The Gated Community. Photo: Tom Smouse (via Americana UK)
In the face of violence in the streets and unlawful detention what can a musician do, really? They can document what’s going on, make their point and try and raise awareness (and maybe the odd dollar) of the organisations that are protecting citizens from their own law enforcement. Read that sentence, and notice just how screwed up it is to describe daily life in the “shining city on a hill”.
Which brings us to today’s song from The Gated Community. It’s a new recording of a very recently written song, written in response to events in Minneapolis, as singer and songwriter Sumanth Gopinath explains: “After Renee Nicole Good’s murder by ICE agent Jonathan Ross here in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026, I began writing songs that more explicitly address the situation we’re in. I find the ‘protest song’ challenging, as it requires a directness that I tend to avoid in my songwriting. This is my third serious attempt as of late and the one with the most rousing, energizing chorus of the bunch. I am so moved and inspired by the bravery, intelligence, and steadfastness of my fellow Minnesotans in the Twin Cities who, against the odds, are acting tirelessly on behalf of our most vulnerable community members. This song is for them.”
The song is available on Bandcamp, it has a price and there’s an option to add a little more to support the people organising for decency: everyone involed in the recording donated their time and all of its proceeds will be donated to local aid organizations including Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) — an organization supporting individuals and families impacted by unjust immigration laws and deportations.
And who are The Gated Community? Well, this band that has been described as a Marxist Bluegrass band (you don’t get a lot of them to the pound) was originally a vehicle for Sumanth’s political songs, but has evolved over nineteen years, expanding in size and scope to include many roots music styles and more personal songwriting. It was formed when Sumanth moved from New Haven to Minneapolis to begin working as a professor of music theory at the University of Minnesota, and now features six singers, with the band combining professors like Sumanth (vocals, acoustic guitar, keyboards) and Beth Hartman (vocals, percussion), and artists from various parts of the Twin Cities scene like Rosie Harris (vocals, banjo, cello), Paul Hatlelid (vocals, drums, acoustic guitar), Cody Johnson (vocals, bass), and Nate Knutson (vocals, guitars, mandolin).
thanks and much love to our families, friends, and fans
All proceeds from this recording will go to one or more organizations resisting the occupation of our cities by ICE and providing aid to our community. Everyone involved generously volunteered their time and resources to this project.
Thank you to Tom Campbell, Eva Cohen, Carl and Ina Elliott, Jim and Sara Harris, Marcus dePaula, Michael Gallope, Gabrielle Gopinath, John Miller, Mark Nye, Daniel Owens, Matt Rahaim, Ian Rans, Ellen Stanley, Ryan Stokes, Dean Von Bank, and our families, friends, and neighbors.
Source: The Gated Community (Bandcamp). I would strongly encourage you to buy this digital record (paying as much as you wish) in support of the embattled people of Minnesota, my home state. ||| TRR
REMEMBER RUSSIAN ‘GUN-RIGHTS ADVOCATE’ [ ] AND CONVICTED FELON MARIA BUTINA? Who doesn’t? Welp, here she is w/ your Daily Irony Supplement — and it’s a massive dose! See, as of Jan. 20 she’ll likely get a pardon and move back Stateside to improve on her spying career (hey, how could she do worse?); but in the meantime, she’s trying to get *Americans* (et al.) to go the *other* way, i.e. move to Moscow — y’know, like Our Guy Ed Snowden & his new roommate, Bashar al-Assad, who just *love* it there, right?
[WARNING: Do not watch this video immediately after a meal.]
Memorial for actor Joachim Gottschalk. When his Jewish wife Meta and son Michael were to be deported, the whole family decided to commit suicide on November 6, 1941. The bronze figure, which was created by Theo Balden in 1967, resembles the actor. It was initially located in a park but had to be moved due to the building of the local Sparkasse in the 1990s. Its new place is a memorial wall in the Joachim-Gottschalk-Straße 35.
The Impact of the Gold Rush on Native Americans of California
This inquiry lesson provides primary sources, maps, images, and background history to offer teachers and students insight into a little-known but vitally important aspect of one of the most iconic events in American history—the California gold rush. Students will analyze sources to answer the question: Do American actions against California Native Americans during the gold rush meet the United Nations definition of genocide?
The attitude of César Chávez and the UFW towards the undocumented changed over time and can be divided into three periods: 1962 to 1975; 1975 to 1993; and 1993 to the present. A look at these changes reveals much about Chávez, the union, and the times. Frank Bardacke is the author of Trampling Out the Vintage: César Chávez and the Two Souls of the UFW.
Whenever an infant heads to nursery, it can feel like an enormous step. Things are changing for everyone. There are all sorts of feelings flying around – relief, sadness, doubt, fear. But what’s going on behind the doors of nurseries and childcare settings in England? India speaks to Joeli Brearley from Pregnant Then Screwed about the current childcare crisis, child development psychotherapist Graham Music about how childcare impacts children, as well as economist Emily Oster on our choices around childcare. India then meets artists Conway and Young who have found a way to make the invisible labour of childcare pay.
Presented by: India Rakusen. Producer: Georgia Arundell. Series producer: Ellie Sans. Executive producer: Suzy Grant. Commissioning Editor: Rhian Roberts. Original music composed and performed by The Big Moon. Mix and Mastering by Charlie Brandon-King.
Childbirth is deadlier in the United States than in any other high-income nation, according to a study released Tuesday by the Commonwealth Fund that underscores the persistence of maternal mortality.
