More than 15,000 attend University of Texas football game amidst coronavirus pandemic

Chase Lawrence

The University of Texas (UT) at Austin held a football game Saturday between the Texas Longhorns and the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP). More than 15,300 people attended the game under conditions in which confirmed cases of COVID-19 continue to spread throughout the state.

Free COVID-19 tests were required only for students who purchased “The Big Ticket” season pass. All other ticket purchasers from UTEP or non-students were exempt and could not get the free tests, accounting for the roughly 14,000 people at the stadium.

A UT Austin spokesperson confirmed that only 1,198 attendees were tested before the game. Out of these, 95 tested positive, or nearly 8 percent. This indicates that the UT Austin student population has an incredibly high incidence of COVID-19.

Prior to the game, the university issued a list of wholly inadequate “precautions,” including markings in the stadium for social distancing, a mask mandate, and a ban on tailgating. They also reported that 225 hand sanitizer stations had been set up.

Fans at the college football game in Austin, Texas, on September 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)

It is well known that people wearing masks in close proximity for long periods can still acquire the virus. It has also been stated by experts and scientists ad infinitum that any large gathering of people, especially where shouting will take place, has the potential to become a “super spreader” event in which large numbers of people become infected with the virus. In fact, the state of Texas has a ban on gatherings of over 10 people.

The exception to the requirement was made by the Texas Governor Gregg Abbott. He has also exempted various business re-openings and issued a mandate that schools reopen for in-person classes eight weeks after their normal start date.

In a press conference Wednesday, Mark Escott, the Austin Public Health interim health authority, citing the occupancy limit set for the game, put it mildly: “Having 25,000 people in one space is a concern.”

On the same day, three COVID-19 clusters were reported with about 100 cases.

UT Austin already has a high number of COVID-19 cases, ranking fourth in Texas universities. The COVID-19 dashboard on UT Austin’s website lists 814 cases, with 633 students and 181 staff infected since March 1. The reported positivity rate of 1.3 percent, which is terrible in itself, is most likely an undercount, especially given the case numbers among students attempting to attend the game.

Given the mass gathering, against the express warning of medical science, it is a forgone conclusion that there will be a spike in infections as a result. It is also likely that the virus will infect visiting UTEP students and cause a larger outbreak at their university, where 103 cases have been reported.

The determination of UT to hold the event is bound up with financial interests. UT Austin’s football team is the university’s single most profitable enterprise. UT sports reported a net profit of $16.5 million in 2018-19. According to numbers from USA Today, UT Austin ranked number one in total revenue among the US college sports programs in the same period.

This helps to explain why UT Austin is giving their athletes three tests a week, as they see are seen as profitable commodities. At most universities, sports programs such as basketball, baseball, and football are the most profitable department of the school and receive millions in investment to the detriment of other departments.

Thirteen UT Austin football players tested or were presumed positive for COVID-19 three days into practice that started on June 15. Showing the contempt the administration holds for students, the university outsourced their testing because the testing set up at the university for students that the administration has touted was deemed too slow, with a team doctor telling the UT Austin Athletics Director Chris Del Conte “I can’t wait around.”

Universities around the country are run like businesses. This is the rationale behind the reopening of universities, additional fees for online classes, and the restart of college athletics. Only a rank-and-file movement of faculty, staff, and students, in solidarity with K-12 teachers and workers everywhere, can stop these criminal policies.

Greece buys billions in French arms amid war tensions with Turkey

Alex Lantier

On Saturday, conservative Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced a purchase of billions of euros in French weaponry and a large increase in the size of the Greek military. This massive increase in military spending, by a country which the European Union (EU) has devastated with billions of euros in draconian cuts to social spending over the last decade, marks a major escalation in Greece’s ongoing military standoff with Turkey.

Mitsotakis indicated that Greece will purchase 18 Rafale fighter jets, four French naval frigates with naval helicopters, and a large supply of anti-tank weapons, torpedoes and missiles. It will also ask French firms to upgrade four Greek frigates that are already in service. Finally, Mitsotakis said that 15,000 more soldiers would be recruited to the Greek armed forces.

“The time has come to reinforce our armed forces. … This is an important program that will form a national shield,” Mitsotakis declared in a speech in Thessaloniki.

The sale comes after months of escalating threats and one direct collision last month between Greek and Turkish warships in the eastern Mediterranean, as Athens and Ankara lay competing claims to territorial waters and oil-rich seabeds in the region. In this dispute, Paris has aggressively backed Athens, sending several warships and fighter jets to the eastern Mediterranean to counterbalance Turkey’s numerical superiority over Greece.

Paris also is seeking to undercut Turkey’s position in Africa and specifically in Libya, where French President Emmanuel Macron backs warlord Khalifa Haftar and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan backs the Government of National Accord (GNA). Haftar and the GNA currently lead the two main factions in the decade-long civil war in Libya triggered by NATO’s war against the country in 2011.

On Thursday, Macron had met other southern European heads of state in a so-called Med7 summit (with Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Malta and Cyprus) in the Corsican city of Ajaccio. Beyond discussing the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen the southern European powers seek new EU bailout funding, they pledged to renew France’s plans for a Union of the Mediterranean, vetoed by Berlin a decade ago. They also issued joint criticisms of Turkey’s maritime claims in waters also claimed by Greece or Cyprus.

The Med7 states adopted a statement calling to “renew the southern partnership between the European Union, its member states and our southern neighbors. We await with interest the November 27 regional forum of the Union of the Mediterranean.” They also pledged to coordinate policy in the Sahel, where they aim to prevent African refugees from reaching Europe and to assist France’s ongoing bloody war in Mali.

In addition to “hailing” multi-trillion-euro EU bank and corporate bailouts adopted to enrich the financial aristocracy during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Med7 states also criticized Turkey. They stated, “We reiterate our full support to Cyprus and Greece amid repeated threats against their sovereignty and aggressive measures by Turkey.”

At a press conference during the summit, Macron declared that the Turkish government “today behaves in an unacceptable way” and should “clarify its intentions.” He added that, from the standpoint of the Med7 states, “Turkey is no longer a partner in the Mediterranean region.”

