A 110-mile march against white supremacy

Dozens of people are joining a march from Charlottesville to Washington DC this week to protest white supremacy and “tell the world what’s going on” in the US.

“The aim of the march is to show to this country, to this world, that white supremacy needs to be confronted. We need to confront the history of the United States – the history of genocide and slavery,” said Nelini Stamp, one of the marchers and a member of the Working Families party.

The march was organized after the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville that culminated in the death of the democracy activist Heather Heyer. Activists set off from Charlottesville on Monday and plan to arrive in Washington on Wednesday 6 September.

Stamp said racism in the US runs deeper than the white supremacy demonstrations seen in Charlottesville.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The march began at the Robert E Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia. Photograph: Julia Rendleman/AP

“The president keeps threatening to remove [the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program] for undocumented immigrants and undocumented youths. And if he does that, that is white supremacy,” Stamp said.

“There is rumors out of Congress of increasing prison spending and prison budgets. That is a form of white supremacy because black and brown people are being incarcerated at enormous rates.”

Adios, Christopher Columbus

Los Angeles became the largest city in the US to ditch Columbus Day on Wednesday, when the city council voted to rename the public holiday “Indigenous People’s Day”.

It was a victory for Native American activists and others, who have long protested the celebration of Christopher Columbus. They argue Columbus was responsible for the colonization of the US and the genocide that followed.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the city voted 14-1 in favor of the renaming, which was pushed by Mitch O’Farrell, a city councilman and member of the Wyandotte Nation tribe in Oklahoma.

Five states in the US do not acknowledge the name Columbus Day – Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon, South Dakota, and Vermont – while cities including Phoenix and Seattle have previously voted to rebrand the public holiday (which falls on 9 October this year).

Who’s actually running for president in 2020?

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are the standout progressives among a slew of Democrats positioning themselves for a presidential run in 2020, Axios reported on Friday.

According to Axios, there are up to “three dozen” Democrats weighing a run against Trump – the chances of them running ranging from “possible to plausible to probable”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Could we be seeing more of this kind of thing come 2019? Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

The candidates being watched most closely are the senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Kamala Harris, as well as New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, Axios said.

What we’re reading

• Houstonia magazine has put together a list of local charities that people can donate to in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. The charities include Baker Ripley, which helps low-income Houstonians, and the Montrose Center’s LGBTQ disaster relief fund.

• Eric Levitz, writing in New York Magazine, says that as the 2018 midterm elections approach, liberals have had considerable success in influencing the Democratic party. “Progressives have created a world where darlings of the Democratic donor wing can call for the (virtual) abolition of the private insurance industry; in fact, this appears to be the politically savvy thing to do,” Levitz says.

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