Construction Maison

KNOXVILLE - Nearly two weeks after the death of a counter protester  at a  white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., activists in Tennessee are gearing up to protest and counterprotest the possible removal of a Fort Sanders monument . Rallies that are being billed by some as right wing or white supremacist are being planned for Knoxville, as well as in other locations like San Francisco and Berkeley, California. Confederate Monument Protest The City of Knoxville's communications and government relations director said the event is locally organized and that there are no indications yet that white supremacist groups from outside Knoxville will attend Saturday's rally. However, the Facebook event listing shows members of the newly reformed local white nationalist group Confederate 28 along with other members of local affiliate groups plan to protest Saturday . The majority of protesters unaffiliated with these groups have said they plan on protesting the removal on ...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — The man accused of plowing a car into a crowd protesting a white supremacist rally in Virginia had been photographed hours earlier carrying the emblem of one of the hate groups that participated in the event. Vanguard America on Sunday denied any association with the suspect, even as a separate hate group involved in Saturday’s rally pledged on social media to organize future events that would be “bigger than Charlottesville.” The mayor of Charlottesville and political leaders of all political stripes vowed to combat the hate groups and urged President Donald Trump to forcefully denounce the organizations that had promoted the protest against the removal of a Confederate statue. Some of those groups specifically cited Trump ’s election after a campaign of racially charged rhetoric as validation of their beliefs. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced late Saturday that federal authorities would pursue a civil rights investigation into the circums...

Paul Bass | New Haven Independent Democrat Marcus Paca, left, and incumbent Mayor Toni Harp . Marcus Paca promised that if he becomes mayor, he will fight gentrification, while Mayor Toni Harp argued that the burst of market-rate housing in town doesn’t constitute gentrification. Harp promised to continue New Haven’s “sanctuary city” policies even if President Trump withholds federal grants , while Paca promised to take a closer look at the issue first to avoid losing needed dollars . Those differences between the two Democratic mayoral candidates emerged Sunday afternoon at their first debate, held before a full house in the sanctuary of Varick Memorial AME Zion Church on Dixwell Avenue. The event was billed as a “forum,” not a “debate.” But a debate it turned out to be, from the moment the two Democrats began fielding questions from a panel of three local ministers and passionately responded to each other’s positions in a fast-paced, issues-focused back and forth. Two- term incu...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — A car with a Lucas County license plate plowed into a crowd of people peacefully protesting a white nationalist rally Saturday in a Virginia college town , killing one person, hurting at least two dozen more and ratcheting up tension in an increasingly violent confrontation . Multiple media outlets are reporting the car is registered to 20-year-old James Alex Fields of Maumee, based on vehicle registration records . Albemarle- Charlottesville Regional Jail Superintendent Martin Kumer told The Post that a man with the same name and age was booked Saturday on suspicion of second-degree murder, malicious wounding, failure to stop for an accident involving a death, and hit and run. Mr. Fields is being held without bail, and is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Charlottesville General District Court , Mr. Kumer told the Washington Post. ...

Florida is the nation's repository for scumbags, a weird little drain trap that snares the frauds and lunatics who rattle through the nation's plumbing before the United States jettisons them out to sea. So it makes sense the state would be filled with its fair share of neo-Nazis. What would Florida be without its own special breed of meth-using assholes hellbent on ethnic cleansing? In the wake of the terror attack in Charlottesville, where a neo-Nazi killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer when he rammed a car into a group of anti-racism counterprotesters, many politicians claimed the protesters didn't "represent" America or its values. But at its core, this country was founded by racist idiots reliant on a horrid system of subjugation in order to make a living. Those ideas never died — and there are plenty of recent Florida cases that show why it's important to keep fighting these cretins: For the past year, Brandon Russell has saluted the flag and worn the u...

This month, a man was arrested in Oklahoma City for trying to detonate 1,000 pounds of explosives in a cargo van parked downtown . The attack, he hoped, would cripple the government and start a revolution. Last October, three men were arrested in Kansas for plotting to bomb an apartment complex and a mosque using four cars laden with explosives. In these febrile days, where terrorists have sought to wreak fear and chaos from Orlando to Paris, and now Barcelona, you’d expect wall-to-wall coverage on cable news about these foiled plots. Terrorism experts would be wheeled out to opine for hours on all angles, from the explosives used to the profile of the would-be attackers to how and why they were radicalized. Instead, the two incidents got barely any coverage — some brief news spots here and there and a few mentions online. Ask any Arab-American or Muslim in America why those incidents weren’t covered ad nauseam and they’ ll reply deadpan : because the would-be attackers were white. So...

The same day it voted to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from a park — a move that white supremacists descended on the city to protest — the City Council did something that got much less publicity. It unanimously approved a $ 4 million spending plan to address racial disparities . Over the next five years, about $2.5 million is to be used to redevelop public housing ; $250,000 will go to expanding a park in a black neighborhood; and $20,000 a year will pay for G.E.D. classes for public housing residents . Photo K. Ian Grandison, a University of Virginia professor, with a map of what the rapidly gentrifying city looked like in the 1920s. Credit Matt Eich for The New York Times Activists call it reparations for the destruction of Vinegar Hill and other black neighborhoods here. “I’m hoping that other elected officials and policy makers from across the country can see it’s not enough to just move a damn statue,” said Wes Bellamy, the vice mayor, who proposed the plan. “I think symbol...

There’s been a lot happening this month.  I don’t have any great plans of action as to the way forward, but I have some knowledge of the background, in terms of how we got here, that seem worth sharing.  Basically I just need to process, and thought I’d do that out loud.  So here are a few reflections on the events of August, 2017, that may be intimately related to one another. Note:  any links that appear below will take you to songs on the subject, mostly written in the past few weeks… *     *     * The Spanish Civil War has been discussed in the media more in the past few weeks than I can remember in my lifetime.  The media has said more nice things about anarchists in the past few weeks than ever in my lifetime as well, and I’m pretty sure they have covered protests more lately than at any time since 1970 or so. At the beginning of the month I wrote a song, “Rojava,” after getting encrypted messages from the front lines of the war against Islamic State in Syria, sent by an anarchi...