More than 80 percent of pregnancy-related deaths in the United States are preventable, but factors including a shortage of maternity care providers, limited access to after-birth home visits and lack of guaranteed paid parental leave have increased the risk of maternal mortality, especially for Black people, researchers have found.
In 2022, about 22 maternal deaths happened for every 100,000 live births in the United States. For Black people, that number rose sharply to 49.5 deaths per 100,000, according to the report from the Commonwealth Fund, which conducts independent research on health-care issues. Two out of three maternal deaths occur up to 42 days after birth, highlighting the importance of postpartum care, which only some state Medicaid programs and private health insurers cover.
The study compared 14 high-income countries. It used data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — known as the OECD — which tracks health system metrics across 38 high-income countries, and from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Maternal Mortality Review Committees in 36 states.
Although OECD data is widely regarded as the gold standard for international comparisons, the authors note that discrepancies in how countries gather health data may affect the findings.
“We can’t just think of reproductive health at the time of pregnancy because a lot happens after the baby is born. If we’re not supporting women during this crucial time period, we’re never going to solve this problem,” said Munira Z. Gunja, the study’s lead author and a senior researcher at the Commonwealth Fund.
Ten of the countries listed in the report had a death rate of fewer than 10 per 100,000 live births; in 2022, Norway’s maternal death rate was zero.
Laurie C. Zephyrin, senior vice president for advancing health equity at the Commonwealth Fund, said these numbers paint a stark picture of health care in the United States. She called for more focus on community-led investments, including birth centers and health-care teams working with patients in the weeks before and after delivery. She also said health systems should have incentives and accountability involving equitable quality of care, particularly for communities of color.
With 65 percent of maternal deaths occurring after birth, many health experts emphasize the need for not only more prenatal care but an increase in comprehensive postpartum care.
“We want this to be the cultural norm. We want this to be federal policy. We want there to be a big change because we know that we can completely minimize the rate of maternal deaths in this country,” Gunja said.
Health disparities are not unique to the United States. In Australia, Aboriginal people are twice as likely to die of maternal complications compared with other people giving birth, according to the report. Still, experts are hopeful that policy changes and awareness will help bridge the divide and decrease the overall maternal mortality rate in the United States.
The report highlighted the importance of access to midwives, whose work has been described as an important factor in countries with the lowest maternal mortality rates, the report found. Teams involving midwivescould deliver 80 percent of essential maternal care and potentially prevent 41 percent of maternal deaths, 39 percent of neonatal deaths and 26 percent of stillbirths, the report said.
Some studies have found that teams led by midwives offer care comparable, or superior, to care provided by obstetrician-gynecologists. In the United States, Canada and South Korea, OB-GYNs outnumber midwives, but in most other high-income nations, midwives are more prevalent.
The United States and Canada face a shortage of midwives and OB/GYNs. Almost 7 million people in the United States live in areas without hospitals or birth centers offering obstetric care or any obstetric providers. The shortage is expected to worsen.
“We are setting ourselves up for an absolute reproductive health provider shortage, and contributing to that is this interference into the patient-provider relationship and the restrictions that are being placed on us,” said Tamika C. Auguste, a D.C. OB/GYN and chair of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Foundation Board who was not involved with the study.
The United States is the only high-income nation without a federally mandated paid parental leave policy and universal health care. Only 13 states and D.C. have paid family and medical leave laws; these policies have been shown to improve health outcomes for pregnant people.
“We are in a dire time in our country, where we’re seeing firsthand the impact of these policy changes at the state level and how they are impacting people’s lives,” Zephyrin said.
In recent years, abortion restrictions have sparked debates and legal battles. State legislatures have been enacting increasingly stringent laws aimed at limiting access to abortion services, such as mandatory waiting periods, ultrasound requirements and bans on certain procedures.
The current wave of abortion restrictions has significantly affected broader health-care services, particularly obstetric care. States that have imposed abortion restrictions often face closure of clinics offering a variety of health-care services, such as cancer screenings, contraceptive services and general reproductive health care. As a result, people in these states encounter greater challenges that exacerbate existing health disparities.
“Women’s health-care providers are being driven out of areas due to the restrictions on practicing full-scope reproductive health care,” Auguste said. “This creates areas where there are no health women’s providers for women.”
The factors that led into the creation of their newest album aligns perfectly with the discussions this podcast is about. Just blocks away from the 3rd Police Precinct that burned down during the protests, Twin Cities country-folk band The Gated Community saw many of their recordings lost due a power outage. But being in the center of burning buildings, gunshots, and neighborly concern, Sumanth Gopinath was compelled to write about it. The result: songs about that tumultuous era that culminated in a new album filled with important issues and topics, which fit perfectly with their existing songs and socially conscious perspective as a band. Sitting around one table, I got to hear about the evolution of a band without egos, which is part of what makes The Gated Community so special.
In his new book, Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry (Island Press, 2024), Austin Frerick identifies contemporary “barons” in seven different corporations—such as Cargill, Inc., the Driscoll’s and the conglomerate JAB Holding Company—who have taken over food systems and re-shaped communities. Frerick writes in the introduction, “I refer to these people as ‘barons’ to hearken back to Gilded Age robber barons such as John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan because I believe that we are living in a parallel moment when a few titans have the power to shape industries.”
A fellow at theThurman Arnold Project at Yale University and former Treasury Department official, Frerick has been among the leading experts and researchers in competition policy and antitrust examining food industry consolidation. As co-chair of the Biden campaign’s Agriculture Antitrust Policy Committee, he helped advise several of the leading Democratic presidential candidates on agricultural policy leading up to the 2020 election.