On Saturday, Erdoğan replied by criticizing France’s neo-colonial policies in the region. He verbally attacked the French president: “Macron, this is not the last problem you will have with me. You don’t know history. You don’t even know France’s own history. Don’t mess with me. Don’t mess with Turkey.” Citing France’s bloody 1954-1962 colonial war in Algeria and to its complicity in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 people were killed, Erdoğan added: “You cannot lecture us on humanity.”

Erdoğan instructed Greece not to follow French policy, “do not take these paths. You will be left all alone.” He added that Greece should “demonstrate good-neighborly behavior. Fortunately, we make our own decisions. Turkey can give any fight, if necessary.”

All of these statements point to the urgent and growing danger of war amid a deepening breakdown of the NATO alliance and growing military tensions in the eastern Mediterranean.

France’s arming of Greece and growing tensions with Turkey are the outcome of decades of war in the Balkans and the Middle East since the 1991 Stalinist restoration of capitalism in the USSR. The bitter struggle over access to oil and gas profits and trade routes unleashed by the 2011 NATO wars in Libya and Syria are having explosive consequences. France is assembling an alliance including Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to isolate and threaten its ostensible NATO “ally,” Turkey.

As for the Erdoğan regime, discredited by its draconian herd immunity policy targeting workers in Turkey, it is aggressively staking oil claims while striking a populist, “anti-imperialist” stance to try to limit growing opposition at home. This posture is empty, however: Turkey’s GNA proxies in Libya are themselves the officially recognized product of NATO’s neo-colonial 2011 war in Libya, which Erdoğan himself ultimately supported.

Above all, the fact that Greece will spend billions of euros on a major increase in its military arsenal underscores that the costs of these reactionary war threats are borne by the working class. While the EU has imposed tens of billions of euros in austerity measures since the 2008, slashing real income levels by an average 30-40 percent, Athens is nonetheless pledging to find billions to spend on armaments that would only be used in an all-out regional war.

The risk of such a conflict, amid a surge of global geopolitical tensions linked to Washington’s war threats against China and to the COVID-19 pandemic, is rapidly growing. These tensions are very directly involved in the region, as Russian warships and planes operate out of Syria, which also has a coastline nearby in the eastern Mediterranean.

One indication of growing great-power tensions in the region was Friday’s announcement that Chinese troops will join forces from Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Myanmar, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Pakistan in joint military exercises in the Caucasus. The exercises are to involve 80,000 soldiers together with tanks and combat vehicles.

Returning to America from Qatar, where he had attended talks with the Taliban on Afghanistan, Pompeo stopped on Saturday in Cyprus and met with Republic of Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades. Noting that “crucial developments are taking place in the eastern Mediterranean,” he said: “We remain deeply concerned by Turkey's ongoing operations surveying for natural resources in areas over which Greece and Cyprus assert jurisdiction over the eastern Mediterranean.”

In an indication that Washington and Paris are now pursuing different and conflicting policies in the region, Pompeo called for de-escalation of tensions inside NATO: “Increased military tensions help no one but adversaries who would like to see division in transatlantic unity.”

This was not, however, an appeal for a peace policy. Pompeo went on to demand that Cyprus cut its longstanding relations with Russia, amid the continuing standoff between US and Russian troops in nearby Syria. He told Anastasiades: “We know that all the Russian military vessels that stop in Cypriot ports are not conducting humanitarian missions in Syria, and we ask Cyprus and the president to consider our concerns.”

The escalating chaos and divisions between the major regional and world powers underscore the urgency of the unification of workers internationally in a socialist, anti-war movement.

The California wildfires, climate change and capitalism

Bryan Dyne

The wildfires burning through the US West Coast, the largest on record in the history of California and which may become the largest in the country, have already killed 33 people and threaten to displace hundreds of thousands.

Just one of these fires, the August Complex in California, has consumed more than 875,000 acres. Until yesterday afternoon, the entire city of Portland was on alert for a mass evacuation as local and state officials warned of a “mass fatality event” if the fires reached Oregon’s largest city.

In a year that has already seen massive and uncontrolled wildfires in the Amazon and in Australia, the California fires make clear the immense dangers posed to human society by climate change, and the total inability of capitalism to address the problem.

The disaster is compounded by the coronavirus pandemic, particularly in California, where the number of cases is still increasing by more than 3,000 a day, with a total of more than 760,000 confirmed cases so far. Residents are now forced to either stay in place, socially distance and risk death by wildfire, or evacuate to a shelter and risk infection.

The official “COVID-19 Interim Shelter Guidance” from the office of Oregon Governor Kate Brown admits these dangers. The document warns: “All shelter residents, even those without symptoms, may have been exposed to COVID-19 and should self-quarantine after leaving the shelter in accordance with state and local recommendations.”

Scientists have long warned that climate change is intensifying wildfires. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned just last year that as global temperatures increase, damage caused by wildfires will grow proportionally. This has been noted both for regions such as the American west, but also in Australia, Brazil, central Africa, Europe and even Siberia.

Further scientific warnings were raised earlier this year in conjunction with the mass wildfires in Australia and Brazil, which saw record fires in those countries.

Like hurricanes on the East coast and in states on the Gulf of Mexico, the likelihood of natural disasters that form a “perfect storm” of weather conditions increases as global warming continues unabated. Hurricanes such as Sandy, Harvey and Maria, once thought of as “storms of the century,” are now expected to happen once every 16 years. The same is true of the infernos now raging.

The Trump administration is spearheading a frontal assault on all environmental regulations, eliminating even the most token restrictions on emissions, fracking, and offshore drilling. Trump has also rolled back controls for emissions of methane—a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide—and appointed Scott Pruitt, an attorney previously used by the oil and gas industry to sue the Environmental Protection Agency, to head that same organization.

For his part, California Governor Gavin Newsom attempted to pose as a strong advocate for climate science, telling reporters, “The debate is over, around climate change,” at a press conference outside the North Complex Fire. He added: “This is a climate damn emergency. This is real and it’s happening.”

Yet for all his rhetoric, Newsom has helped expand the fossil fuel industry in California along similar lines to Trump’s policies nationally. During his first ten months in office, Newsom approved 33 percent more new oil and gas drilling permits than his predecessor Jerry Brown. He also dropped a proposal from earlier this year to further regulate the industry after his administration received a letter from the California Independent Petroleum Association, an oil and gas lobbying group, urging him to do so.

The flagship for such hypocrisy is the “Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice” put out by Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. It asserts that a “Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face,” and claims that Biden will “[e]nsure the U.S. achieves a 100% clean energy economy and reaches net-zero emissions no later than 2050.”

