Lizzo has partnered with Live Nation, who are presenting her upcoming ‘Special’ tour, to donate $1million (£815,000) in funds to organisations offering safe access to abortions.
In early May, leaked documents showed that the US Supreme Court voted privately to overturn Roe v. Wade, a 1973 case that made abortion legal on a federal level. That decision was officially ruled into place yesterday, meaning US states will be able to set their own laws regarding the legality of abortions. As Politico reports, 23 states are expected to make abortion illegal – at the time of writing, five already have, and a further 11 are in the process of finalising anti-abortion laws.
Lizzo is the latest in a growing list of artists speaking out against the ruling. In a series of new posts made on social media, the singer declared she would be pledging $500,000 (£407,500) of proceeds earned from her upcoming North American tour – which is slated to kick off in September – to Planned Parenthood and the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF). Live Nation has agreed to match her donation, making the total pledge $1million.
Lizzo had initially stated that her full donation would be made to Planned Parenthood, however after receiving feedback from fans, she updated her pledge to include other abortion rights and service organisations (namely the NNAF).
In addition, Lizzo encouraged fans to make donations of their own, and sign Planned Parenthood’s ‘Bans Off My Body petition’, through her Propellor initiative Lizzo Loves You.
Lizzo’s North American ‘Special’ tour will kick off in late September and roll into mid-November. There are 25 dates on the itinerary, all of which taking place in arenas and stadiums, with Latto serving as the main support act. The tour will support Lizzo’s fourth studio album, ‘Special’, which is set to drop on July 15. See all of the details for the tour here.
Over the last day, dozens of artists have spoken out against the official overturning of Roe v. Wade. Several have also used their sets at Glastonbury Festival to share their disdain for the outcome: IDLES’ Joe Talbot, for example, dedicated ‘Mother’ to “every mother and every woman and her right to choose whether she is a mother or not”.
During Billie Eilish‘s set, she pre-empted an acoustic rendition of ‘Your Power’ by explaining that the song is “about the concept of power and how we always need to remember not to abuse it”. She continued: “Today is a really really dark day for women in the US. And I’m just going to say that because I can’t bear to think about it anymore in this moment.”
These people are protesting because they are tired, because they are worn out, because they are exhausted by violence against themselves and their communities. Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images
Protesters remain on the streets demanding equality and justice for Black Americans. What they’re feeling, I believe, is something I call “intolerance fatigue.”
This exhaustion is not the sort that lays people out on their beds and couches, unable to move. Rather, it’s a frustration and anger about systemic racism that drives people to act, to demand change and become part of creating the social change they want.
Similarly, the 2020 protests arose in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis. Taking a stand against injustice, people again – still – are tired of being discriminated against, profiled and murdered because of the color of their skin.
Marchers are tired of intolerance, worn out by racism and refusing to be silent in the face of unjust treatment and inequality.
Just as their elders were, today’s protesters and those they support are “sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
In pushing for religion to be given more prominence in U.S. foreign policy concerns, could Secretary of State Mike Pompeo be acting in bad faith?
That’s what many human rights groups believe. In a letter dated July 30, a coalition of faith-based and secular civil liberty groups and leaders accused Pompeo of acting out of “personal political and religious beliefs.” It coincided with the last day of public consultation on a draft report by the Pompeo-appointed Commission on Unalienable Rights that prioritizes religious freedom over other human rights.
As a scholar of human rights and the law, I understand these concerns. Valuing one human right over another undermines efforts to protect everyone’s rights, including the freedom of religion.
The 60-page draft report draws upon “biblical teachings” and “classical liberalism” to conclude that “foremost among the unalienable rights that government is established to secure, from the founders’ point of view, are property rights and religious liberty.”
It is a view grounded in a historical narrative of American exceptionalism. Indeed, launching the report, Pompeo declared: “America is special. America is good. America does good all around the world.”
