by Kimberlee Kruesi —

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Amid nationwide unrest and a global pandemic that wrecked the state budget, Tennessee lawmakers advanced one of the strictest abortion bans in the country as most Tennesseans were asleep Friday and largely unaware the GOP-dominant General Assembly had taken up the controversial proposal.

The bill’s passage shocked Democratic lawmakers and reproductive rights advocates who had been assured for weeks that the anti-abortion measure would not be considered in the Senate.

Just hours after lawmakers adjourned Friday, an emergency lawsuit had already been filed seeking to block the implementation of the measure.

Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Reproductive Rights — the plaintiffs in the case — declared that Tennessee was the first state to pass an abortion ban since the coronavirus outbreak hit the United States.

Gov. Bill Lee is expected to sign the bill “in the coming days,” according to his office.

Republicans were able to squeeze the anti-abortion measure through as last-minute negotiations stalled between the House and Senate on Thursday. Senate leaders had initially promised earlier this month only to consider coronavirus- or budget-related proposals, but eventually conceded to consider a handful of others in order to finalize a new spending plan for fiscal year 2020-21.

“People are going to wake up tomorrow and we will have passed a bill that we said we weren’t going to take up,” Democratic Sen. Jeff Yarbro of Nashville had argued in opposition early Friday.

Under the bill, abortions would be banned once a fetal heartbeat is detected — about six weeks into pregnancy, before many women know they’re pregnant. Similar legislation has been enacted in other states, such as Mississippi and Georgia, but has been blocked by legal challenges.

Those court cases are expected to take years to snake their way through the legal system.

Supporters of the bills want to bring these types of lawsuits to an increasingly conservative U.S. Supreme Court in hopes of ending the constitutional right to abortion protected under the 1973 Roe v. Wade landmark ruling.

Also tucked in Tennessee’s 38-page bill is a requirement that women seeking an abortion undergo an ultrasound and have the doctor describe and display the image to her.

Additionally, doctors must inform women that drug-induced abortions may be halted halfway. Medical groups say the claim isn’t backed up by science and there is little information about the reversal procedure’s safety.

Democratic Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville said that women’s reproductive rights were being used “like a bargaining chip” to get the budget passed.

Lee, a Republican, had encouraged the Senate to take up his proposal while talking to reporters earlier Thursday.

“I believe that life is precious. Every human being is created in the image of God and protecting those lives is important to me. This legislation is an effort to do that,” he said.

Meanwhile, bleary-eyed after spending hours hashing out spending plan details, lawmakers eventually passed a $39.4 billion budget for fiscal year 2020-21.

A key win for the Senate was the elimination of the state’s Hall income tax on stocks and bonds.

The Tennessee Legislature began phasing out the state’s Hall tax in 2016, with its total elimination beginning Jan. 1, 2021. The current Hall tax rate is 1% on dividends from stock.

State lawmakers made sure to funnel $210 million to the state’s cities and counties to help with COVID-19 related budget deficits. There are no restrictions on how the money can be spent.

Lawmakers entered their election-year legislative session in January, only to leave town in March for months because of the coronavirus pandemic. They returned to work about three weeks ago.

After George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police sparked nationwide protests and unrest, Tennessee Republicans stirred more outrage locally by spiking a resolution this week for Ashanti Nikole Posey, a Black teen shot and killed this year. Police officers had said the 17-year-old was killed after she and a friend made a “small marijuana sale,” though the sale has never been proven.

Republican House Majority Leader William Lamberth helped block the joint resolution after he told the chamber he could not support the legislation due to the circumstances surrounding Posey’s death.

However, by Thursday night, Senate members passed their own version honoring Posey that did not require approval from the House.

During the final moments of session, the two chambers were unable to pass legislation that would have provided broad protections for businesses, schools and nursing homes against COVID-19-related lawsuits.

Lee’s office has said the governor is considering calling the General Assembly back to the Capitol for a special session to address legislation that failed to pass. Lawmakers were under the presumption they wouldn’t meet again until January.