Readers should recall the legacy of the Obama-Biden administration on environmental policy before expecting Biden to carry forth any of this platform. During their second year in office they spearheaded the efforts to conceal the full extent of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the largest oil spill to date in the Gulf of Mexico and which caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damages to the entire region. After it became impossible to hide the billions of barrels of oil being pumped in the Gulf, they worked to shield BP as much as possible from any liability while accelerating deep-sea drilling deregulation that caused the explosion in the first place.

Obama spearheaded efforts to expand offshore and Arctic drilling. In 2015, he let Royal Dutch Shell resume drilling after a series of near-disasters three years prior. That same year, he opened up the Atlantic coast for drilling for the first time, despite warnings against offshore drilling issued in the aftermath of Deepwater Horizon.

The Obama White house did nothing to stop the environmentally destructive hydraulic fracturing techniques that massively expanded under Obama and Biden in the search by various corporations for cheap sources of natural gas.

Biden’s platform also shows that the “Green New Deal” is a vacuous slogan that can mean anything one wants. Biden can call for a “Green New Deal” while simultaneously declaring, “I am not banning fracking,” referring to the practice of natural gas extraction that has poisoned much of Appalachia.

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released the initial “deal” proposal, she called for “a transition to 100 percent renewable energy within 10 years, and actions to “virtually eliminate poverty in the United States.” Essentially the only common characteristic between the two plans is the assertion that it is possible to solve the climate crisis without challenging the capitalist system and the private ownership of production.

It is also significant that the demand for a “Green New Deal” has been adopted by the Green Party. While they seek to contrast themselves from the Democrats, their program on climate change makes a call to “Enact an emergency Green New Deal to turn the tide on climate change,” essentially verbatim from Biden’s plan.

The Green Party also calls for a “WWII-scale national mobilization to halt climate change,” modeled on the original proposal by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The wartime rhetoric only underscores the nationalist character of this approach, based on the idea that the climate crisis can be solved in a single country, or through capitalist states addressing climate change via treaty agreements.

Climate change itself is a global phenomenon. As many recent scientific papers on the topic have stressed, the only real solution to halting global warming and all its ongoing and oncoming catastrophes is through a reorganization of the world’s energy production and transportation infrastructure and the development of new technologies to immediately halt carbon emissions.

To seriously address climate change requires a major reorganization of economic life on a global scale. The framework of energy production has to be transitioned from one that uses fossil fuels to one that relies on renewable energy. This, in turn, requires an international effort, involving a massive influx of funding for infrastructure, the development of current technologies and the investigation of new ideas, rather than the squandering of trillions of dollars on war and the self-enrichment of the world’s billionaires.

The technology exists to solve these problems, as well as for increasing the living standards and quality of life of the world’s population. Yet it is impossible to do so within the framework of the capitalist system.

Any effort to genuinely tackle climate change comes into conflict with the nation-state system and the broader framework of capitalism itself. The necessary influx of funds to temper the fires and abate the climate crisis collide with the private ownership of production and the enrichment of a tiny elite at the expense of society as a whole. As long as a handful of billionaires dominate society, with every aspect of economic life geared to their personal enrichment, not a single social problem—including climate change—can be solved.

This makes the solution to climate change an inherently class question and a revolutionary question. It is the working class that will suffer the brunt of the impact of global warming. It is the working class that is objectively and increasingly defining itself as an international class. It is the working class whose social interests lie in the overthrow of capitalism and the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, which will open the way to the establishment of an economic system based on the satisfaction of human need, including a safe and healthy environment.

D-Prize Contest for Medical Oxygen Maintenance

Application Deadline: 18th October 2020

• Early Submission Deadline: October 18th, 2020 at midnight PT (pacific time) 
• Regular Submission Deadline: November 8th, 2020 at midnight PT (pacific time) 
• Extension Deadline (limited to 200 people who register): November 29th, 2020 at midnight PT (pacific time)

Register for an extension.

About the Award: Half the world lacks access to medical oxygen – a basic and critical treatment for numerous ailments. Oxygen concentrators are machines that produce medical oxygen in low-resource settings and are being distributed at a large scale – yet without maintenance, many will soon be at risk of breaking down. Can you develop a team of technicians to service existing oxygen concentrators? D-Prize will award up to $20,000 to help teams launch an initial three-month pilot of this idea.

Type: Contest

Eligibility:

• D-Prize is for aspiring entrepreneurs from anywhere in the world, of any age, and any background.
• We will consider funding existing organizations only if: you are piloting a new distribution-focused initiative, and you need high risk capital.

Eligible Countries: Any

Number of Awards: Top 1-2%

Value of Award: D-Prize will award up to $20,000 to help teams launch an initial three-month pilot of this idea.

How to Apply: Apply below

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Facebook Video Storytellers

Application Deadline: 18th September 2020

Type: Training

Eligibility: The course is open to journalists, student journalists and other content creators from Africa. 

Eligible Countries: African countries

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The six-week, self-directed course starts September 21. It will prepare participants to discover story ideas as well as shoot, script, edit, upload and distribute high-quality videos using a mobile phone. Storytellers who successfully complete this interactive course may apply to participate in a mentorship program and compete for prizes of U.S. $1,500. 

Duration of Award: 6 weeks

How to Apply: Apply now. 

Visit Award Webpage for Details

American Muslims 19 years after 9/11

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

19 years after the ghastly tragedy of 9/11, civil rights remains the major problem for the seven-million-strong American Muslim Community.

The Covid-19 Pandemic shut down the US economy and disturbed the social life however even in this challenging times American Muslims were victims of hate crimes, discrimination and Islamophobia. Almost two decades  after 9/11, American Muslims still dealing with the fall out of this tragic event.

Following Trump’s 2016 election, American Muslims experienced a spike in hate crimes, according to data from the FBI.  American Muslim leaders attributed the spike to anti-Muslim rhetoric espoused by Trump and some of his close associates.