‘Ad hoc rights’
Pompeo set up the Commission on Unalienable Rights with a mandate to provide him with advice on human rights “grounded in our nation’s founding principles” and “the principles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights” – an international agreement supported by the U.S. that sets out, but does not rank, universal human rights such as the rights to education, health and work and freedom of speech and assembly, and protections from torture and discrimination.
In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Pompeo stressed his goal was to distinguish between original “unalienable rights” and what he called “ad hoc rights” that have been added since the end of the Cold War.
The commission’s draft report seeks to do this by suggesting that some rights are “unalienable” in that they are inseparable from our humanity and equates these to human rights. Other rights are merely granted by governments.
The report implies that religious freedom and property rights are more important than other civil and political rights, like freedom of speech and assembly, or the right to vote. It also says economic, social and cultural rights should be treated differently in U.S. foreign policy.
Other rights – including those covering reproductive rights and LGBTQ protections – are dismissed by the commission as “divisive social and political controversies.” It further cautions against U.S. support for “new” rights.
Even before the report’s release, 400 U.S.-based human rights groups and experts noted in a joint letter that “it is a fundamental tenet of human rights that all rights are universal and equal.”
They also aired concern about the makeup of the commission – the majority of members are scholars of religious freedom with stances against abortion and the expansion of LGBTQ rights – among other issues.
Critics say that if the U.S. declares some rights are more important than others, the move will devalue all human rights – including religious freedom. Without freedom of speech and assembly, rights to health and education, and protection from discrimination and violence, freedom of religion doesn’t mean much. That is why human rights are considered indivisible, interrelated and interdependent.
It could also cast further doubt over the legitimacy and credibility of U.S. efforts to promote rights overseas. The concern is other countries may see the proposed approach as a green light to promote their own national sovereignty claims over their obligations to existing human rights law and standards – the latter which the commission’s report disparages as “drawn up by commissions and committees, bodies of independent experts, NGOs, special rapporteurs, etc., with scant democratic oversight.”
The establishment of Pompeo’s commission and its draft report differs from bipartisan efforts that had already placed an emphasis on religious freedom in U.S. foreign policy.
But the office has been more active during the Trump administration. Pompeo used the launch of its 2019 annual report – which singles out China as one of the worst offenders of religious freedom for its treatment of Uighurs – as an opportunity to heighten the administration’s rhetoric against China.
Where from here?
Having received public comments, the commission could, of course, substantially alter its draft report. But even before the end of the consultation period, it was reported that Pompeo promoted the draft as guidance for State Department staff to follow.
The list of challenges to human rights in the U.S. and around the world is long and complex: rising authoritarianism and nationalism, a global pandemic, widespread protests demanding racial justice, climate change, new technologies and economic inequities, among others. The U.S. is only an effective advocate for the protection of human rights overseas, if it can ensure all rights for its own people equally.
But a meaningful deliberation about how the U.S. should protect and promote human dignity for all both domestically and internationally may require a very different approach than that of the Commission on Unalienable Rights.
Most political analysts define “swing voters” as those who swing their support from one party to the other between election cycles – determining winners and losers in the process.
Meanwhile, by contrast, pundits often portray Black Americans as an undifferentiated mass – loyal Democrat-supporting foot soldiers who will execute their mission for The Team on Tuesday as long as some preacher provides the right marching orders on Sunday.
If these depictions have not already expired, they are certainly growing stale. Having studied electoral trends for decades, we can tell you that those undecided voters of the past are an endangered species – in the Midwest and elsewhere. These days, the only choice that most Americans make – indeed, the choice that typically “swings” the election outcome — is whether to vote at all.
That brings us to the characterization of Black Americans as Democratic loyalists.
Our new survey of 1,215 African Americans in battleground states – Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina and Georgia – reveals that while those over 60 remain among the most reliable of Democratic voters, and those between 40-59 are still pretty locked in as well, those under 30 (whom we oversampled to comprise half of our sample) are anything but.