Frerick’s interest in the barons of today’s food-industry is also personal. As a seventh-generation Iowan, Frerick’s interest in antitrust policy began as an undergraduate at Grinnell College where he researched corporate power in Iowa’s slaughterhouse communities.
Barn Raiser spoke with Frerick about how agricultural consolidation has changed the landscape of rural America, and how to bring rural people out from their local Walmart and back onto “Main Street.”
What is it like writing about your home?
It started off as angry and it changed into profound sadness. I think that’s because the origin of the book is in Iowa. “The Hog Barons” chapter is what started this whole thing. This book came about because I published that article in Vox on the hog barons at Iowa Select Farms in Iowa, and I got a book deal from that. I noticed that I changed the tone from when I wrote it as a magazine article and made it into a book chapter. It now reads to me as profoundly sad, like it all kind of fell apart in Iowa. It’s grappling with the Iowa I grew up in and what it’s become, from the anger that’s everywhere to just how industrial the landscape has become.
You wrote that “as farms consolidate, more and more of the wealth leaves rural communities and flows to the Cargills of the world.” You also describe how your hog barons live in a gated community in Des Moines — far from the pollution and working conditions they are creating. A few weeks after your book came out, Jeff and Deb Hansen of Iowa Select Farms, the hog barons you highlight in chapter one, published an op-ed in the Des Moines Register, where they called themselves “stewards of [their] land and communities.” What was your reaction to that op-ed?
They employ their own spokesperson, like someone’s job is to do this for a living, and I just thought it was so poorly written. It reinforced in my head that no one’s ever the villain in their own story. And they’re just delusional. They’re living in a delusional world. They’re just not living in the same world we’re living, and I think the op-ed reflected that. To call themselves stewards of the land with a straight face, it’s just like, no one in Iowa thinks that. That’s an accepted reality at this point.
You hosted a book event in Iowa Falls, where the hog barons are from. What was the reception to your book like there?
Honestly that one shocked me the most. I was actually nervous for that event. I really haven’t been nervous at all during this whole book process. That was the one time I was a little worried for my safety. I turned that tracking thing on my phone so my husband could follow me. It’s a little scary, it’s like you’re going into the heart of the beast. At every book event someone asked me am I worried about my safety, which was, you know, an unnerving question to get all the time. But I had a completely different reaction when I got there. I was shocked. Not only at the turnout—I mean, like 45-50 people—but that there was not one dissenting voice. It was among the most incredible after-talk experiences I’ve had because it felt like a third or half of the room came up and talked to me afterwards, because they all know Jeff and Deb, the hog barons.
They all told me a different story of how Iowa Select Farms bamboozled the community from promises they made and didn’t keep for Des Moines and the intimidation tactics they used to build their empire. Iowa Falls is a beautiful town. It was the epitome of the American Dream for a lot of people and then Jeff and Deb just come in and kind of destroy things to their own personal benefit, and then they hightail it out of there. That’s one thing I kept hearing from people, how they did all this stuff, and then they just left.
In the conclusion of your book, you discuss how “a sense of a distinct regional and local identity” disappears when local businesses disappear. “Unlike the barons, the owners of local businesses live in the communities they serve and are stakeholders in their success. Losing them means losing the glue that binds communities together.” What would need to change for the “Main Street” in rural communities to be revitalized?
This culture of efficiency we live in has stripped us of our community. It views everything as an Excel sheet. There are no coffee beans native to Iowa, you can get coffee anywhere. So much of what you’re buying into is interaction with another human, a sense of being. People bought coffee from my mom because of the human connection and Excel can’t capture that. I was really determined to make that point. Because I saw my mom, who used to work for her own coffee store, and later worked at a corporate Starbucks in Target.
These communities thrive when middle class family farms are around. The biggest way to do that is by putting animals back on the land. These confinements have just destroyed rural communities in every way possible. We also need old fashioned trust busting and antitrust enforcement.
Could you explain how CAFOs are connected to Main Street? How are confinements impacting Main Street?
Denise O’Brien in southwest Iowa really drove home this point to me. She’s a longtime activist, and she talked about how much her street has changed in her lifetime. First of all, one human being can only watch so many cows on pasture—you can’t do robotics for that. Family farms pay local taxes, send their kids to local schools and spend their money locally in town. When that consolidates to one person who owns a big metal shed stuffed full of animals, and the owner of the asset lives in an urban rich community, and then has a low wage worker pop by and take care of things, that’s a very different occupation. It’s the difference between watching a cow on pasture to hauling out dead pig bodies, which is what a lot of that work entails. There’s a whole undercurrent of trauma a lot of these low wage workers experience from basically being surrounded by this incredibly cruel production model that is full of death and destruction.
You write that to change the current system and to “build a more balanced food system” we need to “challenge power directly.” How are you hoping your book will mobilize others to build a more just food system?
That’s my nice Iowa way of rejecting the whole change the food system with your fork mentality that’s been the theory of change the last few decades. To me, it just bifurcated the food system between those that go to the New Pioneer Co-op in Iowa City and those go to Walmart. No one’s ever going to get you a seat at the table. So you have to fight for it.
Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, Te Pāti Māori Member of Parliament for Te Tai Tokerau, raised eyebrows recently when she claimed in parliament that the government of had a “mission to exterminate Māori.”
Kapa-Kingi was speaking on a proposed change to the processes under which children forcibly removed from their parents by the child welfare agency Oranga Tamariki are placed in foster care.
