These Times — This is part of a roundtable on lessons from 2020 that the Left can use to win future presidential elections. It’s been three and a half months since the South Carolina Democratic primary. As the story goes, it was there former Vice President…

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Mailbox

Will Americans Lose Their Right to Vote in the Pandemic?

By Editors' Choice

The safest way to cast a ballot will very likely be by mail. But with opposition from the president, limited funding and time running out, will that option be available? By Emily Bazelon, NYT — In March, as a wave of states began delaying their spring primaries because of the coronavirus, Wisconsin’s election, scheduled for April 7, loomed. The ballot for that day included the presidential primary, thousands of local…

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Anti-smallpox shots in now DR Congo 1962

The African slave who taught America how to vaccinate itself from smallpox

By Reparations

By Carey Baraka, Quartz Africa — In April 1721, a smallpox outbreak swept through Boston. This was the latest in a string of six epidemics that had, since, 1630, laid waste to the city. Cotton Mather, a local slave owner and preacher, claimed to be in possession of a way of preventing contraction of the disease. Mather, who had first come to public prominence as one of the thinkers behind…

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