Here are few examples from recent months:

President Trump re-tweeted a post by an anti-Muslim bigot critical of former vice president Joe Biden for engaging in outreach to American Muslim voters and pledging to end the Muslim Ban. Trump retweeted a July 21st post by Paul Sperry, who wrote, “BREAKING: Biden wishes public schools taught more about Islam; promises Muslims he will end terrorism-related ban on immigration from high-risk Islamic nations “on Day One.”” According to Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative, Sperry has blamed Islam for the spread of the Ebola virus, called former President Barack Obama the “defender-in-chief of Islam,” warned of an “Islamic fifth column” growing inside America, accused tax reform activist Grover Norquist of “ties to militant Muslim activists,” and written multiple debunked books attacking Islam and Muslims.

In June, President Trump appointed former Breitbart writer, white supremacist sympathizer and anti-Muslim bigot Sebastian Gorka to the National Security Education Board. The 14-member National Security Education Board provides strategic consultation and oversight for the National Security Education Program. This program develops expertise for the U.S. federal government workforce and also provides grants to universities and scholarships for students to study languages and regions critical to national security.

In an apparent Islamophobia remark, MSNBC host Joy Reid, in her August 31 night program, said:

When leaders, let’s say in the Muslim world, talk a lot of violent talk and encourage their supporters to be willing to commit violence, including on their own bodies, in order to win against whoever they decide is the enemy, we in the U.S. media describe that as, ‘They are radicalizing those people,’ particularly when they’re radicalizing young people. That’s how we talk about the way Muslims act. When you see what Donald Trump is doing, is that any different from what we describe as radicalizing people? Trump condemned Reid’s remarks, though somewhat inaccurately, tweeting, “The very untalented Joy Reid should be fired for this horrible use of the words ‘Muslim Terrorists.’

On September 8, American Muslim groups expressed deep concerns over a slew of Islamophobic and Anti-Semitic social media posts by Dallas area physician, Michael Robles. Dr. Robles is a physician who works at American Pathology Partners (AP2) and Alliance Diagnostics. He posts regularly on Jihad Watch, a hate website run by notorious anti-Muslim bigot, Robert Spencer.  His posts include:  (1) “The hard hearted and stiff-necked Jews do not believe in the Holy Trinity. They believe in a different god. Their rejection begins from the beginning they will suffer, see Amos. They are antichrist. They follow the evil one.”  (2) “Islam false god false prophet false Quran false Christ – Islam is the anti-Christ, born from deception and follows Satan. Pure death and lies in Islam.” (3) “Never trust a Muslim who actively practices and follows the Quran.”

Politicians have added fuel to the fire of anti-Islam sentiments in the United States. Islamophobia has become a campaign tool used to galvanize voters. The heightened rhetoric has exposed an alarming trend that has developed after 9/11. Muslims are constantly and consistently cast as somehow un-American because of their faith.

Muslim Americans have expressed concern and alarm after Republican candidate Laura Loomer—who has described herself as a “proud Islamophobe” and called Islam a “cancer”— won her primary in Florida, earning praise from President Donald Trump, the Newsweek reported on August 19. Loomer, 27, won the GOP primary for Florida’s 21st District, home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The far-right activist has previously been banned from multiple social media platforms because of her extreme rhetoric. She will now face Democratic Representative Lois Frankel, who is widely expected to win, on November 3. But even if Loomer’s chances of beating Frankel appear remote, Muslim Americans are worried about a Republican Party that appears to be increasingly open to overtly Islamophobic candidates and viewpoints.

On August 29, Republican Mitch Swoboda, who is running to represent the 37th district of Michigan, shared an Islamophobic meme on Facebook equating the wearing of face masks to protect persons from COVID-19 infection with the false trope that women lack rights of personal choice within Islam.   The meme states, “That’s why they [Arabs] imposed on every woman the mandatory use of a fabric over her face. Then Islam turned it into the woman’s symbol of submission to Allah, the man owner of the Harem, and the King.”

Hate Crimes against American Muslims

An Arab-American teenager in New York was assaulted on August 13 with a baseball bat. The Council on American-Islamic Relations  called this “an anti-immigrant, anti-Arab, and racially charged attack.” The victim was identified as Tarek Elsayed, an 18-year-old Egyptian-American.

Somaia Harrati, a 17-year-old American Moroccan Muslim woman wearing hijab, was assaulted with a bottle of urine and Islamophobic slurs on August 10 in Bronx, New York. The NYPD was urged to initiate a hate crimes probe in the Islamophobic incident.

On July 2, 2020, in New York, Rashid Hassan, a Pakistani taxi driver, was assaulted and yelled “Go back to your country.” The police and an ambulance were called to the scene. Mr. Hassan was taken to the hospital and may need surgery on his eye to prevent blindness due to a blood clot resulting from the assault. Another driver nearby recorded the incident and provided the footage to the responding officers.

A 50-year-old Muslim man was assaulted outside the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, Minn., on August 6-night. The victim was walking to Dar Al-Farooq when two people described as being in their late teens or early twenties approached and assaulted him, according to police. The victim suffered a non-life-threatening injury and was transported to Fairview Southdale Hospital.

On September 9, Pennsylvania chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations reported a Muslim man in that state by an alleged attacker who is shown shouting “Go back to your country” during the incident. The assault was captured on video.

Even kids were blamed. The Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Dallas Fort-Worth (CAIR-DFW), a chapter of the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, on February 26 released a new report, “Singled Out: Islamophobia in the Classroom and the Impact of Discrimination on Muslim Students” indicating that 48 percent of respondents say they experienced some type of bullying — nearly double the national average.  CAIR-DFW’s report examines how Muslim students feel about their school environment, about identifying as Muslim and the extent of anti-Muslim bullying and harassment students experience.

In short, years after 9/11 terrorist attacks, American Muslims remain on the receiving end.

On the positive note

It was perhaps a historic moment for American Muslims when in July the House voted to repeal the Trump administration’s travel ban and further restrict the president’s power to limit entry to the U.S.  This was a symbolic victory for Muslim American and civil rights groups as the measure is unlikely to advance in the Republican-controlled Senate, where it has no GOP support. The bill, which passed the Democrat-controlled House 233-183, had initially been slated for action in March, before the coronavirus forced scheduling changes on Capitol Hill.

Since taking office in 2017, The Trump administration has continuously targeted immigrants and communities of color. Despite the recognition that white supremacist violence is a serious issue, the administration continues to focus on suppressing the rights of minority and immigrant communities. The xenophobic immigration agenda of the administration was furthered earlier this year when additional countries, mainly in Africa, were added to the Muslim Ban.