“The theory of the Minister is that Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles should be colour-blind, which is just another word for white supremacy, because to say we are all one people is really to say we should all be white people,” she explained.
Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, Te Pāti Māori Member of Parliament for Te Tai Tokerau. Photo: Tania Whyte
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon described the speech as ‘completely out of line’ and ‘unhelpful.’ Opposition leader Chris Hipkins agreed that it was unhelpful, adding “It’s certainly not language that I agree with.”
Te Pāti Māori co-leaders backed up their MP, however. Rawiri Waititi called it a brilliant speech. “This is how we feel and we will not be told how to feel,” Waititi said. “Many of the policy changes that this Government absolutely makes us feel like there [are] huge extermination processes and policies [aimed at] the very existence of tangata whenua in this country, so it was absolutely the right wording.”
When the facts don’t stack up, you can always appeal to feelings.
Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer concurred. She could hardly do otherwise, since she herself had used similar language in respect of another of the government’s reforms. Her own response last November to the incoming government’s move to roll back some recent restrictions on sales of cigarettes was equally immoderate: “There is absolute deliberate intention of this government, as I said, to create systemic genocide,” she said on that occasion.
Te Pāti Māori Co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer
The question, however, is not how Rawiri Waititi or anyone else feels about anything, but whether the claim is true. And as everyone who has not completely lost their head knows, such claims are preposterous. Genocide is not just cultural assimilation, but the physical extermination of a people. It is inconceivable without mass violence and ethnic killings.
The closest thing to ethnic violence against Māori on such a scale in New Zealand history was during the land wars of the 19th century. And even that was not a war of genocide, but a war of dispossession. As soon as the colonial authorities had their hands securely on the land, the fate of the dispossessed Māori became a matter of relative indifference to them.
A repeal of anti-smoking legislation, or of child welfare legislation – irrespective of one’s attitude to that repeal – does not constitute mass violence. To use such terms to describe what is happening in New Zealand today only debases the language and renders the terms themselves meaningless. And in doing so, it disorients anyone who takes the term for good coin, concealing the true nature of the problem, and disarming anyone who seeks to address it.
What drives Te Pāti Māori to resort to such histrionics and attention-seeking language?
The answer to that question lies in what Te Pāti Māori is. It is an electoral formation and nothing more. It has no existence outside of Parliament and its associated vote-gathering machinery. It is a parliamentary voice without a movement, like a head without a body, and is therefore powerless, despite its presence in parliament, to affect the course of politics in any significant way.
This powerlessness was exposed in the immediate aftermath of last year’s election, when, buoyed by its electoral gains and alarmed by the new government’s right-leaning course, it called for a National Day of Action to coincide with the opening of the new Parliament in early December. The declared kaupapa was to demonstrate the “beginning of a unified Aotearoa approach to the government’s assault on Tangata Whenua and Te Tiriti o Waitangi”. Their hype included the prediction that “The movement that we’re seeing from Māori will make the foreshore and seabed hīkoi look like something extremely small.” This was a reference to the protest of twenty years ago, in which 15,000 Māori and others converged on Parliament, and which triggered the Labour Party’s Māori MPs to quit to form Te Pāti Māori.
Nothing remotely comparable to this occurred in the December 2023 Day of Action, despite generous support of the action by the liberal news media, which publicised the assembly points in advance. A few hundred marched in Wellington, and groups of a few dozen rallied in various other towns and cities. In the largest working class concentration, Auckland, a handful of car drivers attempted to disrupt traffic on the motorways, with little effect. It was a rather stark revelation of the narrowness of support for Te Pāti Māori, especially among workers.
When its fighting talk in parliament produces zero effect, the party therefore has few options except to open their mouth wider, shout louder, and use more extreme language in order to win the ear of the ruling class. Not just ‘racism’, but ‘white supremacy’ becomes the order of the day. Not just ‘discrimination’ but ‘extermination’. Not just ‘extermination’, but ‘systemic genocide.’
Don’t be fooled by the truculent posturing and coarseness of tone: these appeals are directed to the rulers, asking “please, listen to us!” They hope to frighten the ruling layers into adjusting their course.
(On his side, Winston Peters of New Zealand First, the counterpart of Te Pāti Māori on the right wing of capitalist politics, uses equally hyperbolic language in his denunciations of Te Pāti Māori, accusing them of “cultural Marxism” and of wanting “anarchy – headed by their Māori elitist cronies turning this country into something akin to apartheid.” Believe me, Winston, nothing could be more alien to Marxism than the politics of feelings!)
But neither the government nor the broader ruling class will listen to Te Pāti Māori. They defend above all else the dictatorship of profit, and the rate of profit has now fallen to the point where it is incompatible with some of the most basic social rights and needs, such as affordable housing, equitable access to health care, basic infrastructure like water and roads, and more. Their ability to grant even small concessions is strictly limited: on the contrary, their present focus is to restore their profits by making even deeper inroads against our wages and social rights.
And among the things capitalist society today is incapable of delivering is the protection of children from violence. The child welfare ministry Oranga Tamariki has been in a permanent state of turmoil for many years, over the question of uplifting children from their parents. It is no closer to resolving this than it was five years ago, when a shockingNewsroom documentary by reporter Melanie Reid exposed the brutality of child ‘uplifts’.
