This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

2020/21 Black Lives Matter - reflection in the UCLA Centennial Mural

This page has paths:

Contents of this path:
3. 2020 - Downfall of the Two Party System The Gazette - So how did the United States settle into a two-party system in contrast to multiparty democracies such as France, Germany and Canada? Historians say the pattern was set in motion two centuries ago with the embrace of winner-take-all elections nationally and locally - that means that coming in second or third place in most elections is worthless. As two major parties emerged and grew in power, third parties found it harder to attract public notice and get their candidates invited to debates or listed on ballots. In addition, voters who supported these candidates but never saw them win eventually drifted away, and third parties found it harder to create enthusiasm, given their likelihood of losing. And that brings us to our current national election. On the Republican side, Donald Trump is seeking a second four-year term as president. The Democrats have Joe Biden, a former vice president, atop their ticket.
4. 2020 Is America's 2-Party System Fracturing?
8. Angela Davis - UCLA hired her to teach in the philosophy department in 1969. After the four-hour LAPD attack on the Black Panther headquarters in South Central (1969), Angela Davis led a protest march to LA city hall and spoke from the front steps.
9. 2021 Assembly Bill 32, a law that took effect last year, mandated that the state could no longer enter or renew contracts with private, for-profit prisons and detention facilities, with some exceptions, by 2028. California tries again to close down privately operated prisons and immigrant detention facilities - CAP Radio by Janelle Salanga: California’s first-of-its-kind ban of privately operated prisons could be back on the table. Assembly Bill 32, a law that took effect last year, mandated that the state could no longer enter or renew contracts with private, for-profit prisons and detention facilities, with some exceptions, by 2028. But last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that the law couldn’t be enforced because it would likely interfere with the federal government’s detention of immigrants facing deportation or legal proceedings. Judge Kenneth Lee wrote in his decision that Congress granted the Department of Homeland Security “broad discretion over immigrant detention,” so the law could not stand because it conflicted with that power. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who authored the bill as an Assembly member, filed a petition Wednesday asking the Ninth Circuit to reconsider its 2-1 ruling. “The record is clear: For-profit, private prisons and detention facilities that treat people like commodities pose an unacceptable risk to the health and welfare of Californians,” Bonta said in a statement. GEO Group was the company that filed the suit striking down A.B. 32. CapRadio reached out to GEO Group via email to discuss Bonta’s petition. The attorney general’s office has been tasked with tracking conditions in privately operated detention facilities, as mandated by Assembly Bill 103 passed in 2017. In January, the California Department of Justice released its second report, finding that private facilities now account for 97% of the total beds for immigrant detainees in California, compared to 77% in February 2019. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency still has direct contracts with three groups — MTC, CoreCivic and GEO Group — that are valid for at least five years. Then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra wrote that the Department of Justice saw “deficient conditions of confinement” and insufficient mental health care in the three facilities. “Extremely restrictive conditions for detainees in protective custody and placement of vulnerable detainees with mental health conditions in restrictive housing to the detriment of their mental health … were evident at the three facilities, with female detainees facing especially harsh conditions,” he wrote. In 2019, the Department of Homeland Security released a report that found detainees lived in dangerous, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in ICE and U.S. Border Patrol detention facilities in southern Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. President Joe Biden signed an executive order into law this January that ordered the attorney general to let existing contracts between the Department of Justice and privately operated detention facilities expire. But the executive order doesn’t affect private facilities contracted with ICE. NorCal Resist, a grassroots organization offering legal support for detainees and other services for immigrants, said in a statement that it was pleased to see Bonta defending the ban and called all ICE prisons “inherently inhumane and unsafe.” “Taking the profit motive out of the immigration system in California is a good step in the right direction,” it read. California’s petition for a new hearing asserts that the current ruling doesn’t account for states’ traditionally held power to regulate private entities that affect residents’ health and welfare. Bonta’s petition, which would require the case to be presented before a full bench of judges, is a request seldom granted. The court will not order a rehearing without giving GEO Group an opportunity to express whether it believes one is appropriate.
