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UPDATED 6:40 a.m. ET, Aug. 2, 2022 —

The greatness of James Baldwin could never be understated and his relevance is arguably greater in 2022 than it ever has been as the country confronts issues he drew attention to decades ago. It was through that documentation in the form of his literary gifts to the world along with speeches and interviews that Baldwin’s brilliance was immortalized with the sage wisdom that gave way to a number of quotes attributed to him that have withstood the test of time.

This year the the late novelist, essayist and playwright, who stands out as one of America’s most-treasured wordsmiths would have turned 98-years-old. Baldwin’s notable bold ruminations on race, sexuality and other subjects were once considered too controversial for the time of his creative peak.

As a homosexual man, some of Baldwin’s work focused on not only the complexities of the role of Blacks in America but also that of gay men who faced atrocious criticism and prejudice during his climb into the literary ranks.

Baldwin and his mother, Emma, moved to Harlem, leaving behind his father who struggled with drug abuse. She would marry preacher David Baldwin and the family lived under harsh conditions. Baldwin’s stepfather was said to be abusive to both him and his siblings, and when he died in 1943 while James was a teen, Harlem rioted on the day of his funeral – an event that shaped much of Baldwin’s writing style.

An avid reader, Baldwin worked as an editor for his high school’s magazine, continuing his studies at the New School University. Forever intellectually curious, Baldwin would challenge societal norms and even his own involvement in the Christian church. Baldwin would denounce much of what he learned during his time viewing his stepfather in the pulpit, although he never declared himself an atheist. Much of Baldwin’s criticism of the church stemmed from its use by slave owners to oppress Blacks. He would, however, say that religion also had the power to liberate the oppressed as well.

Baldwin left New York in 1948, becoming an expatriate and finding his voice in Paris. Baldwin found acceptance overseas as he struggled to come to terms with his sexuality. In Paris, he thrived and was published in several literary anthologies, joining fellow writer Richard Wright as an essayist during his earlier stays in Europe.

Source: Sophie Bassouls / Getty

Baldwin’s most celebrated novel was his 1953 debut, “Go Tell It On the Mountain,” a semi-autobiographical novel set in 1930s Harlem. The book takes a close look at the role of the church in the lives of Black Americans, once again examining the duality of the lens that Baldwin viewed Christianity. The novel has remained a favorite among readers and has achieved iconic status.

Baldwin’s second novel, “Giovanni’s Room,” sparked controversy and criticism for its homoerotic themes and the fact that Baldwin made White characters the centerpiece of the book. His 1955 collection of essays “Notes Of A Native Son” still resonate strongly to this day.

The Civil Rights Movement was another passion of Baldwin’s during the turbulent 1960s. Baldwin would align himself with the movement via lengthy essays done in his usual forward style. His essay “Down At The Cross” would be published in The New Yorker in two large issues in 1963, which eventually led to Baldwin gracing the cover of TIME magazine that same year while he toured the South, speaking on Civil Rights issues.

Baldwin’s long essay “No Name In The Street” touched on the killings of his friends Malcolm X, Megdar Evers, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Baldwin is also credited for bringing Nina Simone into the movement along with poet Langston Hughes and “Raisin In The Sun” author Lorraine Hansberry.

Baldwin died at the age of 63 from stomach cancer in France on Dec. 1, 1987. He is buried at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Westchester County, New York.

Baldwin’s legacy continues to live in a variety of ways: Author Toni Morrison edited and curated a collection of Baldwin’s writings. Additionally, Baldwin’s work is a staple in many American Literature classes in high schools and colleges. The United States Postal Service honored Baldwin in 2005 with a first-class postage stamp, which also featured a short biography revealed after the peeling of the stamp.

Source: Sophie Bassouls / Getty

A documentary, “I Am Not Your Negro,” hit theaters in 2017, and attempts to complete the manuscript for “Remember This House,” an unfinished story about American race relations told through the lives and murders of civil rights leaders that Baldwin was working on at the time of his death.

Considering all of the above, it was obvious Baldwin had no shortage of commentary. Scroll down to find 10 of Baldwin’s most important quotes that will change your life.

1.

