Slavery

West Virginia Legislature Passes Abortion Ban With Few Exceptions

By Associated Press
September 14, 2022

The legislation would allow victims of rape and incest to obtain abortions at up to eight weeks of pregnancy, if they report to law enforcement first.

West Virginia’s Legislature passed a sweeping abortion ban with few exceptions Tuesday, approving a bill that several members of the Republican supermajority said they hope will make it impossible for the state’s only abortion clinic to continue to offer the procedure.

“It is going to shut down that abortion clinic, of that I feel certain,” Republican Sen. Robert Karnes said on the Senate floor, amid shouts from protesters standing outside the chamber doors. “I believe it’s going to save a lot of babies.”

Under the legislation, rape and incest victims would be able to obtain abortions at up to eight weeks of pregnancy, but only if they report to law enforcement first. Such victims who are minors would have until 14 weeks to terminate a pregnancy and must report to either law enforcement or a physician.

Rape and incest victims would have to report the assault within 48 hours of getting an abortion, and a patient must present a copy of a police report or notarized letter to a physician before the procedure can be performed.

Abortions also would be allowed in cases of medical emergencies.

West Virginia joins the ranks of states moving to ban abortion in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year to end the constitutional right to privacy that protected abortion rights nationwide. That left it to states to decide whether abortion should remain legal, which in turn has ignited intense state-level debates, especially in states controlled by Republicans, about when to impose the ban, whether to carve out exceptions in cases involving rape, incest or the health of the woman giving birth, and how those exceptions should be implemented.

The West Virginia bill now heads to the desk of Republican Gov. Jim Justice, who has signed several anti-abortion bills into law since taking office in 2017. Lawmakers resumed debate on the bill Tuesday after failing to come to an agreement in late July, giving up the chance for the state to become the first to approve new legislation restricting access to abortions since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in June removing its protected status as a constitutional right.

Both the Senate and the House of Delegates speedily approved the bill, after several hours of debate. Dozens of protesters wearing pink shirts reading “bans off our bodies” and holding signs reading “abortion is healthcare” staged a rally in the Capitol rotunda while lawmakers were in session.

Some of the group sat in the gallery as legislators discussed the bills, with some shouting down to legislators in frustration as they spoke in support of the bill. Legislative leadership asked that the onlookers remain silent as lawmakers conducted business. At one point, at least one protester was escorted out of the building by police.

Lawmakers inserted several provisions they said were specifically targeted at the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia, which was the state’s first abortion clinic when it opened in 1976 following the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade case. It has existed as the state’s sole abortion clinic for years, making it the ever-increasing target of anti-abortion lawmakers and protesters.

The bill states that surgical abortions can only be performed at a state-licensed hospital by a physician with hospital privileges. Anybody else who performs an abortion, including nurse practitioners and other medical professionals, could face three to 10 years in prison. A physician who performs an illegal abortion could lose their medical license.

Pregnant people who obtain illegal abortions will not face any form of prosecution under the bill, however.

Kaylen Barker, spokesperson for the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia, said the clinic will not be shutting down, even if the staff is no longer able to provide abortions. Like many clinics that perform abortions, the facility did not offer the procedure daily.

Most days are dedicated to services like gender-affirming hormone therapy, HIV prevention and treatment and routine gynecological care — cervical exams, cancer screenings — mostly for low-income patients on Medicaid with nowhere else to go.

Democratic Sen. Owens Brown, West Virginia’s only Black senator, spoke against the bill before it passed the Senate. He said when he looks around at his fellow lawmakers, he sees a body that is overwhelmingly comprised of white, middle-aged to elderly men who are middle-class or above.

Brown compared groups of men passing legislation that overwhelmingly impacts women to laws that were passed by white lawmakers when slavery was legal in the U.S. He said “all laws are not good laws made by men.”

“That’s somewhat irrational in many ways to be able to apply a law that will never apply to you,” he said to his fellow lawmakers. “It’s easy for you to sit there and do that because you will never have to face the consequences of your actions.”