10. 2021 California plans to be abortion sanctuary if Roe vs. Wade is overturned SACRAMENTO — With more than two dozen states poised to ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court gives them the OK next year, California clinics and their allies in the state Legislature on Wednesday revealed a plan to make the state a “sanctuary” for those seeking reproductive care, including possibly paying for travel, lodging and procedures for people from other states. The California Future of Abortion Council, made up of more than 40 abortion providers and advocacy groups, released a list of 45 recommendations for the state to consider if the high court overturns Roe vs. Wade — the 48-year-old decision that forbids states from outlawing abortion. The recommendations are more than wild ideas. Some of the state’s most important policymakers helped write them, including Toni Atkins, the San Diego Democrat who leads the state Senate and attended multiple meetings. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom started the group himself, and in an interview last week with the Associated Press said some of the report’s details will be included in his budget proposal in January.
11. Restrictive Voting Rights is the New Jim Crow 2021 Protesters gather outside of the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta to protest HB 531, which would place tougher restrictions on voting in Georgia, March 1, 2021. The new law has mostly gained attention for its measures to strengthen absentee ballot identification requirements, curtail ballot drop box use and penalize members of the public who offer food and water to voters in line. Months after former Republican President Donald Trump falsely claimed voter fraud in the 2020 elections, Republican backers say Georgia's law is needed to restore confidence in election integrity. Civil rights groups have filed three lawsuits asserting the law illegally restricts voting rights, particularly for minority voters.
12. What Jim Crow looks like in 2021 Protesters gather outside of the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta to protest HB 531, which would place tougher restrictions on voting in Georgia, U.S. March 1, 2021. Protesters gather outside of the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta to protest HB 531, which would place tougher restrictions on voting in Georgia, U.S. March 1, 2021. Dustin Chamber/Reuters “It’s a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie.” That’s how Stacey Abrams, who spearheaded efforts to organize Black voters in Georgia for the 2020 election, recently described the deluge of new voter restriction laws proposed by Republicans in the Georgia state legislature in the wake of their defeat. Cliff Albright of the Black Voters Matter Fund echoed Abrams, saying the new restrictions, which include new ID requirements and limits on drop boxes, are just “putting a little makeup and cologne on Jim Crow.” Nicole Hemmer Nicole Hemmer The idea that these new voting restrictions are a more sanitized version of Jim Crow says a lot about popular understanding of that era of racism and discrimination (something Abrams and Albright clearly know, and are speaking to). Next to images of White protesters snarling at civil rights activists at sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960 or police officers siccing German Shepherds on Black schoolchildren in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1963, the image of legislators calmly enacting a series of discriminatory restrictions seems far more civilized. Yet, even at its violent peak, Jim Crow had another side, one that always wore a suit and tie, especially when it came to voter disenfranchisement. Required to navigate around the 15th Amendment, which explicitly prohibited barring Black men from voting, White Southern legislators innovated a kind of colorblind racism that would go on to become the right’s preferred tool for opposing civil rights advances in the post-Jim Crow era. Looked at through that lens, the current rush to restrict voting rights is less proof of the resuscitation of Jim Crow than evidence that it never really went away.
13. 2021 After John Lewis dies Democrats renew push for Voting Rights Law
15. 2021 COVID-19 job losses will worsen L.A. homelessness by 2023, new report says
16. 2021 The John Lewis Voting Rights Act