“I want to suggest two propositions. The first one is, that the poets by which I mean all artists are finally the only people who know the truth about us. Soldiers don’t, statesman don’t, priests don’t, union leaders don’t. Only the poets.”

2.

This James Baldwin quote describes Trump's attacks well: “Whatever you describe to another person is also a revelation of who you are and who you think you are. You can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes.”

— (((DeanObeidallah))) (@DeanObeidallah) July 29, 2018

3.

“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” James Baldwin #quote #quotes

— #NotMeUs #StopSwappingAir (@charleshb) July 27, 2018

4.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
James Baldwin #quote

— Weddings 211 (@Weddings211) July 23, 2018

5.

“You have to go the way your blood beats." - James Baldwin .... happy birthday to the icon. pic.twitter.com/DuMtENSaJA

— Clay 'Critical Thinking Theory' Cane (@claycane) August 2, 2018

6.

Source:Getty

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

7.

Just began reading _The Journey of Little Charlie_ by Christopher Paul Curtis and he had me at the opening James Baldwin quote. #kidlit #currentlyreading https://t.co/Wsteh5v08a pic.twitter.com/VIwoKPFwqc

— Joshua Whiting (@jdwhiting) July 30, 2018

8.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live witho... James Baldwin #ENLIVEN #bebetter #qotd #motivation #quotes pic.twitter.com/fd4cszxLmj

— Dawn Lennox Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ #StaySafeStayHome #BLM (@auroraaurellia) July 29, 2018

9.

“I’ve always known that I’m not a nigger. But if I am not the nigger and if it’s true that your invention reveals you, then who is the nigger?”

10.

Source:Getty

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

The post 10 Quotes From James Baldwin That Will Change Your Life appeared first on NewsOne.

When anti-fascist activists physically confront white supremacists in the streets, it’s a common liberal response to disapprove of such interventions by invoking the rule of law. Fascists, we are reminded, have a legal right to rally and disgorge their putrid views in public. When fascists then act on the violent promises of their speech — by attacking people of color, stabbing leftists, or, say, storming the seat of U.S. government — credulous liberal logic does not bend: no need for robust anti-fascist action; violent fascists should answer to the law.

The claim is laughable on its face. Even the FBI has admitted that U.S. law enforcement agencies have turned a blind eye to the explosive rise of organized white supremacist extremism in the last decade. It only makes sense to expect that the purveyors of racist state violence would enable racist civilian violence. Yet even when the judicial system does turn its focus on far-right figures, we see the profound limitations in the notion of putting fascism on trial.

We find ourselves in an unusual moment in U.S. legal history, as a number of high-profile state and federal trials are currently taking aim at white supremacist defendants. Alongside the ongoing cases against participants in the January 6 riots, a civil trial began this week against organizers of the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. In Wisconsin, meanwhile, pretrial hearings have begun in the case against Kyle Rittenhouse — the armed, pro-Trump fanatic who traveled across state lines during last year’s Black liberation uprisings and shot dead two anti-racist protesters.

The January 6 defendants are, despite their protestations to the contrary, receiving considerably more lenient sentences than activists on the left facing comparable charges from protest-related arrests. In the same vein, a number of developments in the other white supremacist cases last week showed the judicial system’s ideological commitment to censuring left-wing and Black liberation movements, even while purportedly addressing some of the most extraordinary fascist violence of our time. The Rittenhouse criminal case and the “Unite the Right” civil lawsuit already offer crucial insights into the limits — and the possibilities — of fighting fascism with the law.

Protesters clash with Kenosha County police in front of the county courthouse during demonstrations against the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., on Aug. 24, 2020.

Photo: KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Rittenhouse Murder Trial

Rittenhouse’s trial is yet to begin, but ever since he chose to travel to Kenosha, Wisconsin, and hunt down anti-racist protesters with an assault rifle, he has received significant far-right support, including from government forces and, it now appears, the judge presiding over his case. Leaked Department of Homeland Security memos last year revealed that federal agents were advised to publicly support the right-wing teen and claim that he “took his rifle to the scene of the rioting to help defend small business owners.”

Hundreds upon hundreds of Black Lives Matter protest arrest cases, which should have been prosecuted on a state level, were deviously transmuted into federal courts. On the other hand, Rittenhouse — who actually crossed state lines — is facing murder charges on the state level alone.

