Month: September 2020

 

Fires that have devastated a Brazilian tropical wetlands region famed for its wildlife were started by humans and exacerbated by its worst drought in nearly 50 years, according to Brazilian authorities, firefighters and environmentalist groups.

Images of cremated snakes, tapirs cooked to death, and jaguars with bandaged, burnt paws in the Pantanal region in Brazil’s centre-west have horrified Brazilians at a time when fires are also razing forests in the Amazon. A dark cloud of soot from fires is heading towards São Paulo.

 

Source: Brazilian wetlands fires started by humans and worsened by drought | Brazil | The Guardian

Brazil’s former leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, barred from elected office due to corruption convictions, said he is open to backing any candidate who can beat far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 elections.

Source: Exclusive: Brazil’s Lula says he will back anyone who can take on Bolsonaro | Reuters

Systemic racism is both a theoretical concept and a reality. As a theory, it is premised on the research-supported claim that the United States was founded as a racist society, that racism is thus embedded in all social institutions, structures, and social relations within our society. Rooted in a racist foundation, systemic racism today is composed of intersecting, overlapping, and codependent racist institutions, policies, practices, ideas, and behaviors that give an unjust amount of resources, rights, and power to white people while denying them to people of color.

Dr. Nicki Lisa Cole, Thoughtco.com

 

Source: Organized Black Militias Are Forming Everywhere Because America Won’t Stop Oppressing And Killing Black People

The Vietnamese American community now finds itself at a crossroads, weighing whether to confront racism head-on or remain quiet and complicit in a system that perpetuates it. Yet the issue of racism—and anti-Blackness in particular—raises questions unique to the refugee experience. As Vietnamese Americans, how can our conversations about race be framed in terms of Black and white when we ourselves—our histories, our bodies, and our struggles—don’t exist within this binary?

 

Source: Why ‘Black Lives Matter’ Is So Divisive for Houston’s Vietnamese American Community – Texas Monthly