On the one hand, Oranga Tamariki is rightly excoriated for the tearing apart of Māori families in circumstances where it is not justified, such as the case documented in the 2019 documentary, causing long-term trauma. On the other hand, it gets criticised – again with full justification, at least in some cases – for failing to protect the lives of children, who suffer violent deaths at the hands of their family members at a high rate in New Zealand.
Coming under fire from both these opposite directions, the institution lurches from one policy to the opposite, according to the nature of the most recent scandal. At the time of the 2019 documentary, Oranga Tamariki was uplifting hundreds of babies each year, in response to criticism for failing to prevent the violent deaths of babies at the hands of family members. About 70% of these uplifted infants were Māori. (Māori make up about 20% of the population). Oranga Tamariki was under pressure to act pre-emptively in many of these cases, before there was any clear evidence of danger to the child – and therefore these decisions were inevitably based on rumour, prejudice, and racial profiling of Māori as ‘bad parents’. In many cases, the decision to uplift was taken in secret, without any prior discussion with the family concerned.
An intense public outcry followed the documentary. Protests outside Parliament demanded an end to the unjustified snatching of babies, especially Māori babies, from their parents’ arms. The protests denounced the lasting trauma inflicted on the affected Māori families, and the damage to the social fabric caused by the high rate of children being taken into state care. A petition called Hands off Our Tamariki (children) gained 17,377 signatures.
Protest at Parliament demands “Hands off Tamariki forever” Photo: Lynn Grieveson
These protests prompted a switch to the opposite policy. Following multiple inquiries into the functioning of Oranga Tamariki, an amendment to the governing principles of Oranga Tamariki was introduced in 2019, called Section 7AA, which bound the institution to uphold the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi in matters concerning Māori children. In practice this meant placing uplifted babies with members of their own whānau, or with their wider iwi, wherever possible. Labour Party Minister for Children Kelvin Davis proclaimed “This report will end uplifts as we have known them. While there will always be a need for some children to be taken into care, this should only happen after all avenues with community and whanau have been exhausted.” The rate of uplifts fell steadily, from 963 uplifts in 2018 to 251 in 2022.
This was a small but significant gain for the whole working class. It pushed back state interference in Māori families and strengthened the bonds of solidarity within our class.
The death of another young child at the hands of his family has halted that momentum, and now the pendulum is poised to swing all the way back again. Wellington toddler Ruthless-Empire Wall was beaten to death by family members unknown, just shy of his second birthday, in October 2023 – after the boy’s uncle had alerted Oranga Tamariki to the dangerous environment he was living in, and requested them to place the boy in his care.
Now the government, at the behest of its Act Party component, seeks to restore the policy of wholesale uplifts. Act campaigned on the issue in last year’s election, and repeal of Section 7AA was part of the coalition agreement between the three parties that formed the new government in November 2023. The campaign is headed by Act’s Karen Chhour, the incoming Minister for Children and for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence. Chhour, who is Māori herself and was raised in state care, presented her own petition to repeal Section 7AA, which received more than 13,400 signatures.
Chhour claims that Section 7AA has led to Māori children being removed from safe and loving homes because their caregivers weren’t of Māori descent. “I consider that section 7AA allows the treatment of children and young people as an identity group first, and a person second, it creates a divisive system that has had a negative impact on caregivers. This repeal will make sure that Oranga Tamariki is entirely child-centric and is making decisions that ensure a child’s wellbeing and best interest. Over successive years, Oranga Tamariki has failed our most vulnerable children, and in part that has been because of Section7AA,” she said.
Karen Chhour Photo: Doug Mountain
Chhour presents no evidence to back these assertions, a point noted by the Waitangi Tribunal which entered the debate. If children are actually being torn from existing foster homes where they have already bonded with their caregivers, simply because their caregivers were not of Māori descent, that could be a matter of legitimate concern. But it is incumbent on Chhour to prove that this is in fact happening. Since she does not do so – beyond claiming to have seen it herself – this appears to be a spurious claim.
Nor does she make any attempt to explain why or how adherence to the Treaty of Waitangi should lead to Oranga Tamariki making decisions that are not in the child’s best interest. Her unsupported assertion hints at an unspoken racist explanation: that Māori parents and foster parents are less than competent caregivers. This is a debate with high stakes.
Thus, the issue Mariameno Kapa-Kingi was attempting to address is a real one, and the repeal of Section 7AA should be opposed. It is the ability to recognise a real problem, combined with the inability to do anything about it, that generates the flailing of arms in Parliament, and the politics of middle class hysteria in general.
Even if the repeal of 7AA is defeated, the social scourge of violence against children can only be expected to worsen in the short term. It is a consequence of, among other things, the divided, weakened state of the working class, which is increasingly being torn apart by the ordinary workings of the capitalist economy, exacerbated by the actions of its government and state.
Such violence against children is connected with massively increased economic and other pressures on families: the inflation eroding our wages, the growing insecurity of employment, the cuts to social services like health care, including mental health care, the breakdown of attendance at school, and above all, the housing shortage, which hurls ever-wider layers of workers down into the horrors of drug-riddled and gang-infested ‘emergency housing.’
Violence against children is closely connected with the scourge of violence against women, in which New Zealand ranks so shamefully high in the world. It is worth noting that Te Pāti Māori, along with the Labour, National and Green parties, supported legislation that undermined women’s single-sex spaces, including women’s refuges from domestic violence, by requiring them to open their doors to males. They took an active part in the attack which shut down a women’s rally in Auckland in March 2023 by force and violence. This fact alone should nullify their claim to speak in defence of children.
