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PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) Happy Thanksgiving to you in the land your forefathers stole.

Thats the in-your-feast message Native Americans are preparing to send as they convene their 50th annual National Day of Mourning in the seaside town where the Pilgrims settled.

United American Indians of New England has held the solemn remembrance on every Thanksgiving Day since 1970 to recall what organizers describe as the genocide of millions of native people, the theft of native lands and the relentless assault on native culture.

But Thursdays gathering will have particular resonance and, indigenous people say, a fresh sense of urgency.

Plymouth is putting the final touches on next years 400th anniversary commemorations of the Pilgrims landing in 1620. And as the 2020 events approach, descendants of the Wampanoag tribe that helped the newcomers survive are determined to ensure the world doesnt forget the disease, racism and oppression the European settlers brought.

We talk about the history because we must, said Mahtowin Munro, a co-leader of the group.

The focus is always on the Pilgrims. Were just going to keep telling the truth, she said. More and more nonnative people have been listening to us. Theyre trying to adjust their prism.

As they have on every Thanksgiving for the past half-century, participants will assemble at noon on Coles Hill, a windswept mound overlooking Plymouth Rock, a memorial to the colonists arrival.

Beneath a giant bronze statue of Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader in 1620, Native Americans from tribes around New England will beat drums, offer prayers and read speeches before marching through Plymouths historic district, joined by dozens of sympathetic supporters.

Organizers say theyll also call attention to the plight of missing and murdered indigenous women, as well as government crackdowns on migrants from Latin America and the detentions of children. Promotional posters proclaim: We didnt cross the border the border crossed us!

Past gatherings have mourned lives lost to the nationwide opioid addiction crisis, shown solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and condemned environmental degradation.

The tradition was born of Plymouths last big birthday bash in 1970 a 350th anniversary commemoration that triggered angry demonstrations by native people excluded from a decidedly Pilgrim-focused observance.

Since then, the National Day of Mourning has become a louder, prouder and increasingly multiethnic affair in the community nicknamed Americas Hometown.

Although mostly peaceable, there has been tension. In 1997, 25 protesters were arrested after their march through town erupted into a melee with police.

There have also been colorful moments. Over the decades, activists have ceremonially buried Plymouth Rock in sand, boarded the Mayflower II a replica of the ship that carried the English settlers to the New World and draped Ku Klux Klan garb on a statue of William Bradford, a Pilgrim father who eventually became governor of the Plymouth Bay Colony.

In a likeminded tradition dating to 1975, tribes in the San Francisco area hold a similar ceremony called Unthanksgiving Day, gathering at sunrise on Alcatraz Island to recall how Native Americans occupied the island in protest for 19 months starting in November 1969.

Francis Bremer, a Pilgrim scholar and professor emeritus of history at Pennsylvanias Millersville University, thinks the nation is becoming more receptive to a side of the story thats too often been ignored.

Fifty years ago, for nonnative people, these were uncomfortable truths they didnt want to hear. Now theyre necessary truths, he said.

To help right old wrongs, Munros coalition is pushing what it calls the Massachusetts Indigenous Legislative Agenda. Among other things, the campaign includes a proposal to redesign the state flag, which critics say is repressive. It depicts a muscular arm wielding a broadsword over a Native American holding a bow.

Paula Peters, a Wampanoag writer and activist who isnt a member of the group that organizes the public mourning, sees progress in getting Americans to look past the Thanksgiving myth of Pilgrims and natives coexisting peacefully.

We have come a long way, she said. We continue to honor our ancestors by taking our history out of the margins and into the forefront.

___

Follow Bill Kole on Twitter at https://twitter.com/billkole .

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No thanks: Native Americans to hold 50th gathering of grief - Associated Press

The Progressive Era left a mixed record, largely because progressives were too hostile to political parties as crucial engines of political engagement and overly optimistic about the power of independent, rational judgment. But the eras reforms solved a particular problem of corrupt, top-down power at a particular moment. Each reformist movement can be expected only to resolve its most pressing problems in a way that keeps democracy going for a future era of reform

When future historians look back on the 2010s, they will observe three larger trends that paved the way for a new era of reform by clearing away the old consensus: a loss of faith in neoliberal economics, the breakdown of white male-dominated social and cultural hierarchies, and the collapse of the normal political process.