I believe words matter…sometimes.

But sometimes, words are stupid.

For instance, remember when Republicans were upset because President Barack Obama wouldn’t say the words “radical Islamic terrorism” because Obama was kinda busy hunting down Osama Bin Laden and killing him?

That was stupid.

Then again, I am a writer and words are the foundation of my profession. If I were a doctor, I’d believe that how people treat their bodies was of the ultimate importance. If I were a police officer, I’d believe that brutality, the disproportionate policing of black people and immunity from prosecution were all that mattered.

Tim Scott (R-S.C.) is a politician, which means he uses words. He is a black man, so he knows about police brutality and discriminatory police practices. If he were truly doing his job, he would care less about words or politics and focus on ending the state-sanctioned violence that is disproportionately dispensed upon black bodies.

But, for some reason Scott won’t acknowledge that there is systemic racism in the way officers police black people in America. Is he afraid to say it? Does he not believe it exists? I can’t figure it out.

So I asked him.

“I’m not a philosopher so I don’t sit back and think through these definitions as much as others do,” Scott told The Root. “There’s racism in America and I do not think we are a racist country. I think there are racial outcomes in policing, even though I don’t think police by and large are racist. I think that we have pockets of racism within the police departments, but I think most people who become cops do so for the right reasons.”

Wait…If there are “pockets of racism within police departments,” wouldn’t that make police racist? And while the existence of “racism in America” might be the best way to define a racist country, Scott doubled down on his position by insisting that the words “systemic racism” aren’t as important as eliminating the phenomenon that can best be described as…Well…systemic racism, explaining:

I think the definition is important, but more important is that I’m in a position to do something about it. So, because I can see the patterns that are racial outcomes, from my perspective, I’m in a position of bringing those patterns to light and then punishing those departments who seem to have that practice in that pattern. So for me, you know, I’ve, I’ve struggled to come up with a concise definition of what, what systemic racism looks like in any of these sectors. But for me, I don’t struggle with it long because I have the ability to make a difference so that the racial outcomes make it harder to answer that question.

Okay. Now I understand. Tim Scott, who is a politician not a definition-maker-upper or a philosopher, seemed to be using “racial outcomes” as a placeholder for “systemic racism.” So I decided to try it. Using his unique congressional thesaurus, I replaced “racism” with his handpicked senatorial synonym and asked him if he sees disproportionate outcomes in policing in law enforcement for people of color, specifically black people.

“There’s no doubt that my answer is yes,” Scott said. “And you are two and a half times more likely to be killed by law enforcement if you are black than if you’re white. That to me only reinforces the fact that there is a pattern that exists. There’s a lot of statistics that fly in the face of what I think is obvious to the naked eye. People tell me I’m wrong, but I’ve talked to a lot of people around the country. African-American professionals who have the same experience that I’ve described. So it’s hard for us to be convinced otherwise, even though people will tell me that I’m dead wrong on this issue.”

There’s almost no way he doesn’t know he just gave a precise summary of how systemic racism works. He almost sounds like he intentionally refuses to acknowledge the words. But should the words matter if Tim Scott does something about it?

And can he do anything about it?

Tim Scott vs. The World

I wish Tim Scott knew how many black people police kill every year.

I wish anyone knew.

In 2014, for the first time in history, the Obama administration tasked the FBI with counting how many arrest-related deaths happened that year. When the Bureau of Justice Statistics issued its report, it found that the FBI had been under-reporting the number by an average of 545 deaths per year.

That number was wrong.

The Washington Post’s “Fatal Force” database is the most frequently cited source for police killings because they are one of the few media sources with the resources and dedication to continue the ongoing research. Killed By Police also keeps a database. The Guardian tried it for two years. Bowling Green’s Phillip Stinson had an expansive police crime database that eventually ended. After comparing all of the publicly available data, we determined … well … that no one knows how many people police kill each year.