As long as these social conditions continue, there will continue to be situations in which children have to be removed from their parents’ care in the interests of their own safety. But such removals can also provide an opening for hostile class interests to drive in a wedge that tears apart working class families. This has been done disproportionately, though not exclusively, against Māori, who make up a substantial component of the working class. It is the built-in tendency of intervention by the capitalist state and its agencies like Oranga Tamariki.
It falls to a revived movement of the whole working class to oversee such situations and to ensure that the ties between children and their whānau are maintained as far as possible during their removal, and that they are returned to their parents’ custody as quickly as possible. Strengthening solidarity within the working class, along with raising the social status of women, is the road to ending the violence against children in a more permanent way.
This is not a new problem for the working class worldwide. Farrell Dobbs, a leader of the historic Teamsters Union strikes which organised truck drivers in the US Midwest in the 1930s, once described how these strikes took on the character of the mass social movement. The Teamsters Union Local 574 ‘flying squads’, which had been organised to shut down strike-breaking trucking operations across the city, expanded their operations to intervene when the union got news of unemployed workers being evicted from their homes for non-payment of rent. The arrival of the union flying squad quickly ended the attempts by landlords and their deputy sheriffs to evict the worker.
Farrell Dobbs, (with images from the 1934 strikes behind him)
“In a few instances, the union even adopted children,” Dobbs said.
He explained that at the time it was common for bourgeois charities to identify working-class families that in their view were unable to adequately provide for their children, and the charities would then arrange to have the children adopted out, against the wishes of their parents. The union organisation stepped in to prevent this happening, finding foster parents from among the union ranks to care for the children temporarily, so that they could be returned to their parents at the earliest opportunity. (The talks where Dobbs tells the story of the Minneapolis strikes are available on YouTube, and are very inspiring to listen to in full. Dobbs describes the adoption of children in the third talk, beginning about the 24th minute.)
Children demonstrate in support of their unionist parents
At this point there is little outward sign of such a revived fighting labour movement in New Zealand, so this political course is far from obvious to see.
What is abundantly clear, however, is that Te Pāti Māori, and all those like them who pursue the opposite course – of appealing to the capitalist rulers and relying on their parliamentary apparatus and state institutions – quickly find themselves in a blind alley.
Errollyn Wallen’s memoir Becoming a Composer is a look into the mind of the composer as well as the life of one. Born in Belize but now based in the far-flung north of Scotland, where she sometimes inhabits a lighthouse, she works at a brisk pace, composing prolifically for orchestra, chamber ensemble, choir, and over twenty operas. Her major public commissions have included music for The Last Night of the Proms, the Paralympic Opening Ceremony, and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and she joins us from her home in the Orkney Islands to talk about Becoming a Composer, and becoming a composer.
Music heard in the show:
Title: Horseplay i. Dark and mysterious Artist: The Continuum Ensemble/Philip Headlam Composer: Errollyn Wallen Album: The Girl In My Alphabet Label: Avie AV0006
Title: Dervish Artist: Matthew Sharp (cello), Dominic Harlan (piano) Composer: Errollyn Wallen Album: The Girl In My Alphabet Label: Avie AV0006
Putin’s critics have long noted his obstinate refusal to publicly utter the name of imprisoned opposition politician Alexei Navalny. But on Sunday, when asked by loyalist journalist Andrei Kolesnikov about Moscow theater director Zhenya Berkovich and Moscow leftist Boris Kagarlitsky, both of whom have been arrested on flagrantly trumped-up charges of “condoning terrorism,” Putin claimed never to have heard of them.
Maybe he hadn’t heard of them. But a good deal of progressive humanity has heard of them, not only because of the outrageous charges against them, but also because both of them are minor celebrities. This means that their cases matter enough to the Moscow-centered Russian “liberal” intelligentsia (broadly defined) and to leftist and liberal circles in the west that you will have already heard about them, too, and you will undoubtedly hear much more about them in the weeks and months to come.
What about the other, uncelebrated Russians persecuted for their dissenting views and direct protest actions during wartime? According to OVD Info, 665 criminal cases have been opened against “anti-war dissidents” since February 24, 2022. It would be understandable if the international press had trouble reporting in depth on each of these cases, despite the best efforts of international human rights organizations and projects like this website. But it turns out that the Russian opposition also finds it too troublesome to remember all their names, let alone name them publicly.
“Every day there are more and more [political] prisoners in Russia. Moreover, we do not have time to remember their names, because they are activists from Khabarovsk and Vologda, Murmansk and Perm. We don’t have time to remember these names,” Olga Romanova, the founder and head of Russia Behind Bars told Radio Svoboda at a rally in Berlin yesterday “in support of Vladimir Kara-Murza, Alexei Navalny and other political prisoners in Russia.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised, then, as I prepared a post yesterday about the trial of Petersburg anti-war activist Olga Smirnova, that a Google search for the keywords “Olga Smirnova trial Petersburg” generated the following dismal picture, in which it transpires that this remarkable, incredibly brave grassroots battler has been roundly ignored by the Anglophone world except for the dependable folks at RFE/RL and silly old me.
Several years ago, a Petersburg “artivist” with whom I worked closely for a time became fascinated with the so-called attention economy. I soon realized that the lesson they had learned from their “research” of the topic was that they had to compete even harder for attention to their own projects and causes. Later, I became convinced that nearly the entire Moscow-centric Russian opposition and their target audiences at home and abroad were also practicing “attention economics” to the extent that the political persecution of non-celebrities, regional activists, and social outsiders (Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example) almost never merited their focused and sustained attention.
