Today on Sojourner Truth:
In addition to the on-going protests against racism and police violence, following the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, new protests broke out this past weekend after the June 12 police killing of unarmed Black man 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. Brooks was a father of four and had just celebrated his daughters birthday hours before being murdered. And, over the weekend it emerged that on Wednesday, June 10, the body of a 24-year-old Black man Robert Fuller was found hanging from a tree close to City Hall in Palmdale, California. Furthermore, news is only now beginning to emerge about the body of 38-year-old Malcolm Harsch, another Black man, was found hanging from a tree close to a public library in nearby Victorville, California. Mr. Harsch was 38 years old. Both hangings took place in cities in Southern California. All of this comes amid more racist maneuvers by Donald Trump. To add insult to injury Donald Trump announced that he will hold a rally in Tulsa Oklahoma, where a white riot on May 31 and June 1, 1921 left 300 Black people dead and the entire Black area, businesses, churches, homes burned to the ground. Trump had first announced that the rally would be held on Friday, June 19, the very day that marked the end of slaver in the U.S., and is known as Freedom Day among Black communities across the country. Amid widespread opposition, Trump was forced to delay the event to Saturday June 20, but that is the very day that the Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival will hold its long planned Virtual Poor Peoples Mass March and Rally.
And there is more. Trump announced that he is moving the Republican Presidential Convention from Charlotte NC to Jacksonville Florida, this coincides with the 60th anniversary of the city's KKK race riot. Referred to as Ax Handle Saturday, on August 27, 1960, KKK members in the hundreds chased and viciously beat Black people with ax handles and baseball bats. This is where and when Donald Trump chose to give his acceptance speech for what he hopes will be another 4 years in office.
As part of our ongoing coverage of this critical time in US history, we bring you a recent webinar held by Haymarket Books entitled, The Fire This Time: The New Uprising Against Racism and Police Violence. The discussion, moderated by E. Tammy Kim, features Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Dr. Marc Lamont Hill. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes and speaks on Black politics, social movements, and racial inequality in the United States. She is author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, which won the Lannan Cultural Freedom Award for an Especially Notable Book in 2016. She is also editor of How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, which won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBQT nonfiction in 2018. Dr. Marc Lamont Hill is currently the host of BET News and a political contributor for CNN. An award-winning journalist, Dr. Hill has received numerous prestigious awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Dr. Hill is the Steve Charles Professor of Media, Cities, and Solutions at Temple University. Both will speak about the history, present and future of the fight for a world where Black Lives Matter.