In June 2020, a bill was introduced in the Assembly of the State of California, saying that the Assembly joins communities throughout the State of California  in recognizing the month of August 2020 as American Muslim Appreciation and Awareness Month. The resolution pointed out that approximately one million American Muslims currently reside in California, the highest number of any state in the United States and the American Muslim community is recognized as having made innumerable contributions to the cultural, political, and economic fabric and well-being of California and the United States.

As a positive outcome of constant pressure, the American Muslims became active politically and created alliances with other ethnic and faith groups.

National Muslim Voter Registration Day: On August 28, 2020, American Muslim activists across the country rallied their communities to participate in National Muslim Voter Registration Day to impact the 2020 presidential election.MPower Change, in collaboration with grassroots organizations, launched the #MyMuslimVote campaign to promote a nationwide virtual registration drive. Participating organizations have already reached out to nearly half a million registered Muslim voters, and are sending email and text message reminders to encourage American Muslims to vote in person or by mail. American Muslims, along with other minority communities, could help vote President Donald Trump out of the White House and usher in Democratic contender Joe Biden, MPower Change Executive Director Linda Sarsour told CNN.

The Trump campaign in mid-August launched Muslim Voices for Trump. Also introduced at that time were similar coalitions for voters who identify as Indian, Hindu and Sikh. A Trump campaign site targeted to Muslim supporters includes a sign-up form, but no policy initiatives are listed. “Muslim Voices for Trump will energize and mobilize the Muslim community in re-electing President Donald J. Trump by sharing the many successes of the Trump Administration,” the site states. “Re-electing President Trump will ensure the protection of religious liberties, economic prosperity, and educational opportunities for Muslims in America.”

Joe Biden’s agenda for Muslim Americans:  In a bid to attract the American Muslim vote, Joe Biden, Democratic Presidential nominee Joe appointed a Senior Advisor for Muslim Engagement on his presidential campaign and issued a special paper  saying “Muslim-Americans are essential to the American fabric, and working with Muslim-American communities is critical to ensuring that Muslim-Americans are uplifted and empowered, and that their issues of concern are addressed within our democracy.”  Muslim-Americans are a diverse, vibrant part of the United States, making invaluable cultural and economic contributions to communities all across the nation. But they also face real challenges and threats in our society, including racially-motivated violence and Islamophobia. Joe Biden pledged to work closely with Muslim-Americans to address the needs and legitimate concerns of the Muslim-American community. As President, he will: protect Muslim-American constitutional and civil rights; honor the diversity of Muslim-American communities; ensure adequate healthcare; create a safe learning environment; rebuild our economy with a more resilient, more inclusive middle class; and make communities safer.

Meanwhile, a coalition of Muslim Democratic delegates has rejected the Democratic National Convention’s proposed party platform, in particular for not pushing for the U.S. to end military aid to Israel and sanctions on Iran, the Religious News Service (RNS) reported on August 4.  The Muslim Delegates and Allies Coalition is urging all delegates to vote against approving the platform during this week’s vote. The coalition was recently formed in hopes of pushing the party to “take more decisive action to improve U.S.-Muslim relations.”  The coalition is made up of 100 DNC national delegates, including some from Virginia, New Mexico and Texas, among other states.

Muslim voters concerned about civil rights: A  coalition of national Muslim organizations on August 25  released the results of a pre-election “Muslims in America Policy Poll” – an online survey of 1,500 Muslims in America that highlights issue and policy priorities of the Muslim community just months before the 2020 General Election.  The poll was created and distributed through a partnership of Muslim organizations, including America Indivisible, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Emgage USA, Jetpac, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), MPower Change and Poligon Education Fund — consolidating efforts to educate and mobilize a Muslim constituency.

Mosques across America dedicate Friday sermons to confronting racism, police brutality: On Friday, June 5, a wave of mosques dedicated their Jummah sermons to preaching against anti-black racism and police brutality, following urgent calls from black Muslim leaders to publicly speak up with a “Day of Outrage.” Led by Imam Jihad Saafir of inner-city community center Islah LA, a coalition of black Muslim leaders in California has suggested that, in Friday sermons and talks, Islamic organizations address racism and that they also address it in letters of solidarity with black Americans.

George Floyd’s killing was a final straw for thousands of Americans protesting against police brutality and systemic police racism. Muslim leaders say it may also, at long last, prove to be a tipping point for non-black Muslim communities, according to Aysha Khan of Religious News Service. “This has been a rough week, a rough two months for Black Muslims who have been deeply impacted by police brutality and mass incarceration,” said Margari Aziza Hill, co-founder of the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative. “We are in mourning, we are tired, we are angry, we are mobilizing.”

Display of Religious Bigotry by Hindutva in NY’s Times Square denounced: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, on August 5 joined the “Stop Genocide in India” coalition in condemning the use of New York’s Times Square to promote the far-right Indian government’s embrace of militant Hindutva ideology, which has resulted in the destructive and deadly rise of anti-Muslim bigotry across India. On August 5, 2020–exactly one year to the day that India revoked article 370, removing Kashmir’s autonomy–Indian PM Modi laid the foundation stone for the building of a Hindu Temple at the site of the 16th century Babri Mosque Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh state. The mosque was destroyed by militant Hindu extremists in 1992 and ushered in nationwide pogroms, resulting in the murder more than 2,000 Muslims.  Special interest groups sympathetic with Hindu nationalist (Hindutva) policies purchased ads in Times Square to celebrate the laying of the foundation stone.

American Muslims join the nation in commemorating the 19th anniversary of this ghastly tragedy with an optimism that the state of present anti-Muslim campaign will subside in due course of time as happened during the Second World War with the Japanese Americans who also endured similar national intolerance, social prejudice and legal injustice.

Rogues in the Ranks

Edward J. Martin

On May 25, 2020, African American George Floyd, was arrested and killed by a white Minneapolis police officer. The officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt forcefully on Floyd’s neck, and in effect crushing Floyd’s wind pipe. Three other officers were involved, two helping to restrain Floyd, and another standing guard between witnesses and the actual killing. Eight minutes passed and Floyd was dead. Video taken by onlookers was posted world-wide which led to protests and riots in Minneapolis and throughout the United States. Protests also broke out in countries around the world, most notably Europe. Absent the video, the question being asked is how many more killings are taking place at the hands of the police, specifically black men.