They thus missed what I thought was the bigger picture, which was that the Putin regime and its repressive apparatus were themselves rehearsing for something “grander,” something that came to fruition on February 24, 2022.
And yet the right-thinking “attention economists” who dominate the Russian opposition and, consequently, the non-Russian Russia watchers whose narratives they help to shape, continue to engage in celebrity worship amid a fascist assault on Ukrainian independence, Ukrainian lives, and Russian grassroots dissent, thus betraying their own deep-seated anti-democratic biases. When people who should know better and should do better feel impelled not to say the names and share the stories of “lesser” political prisoners like Olga Smirnova, they are doing the Russian police state’s work for it. ||| TRR
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During a press conference after the Russia-Africa summit on Saturday evening, Kommersant reporter Andrei Kolesnikov asked the President of Russia a question about a number of the arrests that have occurred recently in the country.
Kolesnikov cited to Putin the names of the arrested sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky, against whom “condoning terrorism” charges have been filed for a post about the explosion on the Kerch Bridge, and theater director Yevgenia Berkovich. She has been charged with “condoning terrorism” over a theater production about Russian women recruited by the terrorist group Islamic State. The play is based on real events.
Human rights activists call the cases against Kagarlitsky and Berkovich politically motivated.
“People are arrested for written or spoken words. Is this normal? Well, thank God, it’s not 1937 here! But some people, you know, think that maybe it is 1937,” Kolesnikov asked.
“It’s 2023 here, and the Russian Federation is in a state of armed conflict with its neighbor. I think that there should be a certain attitude towards those people inside the country who harm us,” Putin replied, adding that “in order to achieve success, including in the combat zone, we must all follow certain rules.”
The President stated several times that he did not know about the cases against those whom Kolesnikov cited as an example. “I don’t know who you are talking about. I am hearing these names for the first time and don’t really understand what they did and what was done to them,” Putin said, but immediately added, “In Ukraine, people are shot for this.” As an example of an “execution,” he referred (without naming him by name) to Denis Kireyev, a member of the Ukrainian delegation to peace negotiations with Russia, who was killed in early March last year. “I don’t know what they [Berkovich and Kagarlitsky] did, you will tell me later. Maybe they don’t deserve what has been done to them. I don’t even know how,” Putin concluded his answer.
Putin did not explain how the case of Kireyev, who was [a Russian] agent, according to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and whose death had nothing to do with any of his public statements, was connected with the Berkovich and Kagarlitsky cases. In addition, the case against Berkovich, although she did speak publicly against the war, is not connected with her anti-war statements, according to investigators.
Today, a rally in support of Vladimir Kara-Murza, Alexei Navalny, and other political prisoners in Russia took place in downtown Berlin in front of the Brandenburg Gate. It was held by the organization Russia Behind Bars with the support of other Russophone NGOs in Berlin.
More than two hundred people turned to the rally on a cold July evening. Among them were human rights activists, journalists, and members of the creative intelligentsia, both those who have lived in Berlin for a long time and those who have recently arrived here.
“Every day there are more and more [political] prisoners in Russia. Moreover, we do not have time to remember their names, because they are activists from Khabarovsk and Vologda, Murmansk and Perm. We don’t have time to remember these names,” Olga Romanova, the founder and head of Russia Behind Bars told Radio Svoboda, “but Putin reminded us of something when he said that it was not 1937 in Russia now. He doesn’t know the names of either Boris Kagarlitsky or Zhenya Berkovich, but he firmly knows that they are guilty, and he firmly knows that people like them are ‘shot in Ukraine.’ It is very scary that Russia is ruled by a person with such ‘facts’ in his head and such a set of beliefs. It seems to me that we are here not only to let political prisoners know that we remember them, but also to try to show the rest of the world that not all of Russia is Putin and that perhaps Russia still has a future. There are people in Russia who oppose Putin. They are people who think the same way we do.”
A statement by Vladimir Kara-Murza was read out at the rally. In particular, he argues that Russian citizens who have publicly opposed the brutal, aggressive and unjust war that the Putin regime unleashed against Ukraine occupy a place on this list [sic].
“We are very different people, people of different professions, generations, and outlooks. Among us there are politicians and journalists, priests and soldiers, artists and lawyers, students and pensioners, leftists and rightists. We are united by our rejection of Putin’s criminal war, which the Kremlin is waging on Russia’s behalf . There are millions of people in our country who think like us. Thank you for listening to us and for not believing the Kremlin propaganda tall tales about the alleged universal support for these crimes. I know that the day will come when this darkness will dissipate and another Russia will return to the family of civilized nations, and we will finally be able to create a real united peaceful Europe.”
The words of the Russian politician sentenced to twenty-five years in prison in Russia were heard at the end of the evening rally in Berlin. On the same day, an appeals court in Moscow upheld the sentence against Kara-Murza, whom human rights activists consider a political prisoner.
One of the people attending the rally told Radio Svoboda that he considers it his duty to voice his disagreement with Russia’s criminal full-scale war in Ukraine in any format anywhere in the world. “Individual conscience is what matters. It doesn’t allow us to regard calmly the crimes that Russia is committing on behalf of its citizens,” the rally participant said.
Known as Minnesota’s favorite Americana band of the 99%, The Gated Community celebrates the release of their highly anticipated new album The Honor and Glory of The Gated Community. Showcasing beautiful harmonies, multiple lead singers and virtuosic soloists, this 5th album from the folk/country cult favorites shows the band stepping out of their Marxist bluegrass band box to create poignant songs of personal and collective loss — many of which were written just a few blocks from where Minneapolis Police Department’s 3rd Precinct station was burned and abandoned following the murder of George Floyd.
