With 50 days until Election Day, Joe Biden appears to be leading Donald Trump, both nationally and in several key battleground states.
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🏛 The New Reconstruction
Adam Sewer has a must read essay in The Atlantic that contextualizes the present moment within the broad sweep of U.S. history, American politics and the Black freedom struggle:
How far will the possibilities of this moment extend? We could consider two potential outcomes—one focused on police and prisons, and a broader one, aimed at eliminating the deeply entrenched systems that keep Black people from realizing full equality, a long-standing crisis Americans have tried to suppress with policing and prisons rather than attempting to resolve it...
History teaches that awakenings such as this one are rare. If a new president, and a new Congress, do not act before the American people’s demand for justice gives way to complacency or is eclipsed by backlash, the next opportunity will be long in coming.
Adam Sewer
📷 Behind the Mask
North Carolina photographer Cornell Watson has an upcoming solo exhibition inspired by Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, “We Wear the Mask.”
This photo series is in honor of my ancestors who smiled when they were not happy, laughed when nothing was funny, and cried when they were not sad so that I could be here today.
Checkout his interview on the This Can’t Be That Hard podcast and his profile in the Washington Post.
🛢 IMO In Hot Water Following Mauritius Oil Spill And Botched Wakashio Salvage Operation
“Mauritius received representatives from the oil industry who acted on behalf of a UN agency - the IMO - shutting out local talent, and have been behind a series of increasingly catastrophic interventions that has now led to the loss of four local crew in Mauritius (three confirmed deaths and the captain still missing), the carcasses of almost 50 whales washing up on the Mauritian shoreline, 30km of heavily impacted oil-drenched beaches, a 300m iron ore carrier - larger than the Titanic - being deliberately sunk in an unknown location off the coast of Mauritius, and the 75m high stern of the vessel protruding like a giant tombstone on the once pristine coral reefs of Mauritius with no clear plan of how and when this will be removed, as the corals below are ground away each day with the strong currents and the supporting chains from the salvage operation. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of questions that remain unanswered.”
(Forbes)
Read more of Nishan Degnarain’s coverage of this unmitigated disaster.
🇯🇲 Toots and the Maytals’ Toots Hibbert Dead at 77
“With the Maytals, Hibbert established himself as a leader in the development of the bright, easygoing sound of reggae in the mid-1960s. He was also credited with popularizing the term through his 1968 song ‘Do the Reggay.’”
(Pitchfork)