The cause of the protests and rioting, it is safe to conclude, has been the result of African American men and women being killed by police. George Floyd’s death unleashed rage and subsequently triggered protests which, at times, turned into violence, predominantly through the destruction of businesses and property. Yet the protest and rioting appeared different from the sixties. The African American uprising included whites, ostensibly millennial, a mixed-race, ethnic, gender identity, class struggle coalition of the discontent. In fact, while the immediate cause of the uprising was a concomitant reaction to lethal racist tactics by police, the “feel” of the uprising had deeper overtones. The protest was not only about deadly force used against African Americans, it was also, arguably, a continuation of what Reconstruction failed to do: eradicate the vestiges of white racism and its monuments dedicated to the South’s deviant overlords such as, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Robert E. Lee, and host of other lionized sociopaths.

The general trend of African Americans being killed, without justification, has been transpiring increasingly for decades. The ACLU has documented numerous accounts of police harassment, intimidations, 4^th and 5^th Amendment violations, civil rights and civil liberty violations, and excessive force and brutality. The Innocence Project has documented disproportionately high number of African Americans who have been charged, tried, and convicted, to only be exonerated at a later date. Clearly law enforcement, District Attorneys, and the criminal justice system have all acted in illegal and rogue fashion targeting African Americans. This is systemic racism, and African Americans have been, and continue to be the primary target.

Rogue Law Enforcement

There is sufficient evidence that law enforcement in the US, has been attracting alt-right extremists in law enforcement. An FBI report, “White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement” Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2006, identifies that white nationalist and supremacist groups have been, and continue to be, hired by law enforcement agencies. They are recruiting, knowingly or otherwise, current law enforcement personnel from extremist groups. The investigation warned that skin head groups were directing such recruits to take on a covert identity as “ghost skins.” The secret identity for white supremacists is to obviously “avoid overt displays” of their true identities, assimilating into society, and then promote the values of white hegemony.

In 2006 the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office discovered that a neo-Nazi gang had formed within the Department. Similar investigations around the country have revealed that officers, and entire agencies, had ties with hate groups in states such as Illinois, Ohio Arizona and Texas. This has been corroborated by an October 17, 2006 Intelligence Assessment from the FBI Counterterrorism Division which detailed the threat of white nationalists and skinheads infiltrating police. Their point of their infiltration: to harass minorities and disrupt police investigations against racists and racist police themselves. The FBI report titled, “White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement,” found that the use of racist tactics of intimidation, brutality and protecting fellow racists cops from prosecution was, sadly, a highly effective recruitment tool for like-minded supremacists.

In 2009, the US Department of Homeland Security issued a report on right-wing extremism and its relationship to “violent radicalization” in the United States. In the report, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” April 7, 2009, Federal law enforcement agencies, according to the report had been alerted to an extremist threat in which state and local law enforcement have infiltrated these agencies and that other personnel are sympathetic to these groups and their cause. An FBI Counterterrorism Policy Guide, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2015, gave greatest priority to the investigation of “domestic terrorism” focusing on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists, whose identifiable links connected to law enforcement personnel. On June 4, 2019, an FBI report from the Counterterrorism Division, “Confronting White Supremacy,” and June 4, 2020, FBI “Domestic Terrorism Conference Report,” described in detail the threat that white supremacist groups present to minorities and the public at large. On June 17, 2020, the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) described, in their report, the deepening concern that white nationalist groups present to democracy itself. And on July 11, 2020, the PBS News Hour, examined the growth of the Alt-right in a report, “Should the US designate racial violence as terrorism?” The conclusion was not only in the affirmative but also concluded that racial terrorism is as much a concern as Islamic terrorism.

The Center for Investigative Reporting, published an investigation in 2019, that found thousands of active-duty and retired law enforcement officers were members of militia groups ranging from Confederate-sympathizing, anti-Islam, or anti-government. They were both active and interactive with each other on Facebook. Members of these groups are unabashed racists. They have been linked to groups like the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, whose purpose is to defend white Americans from “enslavement” and the flood of immigrants, legal or otherwise. The investigation reported that active membership in these groups included active-duty and retired law enforcement officers. They are highly involved with explicitly racist Facebook groups such as “Veterans Against Islamic Filth” (the group deliberately lowercases “Islamic” in its name) and “PURGE WORLDWIDE (The Cure for the Islamic disease in your country)”, and more subterranean groups such as the “Patriots for the Reclamation of America,” and the Los Angeles County Sheriffs, City of Compton, “Executioners.” Even Netflix in a series, “Alt-Right: Age of Rage,” identifies the Alternative Right and the Aryan Brotherhood, and its ostensible leaders, Richard Spence and Jared Taylor, as incendiary in their goals to maintain white identity. They argue that white America is being destroyed by integrating different cultures and identities and that Western white culture is threatened with extinction.

The head of the Oath Keepers movement, Stewart Rhodes, proclaimed in 2009, that the anti-government group includes thousands of “retired and active” police, sheriffs, and marshals. On May 30, during protests in New York City, an NYPD officer was making hand gestures (similar to those used by gang members) that has been linked to white supremacist groups, later reported to the New York Attorney General’s office. The Plain View Project, a database of public Facebook comments made by nearly 2,900 current and former police officers in eight cities, suggests that nearly 1 in 5 of the current officers identified in the study made public posts or comments that appear “to endorse violence, racism and bigotry,” as reported by Buzzfeed News and Injustice Watch in a study of the database. In fact, there are 1269 identified problematic posts from active duty Philadelphia police officers on the site. Of the 1073 Philadelphia police officers identified by the Plain View Project, 327 of them posted public content endorsing violence, racism and bigotry. Of those 327, at least 64 hold leadership roles within the force, serving as corporals, sergeants, lieutenants, captains, or inspectors.

Another example of racism and white supremacists in law enforcement can be traced to the 1990s in which a federal judge discovered that a “neo-Nazi, white supremacist gang” of Los Angeles police deputies – “the Vikings” – operated in the police department with full knowledge of the leadership. In San Francisco from 2015 – 2016, law enforcement attempted to terminate the employment of 17 police officers after an investigations revealed racist text messages were being sent within the ranks. Moreover, the Ku Klux Klan historically has been connected to local law enforcement. In 2014 a police department in Central Florida terminated the employment of two officers, one being the deputy chief of police, for membership in the KKK. In 2015, a police officer in North Carolina was photographed giving a Nazi salute at a KKK rally. The failure of police leadership to take disciplinary action on their own officers regarding excessive force and/or racist conduct is inherent to these agencies.

