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Healthcare workers walk out for Black Lives, 1199SEIU

Strike for Black Lives; Unions and Racial Justice

By News & Current Affairs

SEIU, the Teamsters, AFT, CWA, UFCW, UNITE HERE, ATU and the UFW joined dozens of other labor and community organizations in a national Strike for Black Lives. Meanwhile, unions are pushing the fight for racial justice beyond resolutions. By Martin Belam; Stephanie Luce — From Resolutions to Transformation: How Unions Are Organizing for Racial Justice Tens of thousands of Americans strike in protest over racial inequality 1 Tens of thousands…

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John R. Lewis, a civil rights titan and a formidable member of Congress for three decades, died at the age of 80 on July 17.

John Lewis, front-line civil rights leader and eminence of Capitol Hill, dies at 80

By News & Current Affairs

By Laurence I. Barrett, The Washington Post — John Lewis, a civil rights leader who preached nonviolence while enduring beatings and jailings during seminal front-line confrontations of the 1960s and later spent more than three decades in Congress defending the crucial gains he had helped achieve for people of color, has died. He was 80. His death was announced in statements from his family and from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…

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Deante Campbell of Sanford joins student protesters during a demonstration June 4 against institutional racism at South Portland Police Station.

Teenagers lead the way in Black Lives Matter movement

By News & Current Affairs

Nationally and in Maine, young people of color are leading protests and asking their local leaders to address systemic racism. By Megan Gray, Press Herald — Mariam Beshir spent the days leading up to her graduation from Gorham High School organizing a Black Lives Matter march in her town. She wanted to celebrate. But she knew that Tamir Rice should have graduated from his own high school this year if…

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Folk dancers gather before performing at the 2018 Confederate Festival in Santa Bárbara d’Oeste, Brazil. Each of their dresses is embroidered with the name of a state in the U.S. Confederacy.

They lost the Civil War and fled to Brazil. Their descendants refuse to take down the Confederate flag

By News & Current Affairs

Brazil’s confederados gather in Sao Paulo state each year to celebrate all things Dixie. As in the United States, calls are growing for a reassessment. By Terrence McCoy — To Marina Lee Colbachini, it was a family tradition. Each spring, she would join the throngs who descended on a nondescript city in southern Brazil, don a 19th-century hoop skirt and square dance to country music. The theme of the annual…

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African nations call for racism debate at UN Human Rights Council

African nations call for racism debate at UN Human Rights Council

By News & Current Affairs

By DW — A letter signed by all 54 African nations requested the UN Human Rights Council to urgently debate racism and police violence as protests over George Floyd’s death grow around the world. African countries on Friday called on the United Nation Human Rights Council to urgently debate racism and police impunity, amid growing protests over George Floyd’s death in the United States and other parts of the world. Burkina Faso’s…

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