Living just a few blocks from the 3rd Precinct, frontman Sumanth Gopinath (vocals, guitar) and his partner Beth Hartman (vocals, percussion) were filled with a particular anxiety and dread. “We went through a lot during the uprising itself, but we also feared repeat occurrences of violence at various points – like the November 2020 election, January 6, the inauguration and the Chauvin trial,” Gopinath says. “Moreover, family and friends died or nearly died from COVID-19. My retired colleague David Bernstein passed in March 2020, my aunt died in June 2020, and my uncle was in the hospital for months.”
Although The Gated Community started tracking some of the album in 2019 and early 2020, an electrical failure (caused by the 2020 unrest) fried the studio’s primary and backup hard drives. Left with only a few tracks and a whole new whirlwind of emotions stirred up by the pandemic, George Floyd’s murder, subsequent protests and the rise of fascism in America, the band reworked old songs and arranged new ones written by Gopinath during the pandemic. “Not being able to make music with the other five band members during 2020, I began composing classical music again for the first time in 25 years,” Gopinath says. “I also continued to write songs for the band until we were finally able to do some very distanced outdoor rehearsals in fall of that year.”
With various health concerns among band members, they worked safely and slowly, rehearsing and recording the new tracks with John Miller at Future Condo Studio in Minneapolis. Mastered by Bruce Templeton at Microphonic Mastering, the album was finally done in 2022. Their most ambitious yet, it includes 13 originals with powerful lyrics and thoughtful arrangements. Although still marked by the playfulness that have won them such a loyal following, these songs have less punk urgency and more of the laid-back folk and country vibes of some of their songwriting heroes – from the Ralph Stanley-inspired a capella song “To the Sea Once More” (written for Kobe Dimock-Heisler, a young man of color on the autism spectrum who had just been murdered by police in Brooklyn Center, MN, on Aug. 31, 2019) to the Terry Allen-esque “Mariia” (about the alleged Russian spy and current politician Maria Butina) to the Townes Van Zandt-sounding “Another Fire” (written following the nightly fires that erupted in South Minneapolis after George Floyd’s murder) to the beautiful simplicity of Gillian Welch exhibited in “The Life From My Eyes” (about domestic violence towards women). The album also features the heartfelt playing of recently retired fiddler Teresa Gowan.
Once thought of as a niche novelty outfit, The Gated Community show their evolution into a sophisticated band that mixes social commentary with emotionally rich songwriting. They are incredibly proud to bring this album into the world after the collective traumas of the past three years and are finding solace in playing together once more.
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credits
released February 3, 2023
The Gated Community is Sumanth Gopinath, Cody Johnson, Teresa Gowan, Paul Hatlelid, Rosie Harris, Beth Hartman, and Nate Knutson
with special guest Adrienne Miller
words by Sumanth Gopinath, music by The Gated Community
produced by The Gated Community and John Miller
recorded at Future Condo Studio by John Miller
mixed by John Miller
mastered by Bruce Templeton, Microphonic Mastering
thanks and much love to our families, friends, and fans
special thanks to Tom Campbell and Adam Zahller
in memory of the family members and friends we lost over the past few years, including Liz Adams, Stan Adler, Shekhar Bal, David Bernstein, Josette Bethany, Max Bromley, Jason Christenson, Karen Dresser, Marian Gopinath, Gwen Hartman, Dave Hoenack, Qadri Ismail, Chad Marsolek, Jim McDonald, Ryan Muncy, Rita Elizabeth Nye, Peter Schimke, and Jerold Marvin Schultz
Below, I have reposted a message from my favorite Maoist country swing band, Minneapolis’s The Gated Community.
If you’re a comrade and love country music and live in the Cities (if you live in the Cities, I don’t need to tell you what this means) go see them play a big show at the Parkway Theater on Chicago Avenue. And take your sweetheart and all your friends with you.
This is a song about a gated community entitled “Gated Community,” not a song by The Gated Community. But since they sometimes listen to my advice, I am hoping they will be covering it soon. // TRR
Hi and welcome to Music From Your Heart.
The musical message my heart wants to share with the world is very, very simplistic.
It does not involve complex dialectical or poststructuralist philosophies. It is not about special advanced mediation. And it is not about years and years of study towards a doctoral degree.
This is a simplistic message from the heart. It cuts to the core of what we’re all about.
Deep within the heart of every single person on the planet is a simplistic wisdom. Deep within the heart of every single person is a sense of war. And deep within the heart of every single person is a sense of anxiety.
And the message here is about re-awakening that place within every single person on the planet. That’s why the Music From Your Heart franchise was created.
And we all need reminders to return to that place within. So join the Music From Your Heart Newsletter for these reminders. You’ll get training videos, PDF guides, and updates so you can stay connected with this simplistic message and bring it into your daily life.
] AND CONVICTED FELON MARIA BUTINA? Who doesn’t? Welp, here she is w/ your Daily Irony Supplement — and it’s a massive dose! See, as of Jan. 20 she’ll likely get a pardon and move back Stateside to improve on her spying career (hey, how could she do worse?); but in the meantime, she’s trying to get *Americans* (et al.) to go the *other* way, i.e. move to Moscow — y’know, like Our Guy Ed Snowden & his new roommate, Bashar al-Assad, who just *love* it there, right?