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Queen Elizabeth II’s Coffin Makes Journey Through Scotland

The hearse drove past piles of bouquets and other tributes as it led a seven-car cortege from Balmoral, where the queen died.

Queen Elizabeth II’s flag-draped coffin is passing through the rugged Scottish countryside Sunday on a final journey from her beloved summer estate Balmoral Castle to London, with mourners quietly lining roads and some tossing flowers to honor the monarch who died after 70 years on the throne.

The hearse drove past piles of bouquets and other tributes as it led a seven-car cortege from Balmoral, where the queen died Thursday, for a six-hour trip through Scottish towns to Holyroodhouse palace in Edinburgh. The late queen’s coffin was draped in the Royal Standard for Scotland and topped with a wreath made of flowers from the estate, including sweet peas, one of the queen’s favorites.

“A sad and poignant moment as Her Majesty, The Queen leaves her beloved Balmoral for the final time,” the first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon tweeted. “Today, as she makes her journey to Edinburgh, Scotland will pay tribute to an extraordinary woman.”

Crowds lined parts of the route as the nation mourns its longest-reigning monarch, the only one most Britons have ever known. In the Scottish village of Ballater, where residents regard the royal family as neighbors, hundreds of people watched in silence and some threw flowers in front of the hearse as it passed.

“She meant such a lot to people in this area. People were crying, it was amazing to see,” said Victoria Pacheco, a guest house manager.

In each town and village the cars drove through, they were met with similar muted scenes of respect. People stood mostly in silence; some clapped politely, others pointed their phone cameras at the passing cars.

Before reaching the Scottish capital, the cortege is traveling down what is effectively a royal memory lane — passing through locations laden with House of Windsor history including Dyce, where in 1975 the queen formally opened the U.K.’s first North Sea oil pipeline, and Fife near St. Andrews University, where her grandson William, now the Prince of Wales, studied and met his future wife, Catherine.

Sunday’s solemn drive through Scotland came as the queen’s eldest son was formally proclaimed the new monarch — King Charles III — in the rest of the nations of the United Kingdom: Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It came a day after a pomp-filled accession ceremony in England steeped in ancient tradition and political symbolism.

“I am deeply aware of this great inheritance and of the duties and heavy responsibilities of sovereignty, which have now passed to me,” Charles said Saturday.

Just before the proclamation was read Sunday in Edinburgh, a protester appeared with a sign condemning imperialism and urging leaders to “abolish the monarchy,” getting taken away soon afterward by police. The crowd applauded.

One man shouted, “Let her go! It’s free speech!” while others shouted: “Have some respect.”

It’s a sign of how some, including the former British Empire colonies, are struggling with the legacy of the monarchy. Earlier, proclamations were read in other parts of the Commonwealth countries, including Australia and New Zealand.

Charles, even as he mourned his late mother, was getting to work at Buckingham Palace, meeting with the secretary-general and other representatives of the Commonwealth, nations grappling with affection for the queen and lingering bitterness over their colonial legacies, ranging from slavery to corporal punishment in African schools to looted artifacts held in British institutions.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who had started laying the groundwork for an Australian republic after elections in May, said Sunday that now was the time not for a change but for paying tribute to the late queen.

India, a former British colony, observed a day of state mourning, with flags lowered to half-staff on all government buildings throughout the country.

Amid the grief enveloping the House of Windsor, there were hints of a possible family reconciliation. Prince William and his brother Harry, together with their respective wives, Catherine, Princess of Wales, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, delighted mourners near Windsor Castle with a surprise joint appearance Saturday.

The queen’s coffin will take a circuitous journey back to the capital. On Monday, it will be taken from Holyroodhouse to nearby St. Giles’ Cathedral, where it will remain until Tuesday, when it will be flown to London. The coffin will be moved from Buckingham Palace on Wednesday to the Houses of Parliament to lie in state until a state funeral at Westminster Abbey on Sept. 19.