The reason the number remains a mystery is that law enforcement agencies, politicians, lobbyists and the good ol’ NRA have gone to extraordinary measures to prevent government agencies from counting how many people die at the hands of law enforcement agencies. Even when organizations attempt to count the number of people who die in police encounters, the data is sometimes flawed and often incomplete.

For instance, the Washington Post’s database only lists people who were shot and killed by officers, so George Floyd isn’t counted, because he was choked to death. The Post only counts people who were killed by on-duty officers, so Botham Jean isn’t listed. Eric Garner isn’t listed because he wasn’t shot. For the past three years, The Root has done a complete accounting too, but we are probably wrong, too.

For years, The Root has reported on Scott’s efforts to pass an important piece of police reform. Named after one of his constituents who was famously shot by police officer Michael Slager, the Walter Scott Notification Act required every law enforcement agency in America to report all police shootings and deaths to the federal government. According to the bill, any state which refused to report would face a percent reduction in federal law enforcement grants and funds. Information included by each state would include:

• The victim’s name, race, age, and sex
• The officer’s name, race, age, and sex
• Whether the victim was armed or not
• A description of the weapon used by law enforcement
• A detailed description of the event
• The finding from law enforcement as to whether the shooting was justified or not

Scott tried to pass the proposal as a standalone bill in 2015, to no avail. When he attempted to attach it to funding legislation, it failed. In 2018, as the First Step Act worked its way through the Senate, Scott attempted to slide his much-needed idea in as an amendment to the groundbreaking criminal reform bill. But police unions whispered in the ears of his fellow legislators and once again, the Walter Scott Notification Act fell by the wayside.

It wasn’t just Republicans’ fault. There were enough votes for it to pass through the Senate if Democrats had just joined the bill’s Republican sponsors.

So, in 2019, Scott stopped trying.

Then Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds.

Following the protests over the death of George Floyd, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) selected Scott to lead their party’s police reform efforts. If there was anyone who understood the issue, they figured Scott would.

On Wednesday, Scott announced the Just and Unifying Solutions To Invigorate Communities Everywhere Act of 2020 or the ‘‘JUSTICE Act’’ (Republicans love acronyms). The act has 11 important provisions:

1.  Use of Force reporting: Basically it extends Scott’s Walter Scott Notification Act, to include any use of force, as well as incentivizing bans on chokeholds, no-knock warrants and penalizing officers who make false police reports.
2. Funds body-worn cameras: So we can see what officers did
3. Law Enforcement records retention: Incentivizes sharing of disciplinary records between departments when they hire officers
4. Justice for lynching: Makes lynching a federal crime.
5. Study black boys and men: Commissions a report on “conditions affecting black men and boys, including education, health care, financial status, and the criminal justice system as a whole.”
6. Police training: Funds de-escalation, mental health awareness and duty-to intervene policies.
7. National Criminal Justice Commission Act: Establishes a commission to review the entire criminal justice system and provide best practices recommendations.
8. Law Enforcement Agency Hiring and Education: Funds to recruit and train more non-white officers
9. Best Practices and Studies: Determines a national standard of best practices for policing
10. No sex: Makes it unlawful for a federal law enforcement officer to engage in a sexual act while arresting or detaining people (yes, this is a thing).
11. Emergency Funding: Offers to fund for police agencies.

And how does Scott plan to do this?

Well, he wouldn’t dare use those dirty Democratic ideas like “defund the police.”

Instead, he wants to use the same mechanism that he introduced in the Walter Scott Notification Act. The bill would enforce its provisions by reducing federal grant money that is already available to state and local law enforcement agencies. Scott wants to prevent departments who don’t comply with the law from continuing to receive these funds.

If only there was a word to describe what Scott’s Republican bill would do to police. I wonder what would happen if I Googled it.

But the Democrats unveiled their plan first.