17. 2021 Stop Asian Hate Feng Shen holds up a sign stating “Asians Are not Viruses Racism Is!” in front of candles left out for the eight victims of the Atlanta Mass shooting during the candlelight vigil held in Thousand Oaks, CA. on March 20. 2021. Photo credit: Ryan Bough https://moorparkreporter.com/4016775/news/there-is-no-vaccine-for-racism-ventura-county-asian-american-and-pacific-islander-community-holds-candlelight-vigil-for-atlanta-murder-victims/
18. 2022 Three Strikes
19. 2022 Inglewood Shooting- The Guardian- "Killings in LA spotlight a crisis" ‘Black women are being murdered and no one is paying attention’ - Three recent killings in the Los Angeles area have put the spotlight on the disparate impact of American gun violence on Black women and the lack of attention their stories receive, as the country reckons with some of the most intense spates of gun violence in years. girl holding a sign which reads 'stop gun violence' California city requires gun owners to carry liability insurance in first measure of its kind Read more Both killings took place on weekends, a mere two weeks apart. On 8 January, California officials found the body of Tioni Theus, a 16-year-old girl who was found shot at a busy onramp of the 110 freeway. On 23 January, sisters Breahna Stines and Marneysha Hamilton were among four people shot dead during a mass shooting at a birthday party in Inglewood. Neither incident received much coverage outside of local news, raising questions about which stories are elevated in the national spotlight and which mass shootings grasp the country’s attention. While discrepancies between the attention for white victims of violence and Black victims of violence is nothing new, community organizers and researchers worry about the message this phenomenon continues to send to young Black girls about their worth and potential. “This image of a young Black girl on the side of a highway with cars driving by speaks to the invisibility of Black life,” said Nikki Jones, a professor of African American studies at UC Berkeley. “Black girls are contending with the messages that their life is disposable, and that’s an extremely dangerous message.”
20. 2022 Column: They never thought they’d see a Black president, or another assault on voting rights
21. 2022 The Emmett Till Antilynching Act is Passed. United States federal legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime Beulah Melton, widow of Clinton Melton, talks with civil rights activist Medgar Evers. Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Earlier this month, the Senate unanimously passed legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime. It was a historic moment. Congress has tried and failed to pass anti-lynching legislation more than 200 times over the course of more than a century. According to the NAACP, more than 4700 people were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968. The new Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act – as it’s called – is named for the 14-year-old boy whose murder, 67 years ago, shocked the nation. In 1955, Emmett Till had traveled from Chicago to the Mississippi Delta to visit family when he was kidnapped, beaten, and killed by white men after allegedly flirting with a white woman. His body was later found in the Tallahatchie River. Emmett Til’s death became a media sensation, partly because of a widely distributed photograph of his disfigured face. Today, his murder is considered the spark that ignited the Civil Rights Movement. But for every Emmett Till, there are many others whose names are lost in time. One of them was a Black gas station attendant who lived just a few miles from where Till was killed.
22. 2022 Woman cries while kneeling in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. Woman cries while kneeling in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on May 2, 2022. The Supreme Court is poised to strike down the right to abortion in the country, according to a leaked draft of a majority opinion that would shred nearly 50 years of constitutional protections. Credit: Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/overturning-roe-v-wade-could-have-devastating-health-and-financial-impacts-landmark-study-showed/
23. 2022 Roe vs. Wade falls
24. 2022 An abortion rights activist outside the Supreme Court in D.C The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion that was guaranteed nearly 50 years ago by the decision in Roe v. Wade. The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization was released Friday morning. The justices, voting 6-3 along ideological lines, sided with the Mississippi abortion law that was in question. Reactions were mixed across the country, with anti-abortion-rights supporters celebrating what they view as a victory, and abortion-rights activists expressing their frustration over the decision. Here are some of the scenes from D.C., and across the country. Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