In Ballater, the Rev. David Barr said locals consider the royals as “neighbors” and try to treat them as locals when they spend summers in the Scottish Highlands.

“When she comes up here, and she goes through those gates, I believe the royal part of her stays mostly outside,” he said. “And as she goes in, she was able to be a wife, a loving wife, a loving mum, a loving gran and then later on a loving great-gran — and aunty — and be normal.”

Elizabeth Taylor, from Aberdeen, had tears in her eyes after the hearse carrying the queen’s coffin passed through Ballater.

“It was very emotional. It was respectful and showed what they think of the queen,” she said. “She certainly gave service to this country even up until a few days before her death.”

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Freedmen Fight For Tribal Citizenship On Legal Path Marred By Politics

By Allison Herrera
July 27, 2022

The descendants of formerly enslaved tribal citizens have been fighting on a rocky legal path for two decades for their right to be citizens.

Ean McCants’ family has a long and storied history that stretches back to the days before 1907, when Oklahoma was called Indian Territory.

“My family lived in Sandtown,” McCants said. “My grandmother actually is from Sandtown in Oklahoma City, which is a neighborhood that was founded by Chickasaw Freedmen.”

McCants is a descendant of Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen.

Freedmen were formerly enslaved African Americans held by the Five Tribes before and after removal to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears. They were supposed to be granted tribal citizenship by treaties signed with the U.S. government in 1866 but have been removed from the rolls since the 1980s.

One of McCants’ family members served in the Indian Home Guard during the Civil War and later survived the Tulsa Race Massacre. Despite this, he and other Freedmen descendants aren’t citizens of the Choctaw, Chickasaw or Muscogee Nation.

But in 2017 after a decades-long lawsuit, the Cherokee Nation did grant full citizenship to their Freedmen descendants.

Now, an ally of the Freedmen is hoping the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations will do the same.

“I’m just drawn to the side that’s losing, you know?” said Eli Grayson, Muscogee Nation citizen. ”I don’t know why it is.”

Grayson helped Cherokee Freedmen win their case and has been raising the issue with his own tribe, saying they are in violation of their 1866 Reconstruction Treaty.

“It was based on the fact that the federal government recognized you as a government, that you could do what you want to do,” Grayson said. “But there’s one thing: You are going to stop enslaving people.  This is Article Two, five conditions. You won’t have slavery anymore, the slaves you got are now your tribal citizens. They have an equal interest in the national funds, and they are to be treated the same as the Indians.”

So, what’s stopping the push for citizenship? Choctaw Chief Gary Batton said publicly last year that he wants to have a dialogue with Choctaw citizens about it before deciding.

Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, has been supportive of Freedmen descendants gaining citizenship, but other tribal leaders have remained silent.

The issue of citizenship for Freedmen has been more public in the last couple of years.

In 2021, Representative Maxine Waters held a hearing in the Financial Services Committee on important funding for Indian housing. During that hearing, Cherokee Freedmen descendant Marilyn Vann raised the issue of the Freedmen being barred from essential services.

“The tribal governments receive money for the housing programs, but the majority of Freedmen are excluded,” Vann said. “I ask you to include the treaty obligation language in the final bill and support its passage in the full House.”

Representative Waters has threatened to withhold housing money until the issue is handled.

Many see Freedmen gaining citizenship as a civil rights issue in Oklahoma; treaties tribes signed with the U.S. government in 1866 give them that right.

“These are my people’s fight with the Confederates to basically protect their right to enslave Black people,” Grayson said. “That was not a good feeling.”

McCants thinks it’s not just the tribe’s responsibility to grant Freedmen citizenship. but it’s the U.S. government’s job, too.

“We still have remained in our homes where our ancestors have been, and I think that that says something,” McCants said. “It means that regardless of if the Chickasaw Nation or the Choctaw have this conversation, we’re still going to be in these nations, we’re still going to be their relatives and there’s nothing about that fact that is going to change. So I think that the best thing to do is not resist that.”