The financial crisis of 2008-09 and the decades-long stagnation of middle-class wages shattered the neoliberal faith that loosely regulated markets naturally bring widespread prosperity. In the last decade, leaders in both parties have turned (rhetorically, at least) against the global trade and financial system, mouthing the frustrations of voters.

The new tech giants now wield a kind of power as the central nodes of commerce and information that we havent seen since the railroads of the Gilded Age. For most Americans, the economy feels unfair. Capitalism has lost its luster, particularly for younger Americans. As in the Progressive Era, corporate domination and corruption are widely agreed to be a problem.

On the changing social and cultural order, both Me Too and Black Lives Matter represent profound and emblematic new social movements not just because they spotlighted and remedied longstanding injustices. They are also profound because they show how new technology and new forms of media have upended traditional power relationships by amplifying previously marginalized stories. For instance, the number of women, and particularly women of color, running for (and winning) public office has increased significantly over the last few years.

These cultural changes have provoked a backlash that contributed to Donald Trumps rise and the associated growth of alt-right movements. Fights over identity now define national partisan competition because they echo and reinforce fundamental divides in the ethnic and geographical coalitions of the two major parties and amplify the zero-sum stakes of two-party electoral conflict. The unceasing culture war is a battle over two very different and diverging visions.

On the political system itself: The conflicts over economics and culture are intimately tied to declining faith in politics as usual and the growing distrust of government. But in a politics oriented around zero-sum questions of national identity, and with razors edge control of Congress constantly at stake, compromise equates to surrender.

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Trumps Election May Have Been the Shock We Needed - The New York Times

A volunteer teaching a lesson on art and activism at Sacramento's Del Paso Manor Elementary School in September asked students to create a poster focusing on change they wanted to see in the school, according to statements from both San Juan Unified School District, which includes the school, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

The problem began when some students who created Black Lives Matter posters were told they needed to redo the assignment and didn't have their work displayed in the classroom, the ACLU says. In a letter sent Thursday, the group called out the school district for censorship, claiming the school is violating the First Amendment.

The ACLU claims the teacher specifically said posters relating to Black Lives Matter were "inappropriate for the class" and made four students who supported the movement in their work redo their posters. The teacher targeted these students based on the content of their poster, the ACLU says, which is therefore a violation of their First Amendment rights, according to the watchdog group.

The San Juan Unified School District says these students were asked to redo their posters because the artwork was focused on large social issues, rather than issues specifically related to the school. They were asked to redo the assignment not because of the content, but because the posters didn't meet the assignment's purpose. The district said in a statement that censoring a student's assigned work because of its content "would not be acceptable."

Other students with posters on topics like immigration and animal cruelty were also asked to redo their posters, a representative for the district told CNN.

The ACLU, though, says the fact that other posters were also redone doesn't matter.

It's still a content-based judgement if a teacher decides that a student's BLM artwork doesn't have anything to do with the school, said Abre' Conner, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California. Banning artwork based on the content is a First Amendment violation.

"It's not up to (the teacher) to then decide that Black Lives Matter is off limits for something they wanted to see change," she told CNN.

The ACLU is representing both a student who was involved and the volunteer who was brought in to teach. The organization was originally made aware of the case by the volunteer, and then further investigated by speaking with a student whose assignment was rejected.

ACLU also claiming state education code violation

The ACLU isn't only charging the school with a First Amendment violation. The California Education Code also protects Black Lives Matter posters, the ACLU argues.

It states, in section 48907, "Pupils of the public schools, including charter schools, shall have the right to exercise freedom of speech and of the press including, but not limited to, the use of bulletin boards, the distribution of printed materials or petitions, the wearing of buttons, badges, and other insignia."

As long as the speech isn't "obscene, libelous or slanderous," the expression is protected, the code reads.

Under Section 201 of the code, California's public schools have an "affirmative obligation to combat racism, sexism, and other forms of bias, and a responsibility to provide equal educational opportunity."

The ACLU claims the Black Lives Matter posters fall under this category -- and are therefore protected.

