Dear friends,
I’m running really late today. Sometimes, it’s hard to know where to put my focus. The wiffij, as this publication is affectionately known, began in response to the murder of George Floyd. When I’m overwhelmed, I like to zero in on racial justice.
The work is an uphill climb.
Last year, a police unions sued to block a NYC law to prohibit officers from
putting pressure on a person’s torso while making an arrest.
At the time, a judge ruled for the police, calling the local law “unconstitutionally vague.”
A five-judge panel has now upheld the so-called “diaphragm law.” Finally.
In Georgia, Black students and their moms have filed a lawsuit accusing their school
of allowing an extensive pattern of racism including “overt bigotry and animosity by some white students and teachers against African American students.”
The details are disgusting, and include a white student carrying a whip to remind Black classmates that their ancestors were enslaved.
I confirmed my suspicions that Coosa High School, where the incidents occurred, is located in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Congressional district.
Contact the Floyd County Schools to let them know that Black Lives Matter in every school! This is a 30-second action.
The person in charge of remaking NYS’s district map has the regrettable title of Special Master.
As construed, the map would split Bedford-Stuyvesant in central Brooklyn into two districts and Co-Op City in the Bronx into three, for example, while placing Black incumbents in the same districts — changes that Mr. Jeffries argues violate the State Constitution.
“We find ourselves in an all-hands-on-deck moment,” Mr. Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat, said in an interview on Thursday. In the most recent ad, he says the changes took “a sledgehammer to Black districts. It’s enough to make Jim Crow blush.”
Ahh, Jim Crow. Alive and well, it seems, and unapologetic.
We’ve been hearing a lot about the ‘great replacement’ idea (which cannot be dignified by the term theory, which implies a study of a facts).
Do not use the misnomer ‘great replacement theory’. Educate others when they do.
That was the site of last Saturday’s massacre.
Let’s end the week with an investment. The African Heritage Food Coop is building their first brick and mortar store in Buffalo, near the TOPS market.
AHFC has already been in operation for several years as a food delivery service with a food access mission. They're partnering with other organizations and cooperatives right now on distribution to ensure residents have food while the TOPS is closed.
Invest in a community that needs us and support the African Heritage Food Coop in Buffalo.
I am taking Monday off. Good news will find it’s way to you late Tuesday.
with love,
L
Thanks for the news about the Buffalo food co-op!