The U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs recently held a hearing on the issue. Activists and Freedmen communities are pushing on Deb Haaland, the secretary of the Interior Department, to take up the issue. Plus, a younger generation informed by protests for racial equity will keep bringing pressure to resolve what they see as a human rights issue.

: newsy.com

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Nikole Hannah-Jones Receives Support in Tenure Dispute

Republican lawmakers in nearly a dozen states have tried to shape how racism and slavery can be taught in schools, with some bills explicitly targeting the 1619 Project. This month, Tennessee passed a law to withhold funding from schools that teach critical race theory, following a similar law in Idaho. Similar legislative proposals are underway in Texas, New Hampshire and Louisiana.

Tuesday’s letter added that the same “anti-democratic thinking” behind the failure to offer Ms. Hannah-Jones tenure was evident in efforts by the state lawmakers to ban the 1619 Project from schools.

“We, the undersigned, believe this country stands at a crucial moment that will define the democratic expression and exchange of ideas for our own and future generations,” the letter said.

The University of North Carolina’s trustees are overseen by the university system’s board of governors, which is appointed by the Republican-controlled legislature. Ms. Hannah-Jones, who earned a master’s degree from the University of North Carolina in 2003, is scheduled to start in July, while continuing to write for The Times Magazine.

A university spokeswoman said university leaders would respond privately to the letter of support. Ms. Hannah-Jones declined to comment.

“That so many distinguished historians have signed this letter is yet further testament to the impact she has had in sparking an important conversation about American history,” Jake Silverstein, the editor in chief of The Times Magazine, said in a statement. He added that Ms. Hannah-Jones’s work was “in the best tradition of New York Times reporters who have deepened our understanding of the world with rigorous journalism that challenges the status quo and forces readers to think critically.”

Previous Knight Chairs at the University of North Carolina were tenured.

“It is not our place to tell U.N.C. or U.N.C./Hussman who they should appoint or give tenure to,” Alberto Ibargüen, the president of Knight Foundation, which funds the positions, said in a statement last week. “It is, however, clear to us that Hannah-Jones is eminently qualified for the appointment, and we would urge the trustees of the University of North Carolina to reconsider their decision within the time frame of our agreement.”

In an email on Sunday to faculty members that was reviewed by The Times, Susan King, the dean of the Hussman School, suggested that the board could reconsider the tenure recommendation at a future meeting. “So that this won’t linger on,” she wrote, “we’ve asked for a date certain by which a decision about a board vote will be made.”

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Nikole Hannah-Jones Denied Tenure at University of North Carolina

Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for The New York Times Magazine, was denied a tenured position at the University of North Carolina, after the university’s board of trustees took the highly unusual step of failing to approve the journalism department’s recommendation.

The decision drew criticism from faculty members on Wednesday, who said that the last two people in the position Ms. Hannah-Jones will hold were granted tenure upon their appointment.

In late April, the university announced that Ms. Hannah-Jones was being appointed to the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at U.N.C.’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media. She will start as a professor in July, while continuing to write for The Times Magazine. Instead of tenure, Ms. Hannah-Jones was offered a five-year contract as a professor, with an option for review.

In the April announcement, the dean of the journalism school, Susan King, said: “Now one of the most respected investigative journalists in America will be working with our students on projects that will move their careers forward and ignite critically important conversations.”

MacArthur fellowship in 2017, brought a backlash from conservative groups concerned about her involvement in The Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, which was named for the year that slavery began in the colonies that would become the United States. (Ms. Hannah-Jones won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for commentary for her introductory essay.)

The 1619 Project ignited a continuing debate about the legacy of slavery, but has faced criticism from some historians over certain claims, and from conservatives who have labeled it “propaganda.” The Republican-controlled North Carolina Legislature appoints the university system’s Board of Governors, which has significant control over the university’s board of trustees.

The website NC Policy Watch reported on Wednesday that U.N.C.’s board of trustees had declined to approve Ms. Hannah-Jones’s application for tenure. A spokeswoman for the university, Joanne Peters Denny, said in a statement that “details of individual faculty hiring processes are personnel protected information.”