On June 8, Democratic members of Congress, draped in their finest kente cloths, unveiled The Justice in Policing Act of 2020. The bill bans chokeholds, sets use of force reporting and…Well, you can just read the above synopsis of the JUSTICE Act because — aside from the ending qualified immunity— the Republican plan is almost a copy and pasted version of the Democratic plan, although the Democrats use-of-force reporting mirrors the Walter Scott Notification Act.

“Neither plan is great,” explains The Nation’s resident constitutional authority. Elie Mystal.

Mystal is a Harvard law graduate who spends most of his time excoriating Democrats for their timidity and Republicans for their collective racism. “The Democrats already had a plan, he told The Root. “If they had just done what Cory Booker and Julián Castro wanted to do to end qualified immunity and force police officers to stop being racist, we wouldn’t be here today.”

But no one did.

The most notable difference between the Democratic plan and the Republican plan is that Scott doesn’t outright ban the chokeholds that killed George Floyd and the no-knock warrants that resulted in Breonna Taylor’s death. To be fair, Scott has a great reason for not including these reforms:

Words.

Why We Can’t Ban Police Brutality

Yes, sometimes words are stupid.

However, the words in the Constitution are important, which is why we created an entire court to parse and dissect every phrase and comma in America’s founding document. For instance, nearly every ideological difference between the two major American parties in the U.S. can be boiled down to the interpretation of the 10th Amendment, which states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Basically, the idea that the federal government’s power is limited to the things spelled out in the Constitution is the basis for almost every inter-party political debate. The debates over slavery (Confederate traitors called it “heritage”), segregation (Mississippians calls it “states rights”) women’s bodies (religious zealots call it “pro-life”) and even marijuana legalization (Snoop Dog calls it “sticky icky”) are, essentially, debates over whether the federal government can pass laws that aren’t spelled out in the Constitution.

The federal government has very little input over the laws that govern most of our lives, which is why second-degree murder in one state is manslaughter in other states. And, as it relates to police brutality, Congress has very little control over the laws that govern local and state police. At most, they can offer grants and funds for training and deny funding and grants to agencies that don’t follow the rules.

So how can the Democrats ban chokeholds and Republican’s don’t bother?

Because they can’t.

Most media personalities who are reporting on the bills haven’t pored over the text of the proposals. If they had, they’d notice that the Democratic bill de-incentivizes the practice for local and state authorities by using the same defunding mechanism as Scott. And while news outlets have described Scott’s plan as “narrower,” his proposal’s penalties eventually reach 20 percent while the Democrats withhold 10 percent. The Democrats’ bill only outlaws chokeholds for federal officers.

But who’s worried about Secret Service agents and Treasury officers choking (m…..f……s)? Federal marshals and ICE officials often use no-knock warrants but the vast majority of police brutality come from the state and local levels because the extensive training required of most federal law enforcement agents already includes de-escalation techniques, use-of-force reporting and body cameras.

The JUSTICE Act also provides a better mechanism for holding individual local and state agencies accountable, by micro-targeting localities that don’t implement police reform with increasingly harsher penalties, as Scott’s Deputy Chief of Staff Allyssa Leigh Richardson explained before warning me that it was a “complicated mechanism that we had to create to hold every agency accountable.”

Without the punishment of the law, a higher financial penalty for agencies that do not comply with reform regulations is the only tool available to Congress for enforcing reform. And, because police chiefs and sheriffs are terrified of losing funds, they are more likely to get rid of officers who regularly break the rules if the individual departments are threatened with the loss of funding.

As someone who is not a huge fan of the Republican Party or its tactics, it might pain some to hear this as much as it pains me to say it, but the truth is, the GOP bill is more likely to stop cops from killing black people.

But, as Mystal points out, it’s hard to pat Tim Scott on the back for confronting an issue that his party has exacerbated. Nor should the Democratic party be immune for passing the harsh “law and order” statutes that resulted in racialized policing.

“For years, the difference between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of policing was negligible,” Mystal told The Root. “ It wasn’t until Eric Garner that white people said: ‘Oh, wait…what?’ And none of what either side is offering is enough. Neither plan goes far enough to end systemic racism in police departments.”