Judge Bruce Schroeder, known in Wisconsin for controversial past rulings, appears to be going out of his way to set the stage for Rittenhouse’s self-defense claims to succeed. Schroeder ruled in September that prosecutors could not admit into evidence Rittenhouse’s previous involvement with the Proud Boys — despite the clear relevance such an extremist association could have to proving violent intent. More shocking still, last week the judge decided that prosecutors are not allowed to refer to the people Rittenhouse shot dead as “victims” during the trial, because it is too “loaded” a term. Schroeder said he would, however, allow the defense to use the terms “rioters,” “looters,” and “arsonists” to describe Rittenhouse’s victims.

A court trial is, by its nature, a matter of competing narratives. With his rulings on permissible language, Rittenhouse’s judge — and it seems right to describe Schroeder as belonging to Rittenhouse — has fixed the narrative possibilities in favor of the racist killer. This is not only a matter of whether Rittenhouse gets away without consequences for the killings, which he might, but also how the context of his brutal actions is historicized in law. The correct narrative is one of state-sanctioned white supremacist vigilantism at a time of powerful Black uprisings. The story that threatens to win the day, however, turns this white backlash into a heroic force.

Whether or not the 18-year-old Rittenhouse is found guilty, it will not serve as some form of reckoning for the white supremacist forces and ideologies that informed his actions.

Whether or not the 18-year-old Rittenhouse is found guilty, it will not serve as some form of reckoning for the white supremacist forces and ideologies that informed his actions. Criminal trials of this sort, much like the murder trials of individual racist cops, are structurally incapable of putting any sort of system on trial. Jurors are asked to consider individualized culpability, and there is no doubt that this sits on Rittenhouse’s shoulders — an acquittal on self-defense grounds would be a disgrace. But the teenager didn’t kill two Black Lives Matter protesters because he was somehow a unique bad apple; he did what powerful fascist forces from the media to the former president to the very law enforcement officers he met hours before the shooting encouraged him to do.

There are scant anti-fascist tools to be found in criminal trials against white supremacists, brought by a white supremacist government and presided over by a judiciary stacked with right-wing judges, wherein victory amounts to carceral punishment.

Anti-fascist protesters link arms at an event on University of Virginia campus marking the one-year anniversary of a deadly clash between white supremacists and counterprotesters, on Aug. 11, 2018, in Charlottesville, Va.

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Charlottesville Civil Case

Anti-fascist action does, however, have a strong precedent in the Charlottesville lawsuit. There is a notable history of successful anti-fascist, anti-racist moves geared toward bankrupting and thus severely weakening white supremacist groups through civil court cases.

This is the aim of the civil lawsuit brought against 14 men and 10 groups — neo-Nazis all — considered to be the main organizers of the “Unite the Right” rally. The case’s nine plaintiffs all suffered considerable physical or emotional trauma because of the fascist event, during which a neo-Nazi plowed into a crowd of anti-fascist counterprotesters, killing one and injuring many; a young Black man was viciously beaten by racists with metal poles in a parking lot by a police station; and white supremacists the previous night marched Ku Klux Klan-like with burning torches while chanting “Jews will not replace us!”

The case hinges on whether the defendants — including two KKK chapters, the National Socialist Movement, the punchable white supremacist Richard Spencer, and the “crying Nazi” Christopher Cantwell — engaged in conspiracy. “We are going to show you that the defense came to Charlottesville with a plan for violence with racial and religious hatred,” Karen Dunn, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said Thursday during opening arguments.

Evidence against the fascists is vast. There are reams of text messages and Discord chat threads detailing plans to bring objects like flags and Mace spray to use as weapons. The fascist Jason Kessler, the original organizer and a defendant, helped compile a “style guide” to advise participants on how to communicate through racist dog whistles and thus hide true violent intent in advance of the rally. While recommending the deployment of euphemism, the document also at one point adds, “I really do mean gas” Jews — but using a slur for Jewish people.

In a civil trial, with a lower burden of proof needed to rule in the plaintiff’s favor, this case should be cut and dry. The defendants, whether or not they all knew each other, were all conspiring to plan a violent, racist, fascist event. They succeeded and, in the aftermath, celebrated the violence as such. Kessler described the young anti-racist protester killed at the event, Heather Heyer, as a “fat disgusting communist” in a tweet, adding, “Looks like it was payback time.”