This page is referenced by:

2013 The Black Lives Matter Movement For a timeline click here.

The Black Lives Matter Movement: An Origin Story
https://undergroundrailroadhistory.org/the-black-lives-matter-movement-an-origin-story/
Isabella Mercado, Communications Intern

Trayvon Martin. A 17-year-old Black boy murdered on February 26, 2012 while walking home from a 7-eleven in Sanford, Florida. His killer? George Zimmerman, a white man who served as coordinator of the neighborhood watch. The video of Trayvon’s murder sparked national outrage. For weeks, newspapers, television, and media outlets reported peaceful protestors flooding the streets of cities across America, shouting for the arrest and conviction of Zimmerman. Forty-five days after the death of Trayvon Martin, Zimmerman was arrested. On July 13, 2013, Zimmerman was found not guilty. Profound horror and sadness ensued. Thousands of people felt the pain of injustice at the acquittal of George Zimmerman.
Alicia Garza, a domestic worker rights organizer in Oakland, California, was particularly struck by not only the news, but the reactions that appeared on her Facebook feed. There were two main trends, which she dubbed: social justice cynicism and respectability politics. Some people were unsurprised that the system, with a long history of failure to protect Black families, would once again favor the white transgressor. Other people began justifying and excusing Zimmerman, looking to Trayvon’s family, personal life, and behaviour as the reason for his death. In response, Garza began writing a series of Facebook posts she titled, “A Love Letter to Black People.” In her final post, she wrote, “black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.” Her close friend, Patrisse Cullors, an anti-police violence organizer in Los Angeles, California who she had met through the organization Black Leadership for Organizing and Dignity (BOLD), responded to the post saying “#BlackLivesMatter.” Their friend, Opal Tometi, an immigration rights worker in Phoenix, Arizona contributed her support and a movement was born.
The hashtag was slow to gain popularity. In the second half of 2013, the hashtag appeared on Twitter a total of 5, 106 times. But then on August 4, 2014, Michael Brown, an 18-year-old Black man was murdered by white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. His body was left on the ground for four hours before being taken to the city morgue. The event was documented by bystanders with cell-phones and the news spread around the world via social media. Protesters, initially localized in Ferguson, soon began to appear throughout the nation; they took to the streets just as they had done after the murder of Trayvon Martin. Garza, Cullors, and Tometi had spent the last year with the help of cultural workers, artists, designers, and technicians building the infrastructure to support “moving the hashtag from social media to the streets.” Their team grew through the Black Lives Matter Freedom Ride to St. Louis, Missouri, a plan that had been led and designed by Patrisse Cullors and Darnell L. Moore. They organized for over 500 of their members from across the nation to travel to Missouri to help participate in the protests. Cullors and Moore described their intentions in an article they wrote for the Guardian: “The BLM Ride was organized in the spirit of the early 1960s interstate Freedom Riders in the racially segregated south, after the visuals of Michael Brown’s lifeless and blood-drenched body brought to mind images of lifeless black bodies hanging from lynching trees in the all-too-recent past, after the militarized police forces looked all too similar to the response of police to protestors during the civil rights movement.” In the three weeks after Michael Brown’s death the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag was used an average of 58,747 times per day. There was another dramatic increase three months later, on November 25, the day after the Ferguson grand jury decided to not charge Darren Wilson with Brown’s murder, when the hashtag was used 172,772 times. In the subsequent three weeks, the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag appeared 1.7 million times.

The Black Lives Matter Movement was inspired by the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, the 1980s Black Feminist movement, Pan-African movement, and political hip-hop movement, and the 2000s LGTBQ+ movement. By working to end systematic racism, BLM continues the efforts of 19th century organizations including but not limited to: the American League of Colored Laborers, the Florence Farming and Lumber Association, and the NYS Suffrage Association. Like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Black Lives Matter used collective planning as they rejected the heteronormative, patriarchal heirarchy that pervades most Black rights organizations. The Black Live Matter organization patterned itself after Chicago’s Black Youth Project 100 by placing people from marginalized backgrounds into central roles. With Black women, trans, and queer members in leadership roles, Garza described how BLM differentiated itself from traditional perceptions of Black activism: “It goes beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within some Black communities, which merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black, keeping straight cis[gendered] Black men in the front of the movement while our sisters, queer and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at all.”
The Black Lives Matter revolutionized Black activism in more ways than one. The Movement has utilized protesting strategies including disrupting national holidays (e.g. Black Friday and Christmas) and publicly challenging politicians, widespread media coverage from unique sources such as a 2015 episode in NBC’s popular show Law & Order: SVU, and public support from organizations like the N.F.L. and NASCAR to garner attention and drastically increase participation more than ever before. According to Deva Woodly, associate professor of politics at the New School, at the height of the 60’s Civil Rights Movement protests peaked at hundreds of thousands of people, but in the recent Black Lives Matter protests participation was in the millions. Support for the Black Lives Matters is unprecedented and continues to expand. We, at the Underground Railroad Education Center, stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Movement as they continue to fight for an equitable and just world.