Or as Tim Scott calls it, “outcomes.”

But here is the secret that Tim Scott knows:

There is a way for the federal government to reform the police without defunding it. The words in the Constitution actually provides a mechanism that could force police reform and impact systemic racism.

If someone could prove that the practices of an individual police department, or law enforcement agencies collectively, disproportionately violate black people’s civil rights, then they could use the provisions of the Civil Rights Act to force police reform. But they would have to have some kind of irrefutable proof.

For instance, if someone collected the use-of-force data from every law enforcement agency in America and the self-reported statistics showed that black people were two-and-a-half times more likely to be shot, killed or suffer from police brutality, that would almost definitely do it.

And that may be the true reason that a certain senator has been on a seemingly unwinnable personal crusade. But of course, he’d never say those words.

Because, like most black people, Tim Scott knows what matters most:

Cousins.

“I just want to find a way to create a better outcome for my nephew and my cousins, who are 3 and 4 years old, don’t have to worry about systemic, systematic or whatever you guys call the crap that you and I have to worry about,” Scott explained, adding

“I’m far more interested in improving the outcomes of people that look like me because I was black before I got to the Senate and I’m going to be black after I leave the Senate.”

Word.

(Michael Harriot: World-renowned wypipologist. Getter and doer of “it.” Never reneged, never will. Last real negus alive. Posts Twitter)

by Ayan Ajanaku —

Being extra-measured with what we say in the presence of White people is about the blackest tool in the Black-survival tool belt. Even with White people we might regard as friends and when it relates to the most inconsequential subjects, we still tend to act like we’re “having company over”. Some things are just easier left unsaid.

Imagine explaining to a new White friend in the seventh grade what a relaxer is and that your mom plans to let you have one after you get your first period. My mom had recently shared that news and for some inexplicable reason my pre-teen brain decided to venture down that relaxer rabbit hole with my friend. My friend naturally looked at me like she had just met Alf. And it was then and there that I learned I gots to be more careful.

The things we usually decide to talk about – or not talk about it – when White people are present are usually rooted in how we assess them on either our sounds-ghetto or sounds-mean meter. We learn how to do this when we’re young and from there the practice of carefully curating the information we share and don’t share begins.

The other day I was on some passive aggressive (trip) and decided to ask my (White) roommate a question I already knew the answer to, “Have you ever heard of Juneteenth?”

My roommate (looking at me like she’s trying to decipher what language I’m using): “June what?”

“No,” I said politely, shooting her the best version of my that’s OK-look. “Well, it’s a celebration of the abolition of slavery. I was just curious if you knew what it was because Trump….rally in Tulsa (OK)…race massacre…”

I went down that road as opposed to: “Have you ever considered why the f… you don’t know what Juneteenth is and, to make matters worse, have actually celebrated St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo more than you’ve celebrated the abolition of slavery in the country you actually live in?”

But, there’s an extra-special, too-close-to-call fine line between being cruel with the truth and – as Kat Williams calls it – being on “the cusp of coonery.” I was trying to find and maintain my balance on that line with her that day.

One thing that’s been promising over the past several years though is that we’ve given way to more unfiltered expression that is graciously more akin to mockery than outright cruelty. That may be due to just plain old fatigue about where to draw that fine-ass line. Hitting the apex recently with what has been a virtual motherload of mockery of White people, in an effort mostly to mitigate the pain of recent events.

Giving them that honest mirror on what they need to do IS progress or at minimum amusing, but are we ready to talk freely yet about the work we also need to do? Are we examining the reasons we hide “the work” we’re doing? More importantly, are we even doing work?

I was 12 when my family moved to Tulsa. If the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was mentioned in our school books it was a blip on the radar, a half-page relative historical non-issue. Only in the last year did it become a curriculum requirement for Oklahoma schools.