Derek Chauvin, the police officer charged with George Floyd’s death, had been under investigation for over 17 documented complaints. None of those complaints resulted in disciplinary action while only a few resulted in a letter of reprimand placed in his file. The Minneapolis Police Department refused to disclose the exact nature of the investigations or reprimands. The refusal to disclose these disciplinary actions speaks to a larger issue of transparency and public accountability. Between 2011 and 2015, the NYPD recorded 319 law enforcement offenses, including harassment and assault in many cases. All offenses were “cause” for termination. Thirty-eight law enforcement officers were found guilty by police tribunals of excessive force, unnecessary and unprovoked fights during arrests, or firing weapons unnecessarily. Apparently internal investigations took little to no action on accusations of favoritism, racism, and unlawful interrogations to force confessions and guilty pleas.

Large cities such as Chicago, also have struggles in holding police accountable. According to the Citizens Police Data Project, only 7 percent of complaints have resulted in disciplinary action. These include allegations of law enforcement using racial slurs. In 2018, the chief of police in Elkhart, Indiana, failed to discipline an officer for racial slurs while simultaneously promoting him to sergeant. The chief had full knowledge that the officer was making numerous statements on “white power” on police communications according to ProPublica. The “white power” motto has also been identified with Minneapolis Lieutenant Bob Kroll, who is president of the Police Officers Federation. He was named as a defendant in a lawsuit brought by four black Minneapolis law enforcement officers against the Minneapolis Police Department for discrimination. In the complaint, the allegation by the plaintiffs alleged that the Lieutenant displayed a “White Power badge” on his motorcycle jacket. Kroll, rejects the characterization, but has been heard frequently describing the Black Lives Matter movement as a “terrorist organization.”

The Obama administration made serious attempts to address police forces. In fifteen police departments throughout the United States, the administration legally forced these departments into consent decrees implementing reform. Under federal law the police departments were to commence with reforms from racial discrimination to brutality. In one case, the Justice Department report on its consent decree with Chicago, revealed that the police department received over 30,000 complaints of officer misconduct in five years and determined that a systematic pattern of excessive force has undermined confidence within minority communities. But the new Trump administration sought to undue these reforms.

On March 31, 2017, Trump’s former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, ordered the Justice Department to review Obama-era consent decrees on police department reform. Sessions then curbed their use by requiring political appointees to sign off on any future settlements. The Trump administration restriction on the use of the decrees was characterized as a transition away from protecting civil rights to instead promoting “law and order.” This was continued by Trump’s next Attorney General William Barr, who supported Sessions’ policy. To date, the Trump administration has not issued any new consent decrees against police forces within the United States.

Not all law enforcement officers are members of racist or white supremacist groups. Nor do all law enforcement support alt-right ideology. Notable examples of strong relations with citizens and community-led policing in response to this past several week’s protests include New Jersey police officers marching with Black Lives Matters protestors, police chiefs listening to and walking with protestors, and police in both New York City and South Florida kneeling in solidarity with protestors. In Flint, Michigan, Genesee County Sheriff Christopher Swanson removed his riot gear and walked with marchers. In Long Beach, California, Chief Robert Luna fired a rogue officer for posting his picture on Facebook standing with his baton over blood.

*

To be sure, there are other issues needing attention. Qualified immunity for police and district attorneys, police (unidentified) infiltration disguised as protesters assaulting protestors and damaging property falsely blaming protestors. Most disturbing is the fictional account of the Antifascists (Antifa) as a violent leftist terrorist group. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In an internal memorandum, FBI Director Christopher Wrey, found no evidence of Antifa’s involvement in national unrest, specifically with the George Floyd protests and riots as falsely reported by The Nation, June 2, 2020. The Washington Field Office memo states that “no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement” was initiated during the protests, as erroneously stated from Trump, Attorney General Barr, and various right-wing news outlets such as FOX News. On June 12, 2020, the New York Times in “Federal Arrests Show No Sign That Antifa Plotted Protests,” cleared Antifa and on June 22, 2020, the New York Times, “41 Cities, Many Sources: How False Antifa Rumors Spread Locally,” described how propaganda against Antifa was spread through the media community, most likely form conservative politicians and political action committees. The attempt was to falsely blame the uprising on an orchestrated group such as Antifa, according to Glenn Kirschner, former FBI, counterintelligence. Blaming a “left-wing” group was a ruse created to gaslight the public and divert attention from the “right-wing” police tactics condoned by the Trump administration.

Most disturbing is the training techniques – taught to American law enforcement by the Israeli Defense Forces – involving the neck suppressing technique used on George Floyd. The IDFs, use the same techniques on Palestinians as reported by Amnesty International (http://amnestyusa.org/7-17-20), and also documented in The Progressive in “US Police Are Being Trained by Israel – And Communities of Color Are Paying the Price.” The police training tactics are sponsored by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Anti-Defamation League (A-DL), which in turn sponsors the American Jewish Committee Project Interchange Institution and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.

The term “systemic racism” means that institutions produce and perpetuate racially disparate effects in the case of minority populations. Professor Bernard Harcourt of Columbia University Law School has conducted and compiled several empirical studies of systemic racism in law enforcement agencies. These include a wide range of police tactics which include the use of policies such as “stop and frisk” and the disparate rates of police activities including traffic stops, searches of motorists during traffic stops, levels of respect shown during stops, misdemeanor arrests, marijuana arrests, use of SWAT teams, individuals jailed for inability to pay petty fines, militarized policing of targeted neighborhoods, resolution of murders of white versus black victims, sustained complaints against police officers, and unarmed victims of police shootings. The evidence of links to explicit white supremacist groups is only the tip of a racist iceberg, according to Harcourt.