The watchdog group says the teacher specifically referenced the Black Lives Matter posters in conversations with the volunteer, calling them "inappropriate and political." The teacher asked "whether students were getting shot at the school and demanded answers regarding why a presentation on Black Lives Matter was relevant" to the elementary school, the ACLU alleges. Political speech is protected by the state's education code.

He also threw away one of the student's posters, after saying the student could pick it up, the ACLU claims.

"Looking at those pieces together demonstrates that this was clearly more than asking students to redo the assignment," Conner said. "It seems that there was some kind of animus against the topic (of Black Lives Matter)."

The district said in its statement that some of the assertions made by the ACLU present "new information" and officials are investigating the incident further.

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Sacramento elementary school violated free speech by censoring Black Lives Matter posters, ACLU says - CNN

To witness was in fact one reason I was there. Cementing something in memory is one way of cementing it in the world. But I had another reason for going, too. My daughter was 12 on the day of Nias murder. She caught the train to school from the same BART station where Nia was killed. She called me that day in a panic, terrified and bereft and full of questions that I could not answer. Why did this happen to Nia? Why did this happen to black women? Why wouldnt this happen to her? I had no answers. I could do only what parents do: promise to protect my child. So I told her that I would go into the streets that hundreds, maybe thousands of us would go into the streets, and that we would be doing it for her. We would be doing it to show her that we would not let this happen.

It was tremendously important to me that my daughter stay home that evening, safe in her room, in her pajamas and slippers, watching Netflix, eating Flamin Hot Cheetos, texting with friends while we put our flesh on the hot downtown asphalt. No child should have to protect herself. It is our job to protect one another. And this is why I protested not to make noise, or make change, but in order for the person who could not, should not be in the streets to see me, to see us all, as proof that she is not alone in caring for her life. To attend that protest was an act of love, an experience that brought me closer to life. But it was set against a backdrop of death.

For black people, Lena Waithe told me, death is always present. We were sitting in her home in Los Angeles, discussing her screenplay for Queen & Slim. Black death is very interesting in that it is devastating, but at the same time, it illuminates us, she said. She named Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Emmett Till, Fred Hampton and Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., Tupac Shakur and Nipsey Hussle black figures whose deaths turned them into symbols, added tragic weight to their legacies. Four little black girls minding their own business playing in the basement of a church shook the world, she said, referring to the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. You dont want those little black girls to die, because who would want that? But if they didnt, would we be as free as we are right now? There are so many sacrificial lambs in our past. Its almost like black death is necessary to set us free. And I grapple with that. All the time. Thats why I think I had to write this.

When I asked the director, Melina Matsoukas, if she thought Queen & Slim was a hopeful story, she replied almost immediately: Its a black story. Rather than a dodge, this felt like a complete answer. In blackness, hope is often complicated by the intrusion of death, bloodshed, depression, incarceration, grief, brutality. You cannot for the good of your family, your kids, your loved ones, yourself keep your face fully toward the sun when you know the darkness is chasing you. In Queen & Slim, all good things are fleeting, and all love is set against bloodletting. The characters would like it to be otherwise, but they do not have a say.

I wanted you just to look at them like: Huh, thats me. Thats my mother, thats my brother, thats my sister, thats my cousin, Waithe told me. I want you to live with them, I want you to be scared with them. I want you to fall in love with them. The idea that we are supposed to identify with the characters on a screen is not new, but the idea that we black people are supposed to identify might still be. White directors have been speaking their language for decades, Waithe said. We have to learn it, we have to find ourselves in that narrative.

For Waithe, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago, finding herself in that narrative meant studying television made by people like Aaron Sorkin and the creators of Friends, David Crane and Marta Kauffman. After years acting and writing in Los Angeles, she became the first black woman ever to win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series, for an episode of Aziz Ansaris Master of None loosely based on her own experience of coming out to her mother. That episode was directed by Matsoukas, a woman of mixed heritage Jamaican, Cuban, Jewish and Greek who had spent a decade directing music videos for stars including Lady Gaga and Rihanna. (Her memorable video for Beyoncs Formation, with its stylistic mixture of documentary and fantasy, arrived at the height of Black Lives Matter and, to many, deftly synthesized the visual power of the movement; its look echoes in Queen & Slim.) Matsoukas describes the film as not just about black love onscreen but also about the sisterly love of the two women who came together to make it. We can be a power, she told me of the faith she has in her artistic relationship with Waithe. Trust is really important, she said. Probably the only way I survive.