My mother and I simultaneously learned about the massacre in Jack & Jill of America, Inc. (her attempt at “blackanizing” us in an all-white environment) when I was a teen and she a 45-year-old adult who had lived nearly her whole life in Oklahoma. Her parents were children during the Tulsa massacre, but she says they never spoke to her about it.

In my entire childhood and adult life, I had never imagined why.

None of my mother’s brothers and sisters (eight of them) from a small black town called Boley, OK, 60 miles from Tulsa, ever moved to Tulsa. My family was only in Tulsa because my dad’s job transferred him/us there from Lake Charles, LA. I never ventured to learn about the history of blacks in Tulsa until a few years ago, when I put two and two together and wondered why my extensive maternal family so rooted in Oklahoma and so close to its second-largest city had NO members there.

Let me be clear, while I was comfortable throwing Juneteenth in my roommate’s face, there are no shortage of African Americans who don’t celebrate Juneteenth. And hell no, it’s no less right that they don’t!

White people stood just as much to gain from becoming human and abolishing slavery as we did. Although to the untrained ignorant eye, which is, unfortunately, the average eye, it could look like “we freed ya’ll, now you take it from here.”

The bearers of such eyes – the oblivious “Karens” of the world that we mock to keep from crying – can keep you up at night, if you let them.

A Black friend once told me that she doesn’t talk to her White friends about “the work” she does on herself to shake loose of the black-white, less than-better than dynamic. She fears that doing so might free up “the Karens” with their diatribe about pulling herself up by those good old boy bootstraps.

I thought to myself: “You think a person that REALLY wants to put in work to help solve a social problem is going to stop working because they see you working too?”

A person that WANTED to be involved never stopped being involved in anything because they saw other people being involved. If anything, they would be stimulated to pick up their pace.

Nevertheless, it’s true that there are White people and Black people that are simply comfortable with the “40 acres and a mule” they’ve carved out for themselves. They don’t see any room for personal growth.

Let’s just be OK with them for now. They aren’t the target market here. Let ’em go.

Who is the target market though? Is it you?

Learning how to be happy with folks not being ready is the hardest part of the movement process which IS a personal growth process. You can’t make anyone be ready. You can ask the questions. You can’t make them want to TRULY know the answers. You move on and, perhaps, keep posing the questions, periodically.

A must-do step though is to stimulate happiness within first. Anger is a powerful tool for stimulating action and growth, but anger isn’t a sustaining energy. Ain’t nobody trying to stay mad. Life is too short for that.

We are able to sustain energy when we know how to fuel ourselves by maintaining internal balance with processes like meditation for example. From there it’s easy to gather competence and clarity about the specific work needed. Like perhaps picking up a history book and/or talking to older family members. Or just being more reflective about our compulsions and language.  At that level of freedom, we no longer have to carry our story along like top-secret baggage.

It’s only now that I’m able to understand that what my adolescent brain thought was a relaxer rabbit hole was really something of an underground railroad to freedom. Because at the heart of it, freedom is really just being able to tell your story freely.

(Former Memphian and blogger Ayan Ajanaku lives in Seville, Spain, where she teaches English online.)

Dr. Charles McKinney is an associate professor of history, teaching selected topics in Africana at Rhodes College. He enjoys the renown of a widely-sought speaker and a published author.

But in 2014, the scholar was a grieved father.

An 18-year-old Michael Brown had been killed by a police officer in Ferguson, MO, while reportedly surrendering with his hands raised in the air. Demonstrations and violent acts of protest reverberated across the nation.

McKinney’s heart was heavy. So he did what any other good, African-American father would do. He took his sons down to the Mapco store at the corner of  Jackson Ave. and Evergreen St., where some protesters had gathered in their neighborhood. It was important for his sons to see him “standing as a black man against this killing.

“I just remember explaining to my boys and the other young people who were listening that no police officer has the right or the authority to be judge, jury and executioner,” McKinney said.”

