HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

Human Wrongs Watch

By Richard E. Rubenstein – TRANSCEND Media Service*

Fifty years ago this year, I published my first book, entitled Rebels in Eden – an exploration of mass political violence in America focusing on the uprisings that had by then incinerated substantial portions of the inner city communities of Los Angeles, New York, Newark, Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, as well as scores of smaller towns and cities.[i]

Richard E. Rubenstein

Those riots were far more destructive than anything experienced in the protests following the recent killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery by police and ex-police officers.

The sixties uprisings killed several hundred people (almost all Black civilians), injured more than 12,000, and caused billions of dollars in property damage.

What Hasn’t Changed

Rebels in Eden was reviewed in popular journals like TIME and Newsweek and was widely read, along with a small flood of similar publications. But, what difference did any of this make?

Human Wrongs Watch

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana and Inger Andersen*

BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 18 2020 (IPS)* – The world before COVID-19 looks very attractive right now. In light of the disease, mass unemployment and social distancing, a return to pre-pandemic normality seems appealing. Yet we should remember what normal was.

Credit: Marcin Jozwiak on Unsplash

Normal was obtaining 85 per cent of our energy fossil fuels and losing 7 million people a year to air pollution. Normal was careening toward a global temperature rise of over 3.5 C by the end of the century, with island nations facing obliteration. Normal was 1 in 8 species threatened with extinction, continued squeezing of wild spaces into smaller and smaller corners, and the rampant illegal trade in wildlife.

Normal contributed to causing this pandemic.