The events in Charlottesville were an inflection point in the Trump era. President Donald Trump, reflecting on an unbridled fascist spectacle, spoke of “very fine people” on “both sides.” Drawing intolerable false equivalences between the far right and the far left was not only a Trumpian specialty: It also undergirds the Biden administration’s approach to domestic extremism. And in the civil case against organizers of neo-Nazi violence, questions about the alleged threat of antifa have already emerged in jury selection, as has the mythic notion of anti-white racism.

One potential Black juror was struck because, according to Cantwell, the crying Nazi who is absurdly acting as his own counsel, “she seems to be very concerned about race. … She is worried about racism in all categories except against white people.” Another juror who will be permitted to serve described Black Lives Matter as “a sham” and “lie-filled.” And another juror who will serve said of the “Unite the Right” rally, “All I kind of remember is that there were two sets of extremist groups” — as if counterprotesting a mass fascist gathering is an act of extremism rather than moral obligation.

Civil suits like these not only aim to deliver financial reparations to victims of organized fascism, but they also function as anti-fascist interventions.

The plaintiff’s lawyers, from the nonprofit civil rights group Integrity First for America, are relying on the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, which was designed to prevent the klan from denying freed slaves their civil rights. Civil rights groups have been using the Reconstruction-era law against white supremacist extremists for four decades. The precedent was set by five Black women in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who sued the Justice Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in a class action on behalf of the city’s Black community, following a shooting spree that left four Black women injured. The women’s attorney dusted off the 1871 law for the purpose, and it has been used in a number civil suits based on conspiracy claims ever since. It’s also being deployed in certain January 6 conspiracy cases.

Civil suits like these not only aim to deliver financial reparations to victims of organized fascism, but they also function as anti-fascist interventions. Anti-fascist action — including the deplatforming of white supremacist figures, shutting down fascist rallies, doxxing organizers, and sometimes militant confrontation — aims to make the consequences of fascist organizing intolerable if not impossible.

Using tort law to bankrupt fascist organizations and individuals sits within a set of consequentialist anti-fascist practices: The court proceeding will not itself serve as a reckoning for fascist ideologies; the jury will not be passing judgment on the inherent evil of white supremacy. If successful, though, the plaintiffs will economically devastate several major white supremacist organizations.

The criminal legal system cannot be trusted as a bulwark against fascism. In the courts, anti-fascists must use the tools available to fight the far right. We must, in a manner of speaking, take the law into our own hands.

The post Cases Over Far-Right Violence Show Limits — and Opportunities — for Anti-Fascism in the Courts appeared first on The Intercept.

In city after city, the story appears to be the same: Police unions are firmly against rules requiring their members to be vaccinated against COVID-19. In Chicago, after Mayor Lori Lightfoot said a mandate would be in order for all public employees, Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara told the Chicago Sun-Times his response would be “Hell no,” analogizing the directive to something out of the Holocaust:

“This ain’t Nazi fucking Germany, [where they say], ‘Step into the fucking showers. The pills won’t hurt you.’ What the fuck?”

In New York City, the Police Benevolent Association promised to sue the city if, as seems likely, Mayor Bill de Blasio requires cops to get jabs. Though less belligerent than his peers, a union chief in Cincinnati warned city leaders that a strict mandate (without an option for officers to simply get tested frequently) “would be a bad policy for a department that is struggling to retain and attract enough police officers.” A San Jose union leader said a vaccine mandate—with testing as an option only for those with religious or medical exemptions—would “decimate” his department. Police in Tucson filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to block a vaccine mandate from going into effect among their ranks.

The mandates are no academic exercise; they’ve become a necessity in places like New York because police have lagged behind the rest of the population in getting vaccinated. And the excuses that might explain away, at least to some degree, lower vaccination rates in other quarters do not apply to police. Unlike some workers, they can take a day or two off to get a shot if they need to without being fired. They have ready access to health care professionals who can answer any sorts of questions they have. Because of their line of work, they have also experienced the horrors of successive coronavirus waves—the virus is the No. 1 cause of death for law enforcement in the United States this year. They are literally the government.