Queen & Slim holds its cinematic influences for all to see. It is tempting to compare it to both Bonnie & Clyde and Thelma & Louise, as the titles syntax seems to invite. Visually, Matsoukas says that she was inspired by Belly, another cinematic debut by a music-video director turned filmmaker, Hype Williams its gritty, ever-moving camera, its flashes of light and color. And Waithe lists among her influences films like Set It Off and Love Jones, both part of a 1990s wave that had dozens of black filmmakers telling stories that felt unaffected by the white gaze the same movies that my cousins and I watched over and over on lazy summer days, memorizing every line, partly because they were about us and partly because there were so few of them.

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Queen & Slim Could Be One of the Great Love Stories of All Time if You Let It - The New York Times

Yet, many modern organizers will say its a collective belief in one another, not God, that sustains a movement. Opal Tometi, a co-founder Black Lives Matter, has described the movement as one created out of a profound sense of black love. We wanted to affirm to our people that we love one another, and that no matter how many times we hear about the extrajudicial killing of a community member, we would mourn, and affirm the value of their life.

Black Lives Matter has intentionally positioned itself outside of organized religion in an attempt to challenge the norms of religious institutions, particularly concerning issues of sexuality and male-centered leadership. But the embrace of the secular seems to be a failure on the part of the movement despite small wins in cities that are mostly liberal, the most lasting impact has been a change of conversation. And even then, the Black Lives Matter mantra has been co-opted by liberals as a political slogan rather than a pointed ideological conviction. Without the centralized leadership, oratorical strength and widespread influence organized religion has historically provided to black liberation struggles, it has been difficult for the movement to sustain itself on a national front.

I fear that absent the structural and rhetorical power offered by organized religion, it will become increasingly difficult for the left to fight the growing ideology of right wing extremism, an ideology that has always been heavily undergirded by its own religious dogma. Religion has long been crucial to the right wing in pushing its legislative agenda. In the early 1960s, for instance, the Supreme Court decisions restricting teacher-led prayer and Bible reading in the public schools helped ignite the religious right to political action, and their influence within the Republican Party has grown steadily ever since.

White evangelical support for President Trump exceeded 80 percent in the 2016 election, and they remain critical to his base. The Trump administration has often cited religious freedom in its efforts to allow medical providers to deny reproductive health care and empower anti-LGBTQ discrimination by federal contractors.

Assuming leftism to be inherently antagonistic to organized religion does a great disservice to both the history of progressive movements and modern progressivism itself, as collective belief provides both a program and a passion essential to anti-oppression movements. In many ways, the political is made more significant when intertwined with the spiritual, as belief supersedes political motivation in pursuit of a world vision that is exalted as the will of God. In the words of Dr. King: Religious obligations are met by ones commitment to an inner law, a law written on the heart. Man-made laws assure justice, but a higher law produces love.

Beyond politics, perhaps what we lose with the decline of collective belief more than anything is this notion of radical love, one that extends beyond identity politics or civic obligation. As I consider the generational decline of organized religion, I imagine the good collective faith can still achieve. These days, when I participate in a climate march or donate money to organizations like the Trans Women of Color Collective, I do so as much out of religious obligation as a political one. Beyond a tendency toward compassion and empathy, religion has ingrained in me the notion that I am indeed my brothers keeper; that anothers well-being is inextricably bound up with my own.

I think often of that morning 17 years ago, waiting alongside my mother and sisters at the doors of the church, standing in the need of more than prayer. That day I came to know the God of Love only through the Love of God, a love that was extended by strangers beholden to me only by a system of collective belief. If anything has the potential to Save the Soul of America, surely that love can.

Bianca Vivion Brooks is a writer based in Harlem.

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To Take on the Religious Right, We Need a Religious Left - The New York Times