Powerful interests don’t want students to “interrogate the systems of power and privilege that are at stake” in today’s struggles, said Dr Gilda Ochoa, a professor of Chicano/Latino Studies at Pomona College and supporter of legislation requiring all students in California’s public university system to pass an ethnic studies course before graduation. The bill was put on hold in the face of fierce opposition. Seventy-five percent of the state’s K1-12 students are non-whites, but few students or teachers “have learned this crucial history,” said Ochoa.
In light of the pandemic, we have seen an extraordinary emergence of mutual aid strategies around the world.
Rep. Omar recently commended the US war machine for increasing the “transparency” and “accountability” of its bombing of her native country.
The no-bail movement was on a roll from Vermont and New Jersey to Alaska and Georgia – and then the lock ‘em up mob struck back.
The COVID-19 crisis only heightens the urgency of black reparations, which is now more essential than ever.
Both see the United States as the Empire, and they agree that it must be opposed.