Ms. Hannah-Jones declined to comment. On Twitter on Wednesday evening, she wrote, “I’ve been staying off of here today, but just know I see you all and I am grateful.”

Nearly 40 faculty members from the journalism school signed an online statement on Wednesday calling for the decision to be reversed, saying the failure to grant tenure to Ms. Hannah-Jones “unfairly moves the goal posts and violates longstanding norms and established processes.” The statement added, “This failure is especially disheartening because it occurred despite the support for Hannah-Jones’s appointment as a full professor with tenure by the Hussman dean, Hussman faculty and university.”

It continued, “Hannah-Jones’s distinguished record of more than 20 years in journalism surpasses expectations for a tenured position as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism.”

Alberto Ibargüen, the president of Knight Foundation, said that while the foundation funds the Knight Chair position at U.N.C., it has no role in appointments. The agreement calls for a five-year appointment, with tenure review within that period, he said.

“It is not our place to tell U.N.C. or U.N.C./Hussman who they should appoint or give tenure to,” Mr. Ibargüen said in a statement. “It is, however, clear to us that Hannah-Jones is eminently qualified for the appointment and we would urge the trustees of the University of North Carolina to reconsider their decision within the time frame of our agreement.”

Ms. Hannah-Jones’s editors voiced their support on Wednesday. “Nikole is a remarkable investigative journalist whose work has helped change the national conversation about race,” said Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times.

Jake Silverstein, editor of The Times Magazine, strongly defended her and her work.

“Nikole’s journalism, whether she’s writing about school segregation or American history, has always been bold, unflinching and dedicated to telling uncomfortable truths that some people just don’t want to hear,” Mr. Silverstein said. “It doesn’t always make her popular, but it’s part of why hers is a necessary voice.”

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SEOUL — A judge in South Korea ruled on Wednesday that Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by Japan during World War II cannot seek compensation from the Japanese government in a South Korean court, a decision that angered survivors and contradicted an earlier ruling in January.

In the earlier verdict, the presiding judge ordered the Japanese government to pay 100 million won ($89,400) each to 12 former Korean sex slaves, known as “comfort women.”

The two different decisions by two different judges in the Seoul Central District Court complicated the survivors’ decades-long effort to hold the Japanese government legally accountable for wartime sexual slavery. The two rulings also showed that the South Korean judiciary was divided over Japan’s claim that international law shielded it from lawsuits in foreign courts.

In January, the South Korean judge ruled that the Japanese government should be subject to Korean jurisdiction because the experience of Korean sex slaves involved “anti-humanity acts systematically planned and perpetrated by the Japanese Empire.” For such acts, Japan cannot claim exemption from a lawsuit in South Korea based on state sovereignty, he said.

2015 agreement, which South Korea and Japan called “final and irreversible,” permanently settled the long-running dispute over comfort women. Previously, in a 1993 statement, Japan issued a formal apology for the practice.

On Wednesday, a different South Korean judge, Min Seong-cheol, sided with Japan and threw out the lawsuit filed by a separate group of former sex slaves. If courts start making exceptions to the principle of national sovereignty, “diplomatic clashes become inevitable,” the judge said in his ruling. Mr. Min also cited the 2015 agreement, under which Japan acknowledged responsibility for its actions, apologized anew to the women and set up an $8.3 million fund to help provide old-age care for survivors.

Some of the surviving women have accepted payments from the 2015 fund. Others rejected the agreement, saying that it failed to specify Japan’s “legal” responsibility or to provide official reparations. The lawsuit thrown out on Wednesday was filed in 2016 by 20 plaintiffs, including 11 former sex slaves. Only four of the 11 are still alive, and all of them are in their 80s or 90s.

Neither the ruling in January nor the one on Wednesday is the final say on the matter. The plaintiffs in the second lawsuit said they would seek the opinion of higher courts by appealing Wednesday’s decision.