Only days ago, McKinney’s 19-year-old son, Ayodele McKinney, felt “the power of marching on the street” to protest the May 25 killing of 46-year-old George Floyd at the hands of a Minnesota police offer, who now faces a string of charges and has been fired from the force.

“I told my father I wanted to experience a wider, more organized, protest,” said Ayodele. “And I wanted to support everyone in the march screaming ‘Black Lives Matter.’ It was necessary for me to go. I felt compelled to go.”

McKinney poured into his children from the onset a sense of pride about their race and their legacy.

Like every conscientious father of African-American sons, McKinney had “the talk” – If you’re ever stopped by police, do everything you are told to do, and be polite; answer “yes, sir” and “no, sir.”

“I would have been derelict in my duty as a father if I had not given the talk,” McKinney said. “But it is still tiring and frustrating, draining and enraging.”

He laments that elder son Ayodele can chart his life by police murders of Black people over the last seven or eight years.”

“My older son knows what was going on in his life by the names of people who have died in police custody,” said McKinney. “He can say, ‘When Trayvon Martin died, I was 12 years old. When Walter Scott died, I felt this way. When Sandra Bland died…When Michael Brown died…’ He can tell his age by each death like you can tell the age of a tree by its rings.”

When Ayodele returned from the march, he told his father that anger must be transformed into action. The teen attends Xavier University in New Orleans.

Although history keeps repeating itself, McKinney said he is a realist and not a pessimist. Four hundred years of racism and oppression are not going to disappear overnight.

“I told all three of my children – I have a 30-year-old daughter – as you grow older, you will enter debates and you will have conversations about the struggle for freedom,” McKinney said.

“There will be many battlefronts upon which to fight. I hope you will engage, like Dr. King said, in the ‘long and bitter, but beautiful struggle.’”

Labor unions, religious organizations, faith and civic rights leaders, The Women’s March and numerous celebrities will gather virtually Saturday (June 20) for “The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.”

The campaign is a “movement of tens of thousands of people across the country who are organizing to end the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, militarism and the war economy, ecological devastation, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism,” according to the organization’s website.

The event will be live streamed from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (CST) Saturday (June 20) and Sunday (June 21). MSNBC will live stream. RadioOne will air on all of its stations and other local and national media have partnered as well.

The event mirrors the goals of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s planned Poor People’s Campaign, which was derailed when he was assassinated in Memphis while helping the city’s striking sanitation workers.

Plans for this weekend’s event hit a major stumbling block when the COVID-19 pandemic caused major events to be canceled or postponed.

“COVID-19 is highly contagious, and all that planning we did for (for the scheduled) June 30 date was wasted, I thought,” said Dr. Alvin O’Neal Jackson, executive director of the organization. “But I began to consider the possibilities.”

Jackson said Saturday’s event potentially could host millions of participants across the globe.

“This is our time. This is the moment,” Jackson said.

“There are 140 million people living in poverty in the United States. That’s nearly half of this country’s population. Our virtual, mass March on Washington is a call to action that must be answered.”

The online confab will feature artists, politicians and celebrities, but they only will be introducing ordinary people who will talk about their struggles through poverty, a pandemic and protests for racial justice.

Jackson said hundreds of mobilizing partners will participate, including14 national labor unions, 16 national religious organizations, civil rights organizations, faith leaders, The Women’s March, and 350.org., an “international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.”

Some of the participating celebrity allies are Jane Fonda, Wanda Sykes, Erika Alexander, David Oyelowo, Debra Messing, Joan Baez, Erika Alexander and former Vice President Al Gore.

They will speak as advocates of the campaign.

However, the real “stars” of the event are those who will give personal testimonies, Jackson said.

Dr. Bernice King, youngest daughter of the civil rights icon, recorded a special message for the event.

“We are picking up the mantle again after 57 years,” Jackson said. “When Dr. William Barber called and asked me to come and help a year and a half ago, I knew it was the call of God.

“The legacy of Dr. King lives on in this peaceful, broad-based social justice movement. This is a history-making, transformative moment in time.”