It doesn’t really speak well of America’s law-enforcement agencies that their ranks are filled with people who cannot determine, from the voluminous evidence and expert opinions, whether the COVID-19 vaccines are good or bad for them. It is not a good reflection of anything, really, that Chicago’s police union leadership in particular cannot seem to distinguish between a life-saving vaccine and the gas chambers. And the vaccine is hardly the only area where police have become clearinghouses for disinformation. As my colleague, Ali Breland, reported last year, the QAnon conspiracy movement has attracted a real following among cops. America’s municipal police forces were well represented at the Capitol on January 6th, motivated by false narrative of a stolen election.

When public employees’ Facebook-meme rabbit holes make them a danger to the general welfare, the solution is not to accommodate those unfounded fears, it is to remind those employees who they are supposed to be working for. The vaccine is the simplest of steps police can take to ensure that, whatever else they might do, their literal presence is not inflicting harm, so that fewer people—and fewer cops—get sick and die from a virus that should never have killed this many. This is the absolute most basic threshold of “to serve and protect.”

Plus, this roguelike has loot for days

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Subscription lingerie service Adore Me accused the popular social media site TikTok of racism and fatphobia in a lengthy Twitter thread last week. 

“We’re taking a break from tweeting about lingerie today to have an important conversation about TikTok,” the company began Thursday. “The app’s algorithm was openly built with discrimination at its core. They’ve said it’s gotten better, but here’s what we’re seeing here at Adore Me.”

“First of all, as a lingerie company, we understand that our products and marketing can push the boundaries of what’s allowed on social media platforms,” they tweeted. “That said, years of working with Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest and the rest, have built-in general expectations around what is acceptable. Even within our own marketing teams, we are incredibly conscious about how we present our products to a general population.”

“TikTok,” they maintained, “is a different story.” 

Just a few examples—recently, we've had this video taken down: pic.twitter.com/bZIKNnRKzg

— Adore Me (@AdoreMe) February 4, 2021

Adore Me noted that TikTok is well-known for random content removal. 

“However, it’s been a very open secret,” they tweeted, “that the algorithm itself was built with very explicit discrimination against the overweight, the ‘ugly,’ the differently-abled, and even the poor.”

“Adore Me has regularly seen the removal of our content on TikTok that features plus-size, Black, and/or differently-abled models and women of color,” company officials wrote definitively. “This is unacceptable and discriminatory, and we will not stand for it.”

Read More: Texas pastors under fire for referring to Kamala Harris as racist trope

They shared several seemingly harmless videos that were removed from the site. 

“Adore Me’s mission has always pushed to make lingerie and fashion more inclusive. We work with models of all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, and backgrounds, and we refuse to change the models we work with to satisfy the hidden demands of the TikTok algorithm.” 

The company shared how plus-sized Grammy Award winner Lizzo has also said she has experienced having her swimwear videos inexplicably removed. 

Read More: Twitter thinks Jazmine Sullivan should’ve performed solo at Super Bowl

“TikTok keeps taking down my videos with me in my bathing suits,” the singer noted last year in a clip posted on the site. “But allows other videos with girls in bathing suits. I wonder why? TikTok … we need to talk.”

The clip has received millions of views on TikTok.

The Adore Me tweet thread ended with a single request: “It’s time to have an honest, open conversation about how the fastest-growing platform that has come to define fast-moving cultural trends (Ocean Spray, anyone?) chooses who to exclude and why.”

It was “signed” by “A fed-up Adore Me Team.” 

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TikTok hierarchy told USA Today it doesn’t moderate its content on the basis of appearance or ability. “The incredible diversity of our users is what makes TikTok such a unique place to create, share, and find community,” company spokesperson Jamie Favazza said.

“Let us be clear,” she added, “TikTok does not moderate content on the basis of shape, size or ability, and we continually take steps to strengthen our policies and promote body acceptance.” 

However, Adore Me staffers maintain that “the more these removals occur, the more we wonder if we’ll ever be able to grow on the platform — or if it’ll even matter, if TikTok continues to drive fat, Black, and/or differently-abled creators off the platform with its blatantly discriminatory algorithm.”

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