In The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens, 2018, Harcourt argues that the effort to reduce crime in the United States initiated a terror campaign on its citizens, specifically African Americans, in much the same way the United States supported terror tactics in the Third World. Modern militarized police officers with tanks and drones have become pervasive tools along with government surveillance and profiling. Social media also serves to distract and track citizens from the fact that they have consciously or unconsciously surrendered rights to privacy, unauthorized surveillance, and unlawful searches and seizures. All of these, Harcourt contends, are facets of a new and radical governing paradigm in the United States – one that is rooted in the modes of warfare originally developed to suppress anticolonial revolutions and, more recently, to prosecute the war on terror. Harcourt provides a penetrating and disturbing account of the rise of domestic counterinsurgency, first as a military strategy, and secondly, as an increasing way of ruling ordinary Americans in an authoritarian manner.

Finally, Harcourt demonstrates how counterinsurgency’s principles – bulk intelligence collection, ruthless targeting of minorities, misleading, gaslighting and pacifying propaganda – have taken hold domestically despite the absence of any radical uprising – that is, till recently with the nascent Minneapolis rioting and subsequent uprisings in urban America. This counterrevolution against phantom enemies, he argues, is the tyranny of government at the behest of the power elite. For Harcourt, seeing and identifying this is the first step in resistance to the white nationalist police state within America. So the immediate task is twofold: demand an end the police killings of innocent black men and resist descending into a fascism.

Judicial Manoeuvres and Delhi Slums

Dunu Roy

The recent order by the Supreme Court 3-judge bench that threatens the homes and livelihoods of an estimated 48,000 families living along 70 km of railway tracks because they were “encroachments which are there in the safety zones,” has understandably raised many concerns. To place this order in context it is necessary to understand the trajectory of the courts and how they have manoeuvred their way from justice into governance that does not lie within their mandate.

The theme in which this order was pronounced goes back to 1985 when a petition was filed before a 3-judge bench on the pollution of the river Ganga at Haridwar but targeted the downstream tanneries at Kanpur. ​ When the first order was given in 1987 there were 35 advocates present in court representing the municipality, the pollution control board, and the 43 tanneries. In 2020, in the same theme, the number of advocates was 417 and they represented a host of regulatory bodies, municipalities, railways, solid waste handlers, smog tower makers, standards-setting institutions, and 12 thermal power plants.

How the issue of water pollution in the Ganga is linked to air pollution, railway safety, coal-burning plants, solid waste, air purification, and slums – and the list goes on increasing – is an indication of how the Court has kept manoeuvring its mandate to converge apparently unrelated, and contradictory, issues. In the present case, the EPCA recommended that all non-degradable waste be “given to authorised waste recyclers/pickers”, but the court has responded by evicting the waste-pickers! As for the slums as a safety hazard, the Railways’ own finding is that its safety performance is dependent on how much it invests in infrastructure.

This is not the first time the court has done this kind of manoeuvring. Other cases filed at the same time (1985) have been used to close not only 168 polluting industries (1996) but 75,000 non-conforming ones (2004); restrict diesel (1997) but also order the change from 10,000 diesel to 4,000 CNG buses (1998); ban mining (2002) while also removing 3 labour camps next to Bhatti Mines (2006); protect the Ridge (1995) but at the peril of evicting residents of 21 villages (2014). All these were based on the mistaken hope that they would stop the “adverse effect on the public at large.”

Another case before the court that addressed the issue of removal of garbage was also manoeuvred into other issues. While pulling up the municipalities for not removing garbage, the court commented that “slums are major polluters and they should be removed”. It also gratuitously observed, “Rewarding an encroacher on public land with free alternate site is like giving a reward to a pickpocket.” This casual observation has since been used by many agencies to hold the poor guilty for all problems. In addition, most courts are now following the precedent that the alleged guilty have no right to be heard.

The High Court of Delhi offers several examples of this bias. In 1994 an association of factory owners had filed a writ in this court seeking relief from congestion and the lack of facilities in their industrial area. Another association filed a similar writ for a different area in 2002. They were clubbed together and, suddenly targeting the slums – who were not heard, the Bench held that while “it is undoubtedly the duty of Government authorities to provide shelter for the under privileged”, but “we hereby proceed to squash the same (policy) which requires alternative sites to be provided to slum dwellers.”

At the same time another Bench was hearing 36 petitions by slum dwellers, along with 28 by resident welfare associations, on slum eviction.  This Bench too declined to hear the slum dwellers (arguing that the above Bench was hearing them!) but passed orders for the “demolition of all slum clusters which have come up after February 1997.” The Union Government stepped in to file a Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court against the squashing of resettlement policy and a stay was granted by the court with the proviso that the Union could “proceed with the impugned policy”.

Faced by this turn of events the High Court then on its own decided to address the issue of slums. The Ministry of Tourism prepared a brief showing that slum dwellers were polluting the river Yamuna. The slum dwellers were not heard although a study showed that the 29 drains from their settlements carried only 0.08% of the total sewerage discharged into the river. The court merely ordered “to forthwith remove all the unauthorised structures, jhuggies, places of worship and/or any other structure which are unauthorisedly put in Yamuna Bed and its embankment, within two months from today.” This order was used to evict 60,000 families living on the river bank while ignoring the 23 encroachments on the river bed by the government, religious institutions, and residences.

In another case, the High Court gave an order to remove a settlement on the land belonging to Delhi Vidyut Board to free the road for smooth flow of traffic. The order stated, “the unauthorised occupants also have buffalos and other animals which not only give way to unhygienic conditions but also create hindrance on the smooth flow of commuters on the ring road of Delhi which are in thousands.” Thus, safety, conservation, pollution, congestion, waste, animals, hygiene, and land are all manoeuvred  to promote action against slums.

At the base of this trajectory is the fact that slums are not illegal. They are defined as unfit for human habitation, dilapidated, overcrowded; with no ventilation, narrow streets, no light or sanitation; and “detrimental to safety, health, or morals.” Also, it is the Delhi Development Authority that is responsible for creation of slums because of its failure to provide even one-third of the LIG housing that it is legally mandated to provide. The executive and the judiciary both know this and that is why the policy of resettlement exists and judgements follow from that. If slums are to be cleared or improved as per the Act, then “habitable” land becomes the critical (and expensive) issue. Proving encroachment is even more problematic because the rich have illegally occupied far more land than the poor.

That is why courts are turning to the belief that slums are “detrimental to safety, health, or morals”. Such a ‘sentiment’ requires less ‘evidence’ than property rights, occupation dates, and illegal squatting. Unless this kind of manoeuvring by a ‘committed’ judiciary and executive is challenged, and service providers held to account by an independent legislature and a free press, this trajectory is going to continue.