Black church members are seen as key to a candidate’s election victory; here, Governor Bill Clinton and Senator Al Gore attend service at the Olivet Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio during the Clinton-Gore 1992 campaign. Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Not sold on Biden
Only 47% of those Black Americans under 30 years old that we surveyed plan to vote for the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden. That’s roughly the same percentage who have anything positive to say when asked what “one or two words come to mind” about the former vice president.
Cathy Cohen, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who studies Black youths’ political views, summed up this attitude in a recent podcast: “They’ve seen the election of Black mayors, they’ve seen the election of the first Black president, and they’ve also seen that their lives have not changed.”
But survey respondents of all stripes tend to wildly overestimate their intention to vote. Indeed, about half of our Black survey respondents under 30 say they don’t often vote because it “doesn’t make a difference,” providing a somewhat more realistic estimate of the percentage who will probably just stay home – and not search for a stamp to mail in their ballot, either.
And that number does not even take into account the turnout-depressing effects of voter suppression efforts taking place across the country, the pandemic or the heavy distrust of mail-in voting that young Black people tend to express. Only 64% of young people in our sample say they trust the state to report their vote accurately, and only 30% say they plan to take advantage of mail-in voting.
Biden is courting the Black vote – here, he’s at the Bethel AME Church in Wilmington, Delaware on June 1, 2020 – but fewer than half of young Black Americans surveyed in battleground states say they will vote for him. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
Not sold on the Democratic Party
Such cynicism on the part of young Black Americans is reflected in the lukewarm feelings they tend to have toward the Democratic Party more generally.
Only 47% of them say that the party is welcoming to Black Americans, and only 43% say they trust Democrats in Congress to do what’s best for the Black community. Perhaps most strikingly, unlike their older counterparts, only half of those under 30 view the Democrats as any better than the Republicans on these scores.
In both the survey responses and in the focus groups we conducted of young Black Americans in these same states, we heard repeated frustration toward what they view as a Democratic Party that expects their vote but doesn’t really do anything to deserve it other than claim to be “less racist” than the alternative.
As one of our focus group respondents put it, “I think at the end of the day, they all have the same agenda.”
In short, it appears that for Black America, the future is not necessarily “blue.” Electorally speaking, it is not necessarily anything at all. Moving forward, young Black Americans may be the real “swing voters” in the only way that term really makes much sense anymore.
The Islamic State’s media wing has released a video calling for supporters in the United States to commit acts of arson.
The 4-minute video, which was released over the weekend, was produced in both Arabic and English and features high-end video editing, according to a report by the Middle East Media Research Center’s Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor.
The narrator speaks about how ISIS supporters should fight “fire with fire” and includes an image of a military-style rifle while discussing how some would-be terrorists don’t have access to certain weapons. Instead, the narrator advocates for arson attacks and highlights the devastating effect that fires have had recently in places such as Australia, Greece, and the U.S.
“To become more convinced of this option, try looking at the fires in the lands of the crusaders every year. Fires in forests and fields, cities and villages completely destroyed, people displaced, armies of firefighters and civil defense personnel working continuously days to no avail,” the narrator says. He also instructs terrorists to be careful to dispose of incriminating evidence.
Although ISIS’s territorial caliphate has dissolved, the terrorist group still has affiliates around the globe. Islamic State West Africa Province, which operates in Nigeria, Chad, and neighboring countries, recently executed four aid workers from two international organizations.
ISIS has also committed atrocities in Afghanistan through its Khorasan Province branch. ISKP is thought to be behind a horrific attack on a maternity ward that resulted in the deaths of mothers and children. ISKP has been fighting both the Afghan government and the Taliban.
Last year, the U.S. scored a major victory when ISIS’s then-leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi was killed in October during a Delta Force operation. In June, the State Department announced that it was offering $10 million for information about the location or identity of ISIS leader Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahma al Mawla, up from its previous offer of $5 million.
