My piece for the New York Times: Britain's strikes are pushing back against the government line that economic pain is unavoidable - and they've captured the public mood
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rachel shabi
@rachshabi
Journalist. Politics and sometimes food, but only for geopolitical point-scoring
LondonBorn March 30Joined January 2009
rachel shabi’s Tweets
Will be joining Sky news for the press previews this evening and to gush about the coronation (as if)
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"The Met police had tweeted earlier this week that they would have a 'low tolerance' of those seeking to 'undermine' the day."
Not even pretending to operate the law, are they? Just arresting people who are politically inconvenient.
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Outrageous scenes of cops arresting anti-monarchy protestors and stealing their placards
So we are not allowed to show public opposition to a bloke being crowned head of state for having been born into unimaginable wealth while ppl line up at food banks and schools fall apart
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Are you pitching a sitcom
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King Charles III lives in a palace and is one of Britain’s richest men, but his life is complicated. There’s a second wife, an embarrassing brother, and strife with a son and daughter-in-law. He will hope to keep a lid on those tensions at his coronation. apnews.com/article/king-c
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"Iraqi communities living close to oil fields, where gas is openly burned, are at elevated risk of leukaemia, a BBC News Arabic investigation revealed."
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Will be with the excellent World Service Weekend tomorrow 0630 to 0900 UK, join us early risers and those on later time zones
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#ItsBloodyComplicated Ep 84: 3 Years of Keir Starmer is available now👍
Thank you to our guests and 🙌
🎧 Listen to the podcast episode here👇
ow.ly/b4av50NzFPs
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The difference is racism.
That's it.
#Sudan
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'You were coming up with safe routes from Ukraine, would it be sensible to do the same from Sudan?'
On #BBCBreakfast Jon questions Home Secretary Suella Braverman about the evacuations of people from Sudan
bbc.co.uk/news/live/worl
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Every word of this excellent piece
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The lesson from the Diane Abbott row: if we fight racism in silos, we just can’t win. My column
theguardian.com/commentisfree/
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The UK flights from Sudan are only taking UK nationals. Doctors who work for the NHS and live and work in the UK but aren’t citizens are being left behind.
This is the poisonous madness of racist UK.
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Honestly could have written the script for the outrage spectacle over Diane Abbott: one offensive comment, for which she apologised, then pounced on to swarm attack a Black woman, the left, ‘wokeism’, critical race theory
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We can acknowledge the ongoing, everyday racism people of colour face, everywhere - education, workplace, healthcare, housing, policing, Windrush for god’s sake - without minimising antisemitism, or saying it isn’t racism, or whatever. That’s the work
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Thankfully there are many examples of solidarity btw black, Jewish, Muslim, Traveller and other minoritised communities against the distinct but overlapping struggles we all face in Britain
Strangely these are not the voices I’m seeing centred in media coverage of this “debate”
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Our political and media conversation constantly reproduces this: performatively caring about antisemitism while minimising other racism. And at a time when we should be uniting to tackle all racism, it tears the left apart
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There is zero anti-racism benefit to singling out antisemitism in this way. The only political force that ever gains from this divisive approach to tackling racism is the right wing, always (fromPolitico playbook)
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Exactly this. Labour can't deal with any racism effectively - including antisemitism - unless the party is consistent. Creating the perception of hierarchies, as Forde documented, is awful for everyone
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I think it's a legitimate question to ask why the swiftness in action we've witnessed with Diane Abbott cannot be replicated when it comes to the Islamophobia and anti-Black racism that is rife in the Labour Party and has been very well documented.
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The excellent on now talking about #DianeAbbot, racism and tackling all forms of racism in politics and across society. “Look at the people who are erased in this conversation, Black Jews, Jews of colour, Arab Jews, GRT people and communities.”
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Racialised minorities face different kinds of racism at different times. And obviously, colourism has an ongoing impact. We need to find ways to discuss tangible differences without feeding oppression olympics or hierarchies
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And Robyn Autry, who wrote on our media outrage spectacles over racism: "Race is an elastic social category, not a fixed biological one; Jewish identity and experience are not synonymous with whiteness; and Jewish people have historically been treated as a distinct racial group."
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I'm reminded of what Emily Tamkin wrote in the book Bad Jews: “Precisely because race is a construct, the boundary between ‘white’ and ‘not white’ is slippery and inconsistent.”
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The World Service clip on Diane Abbott is here: we discuss a general lack of understanding over how minorities are racialised, as well as Labour and the Forde report (30mins in)
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Talking with BBC World Service about Diane Abbott letter and racism in Britain around 9:30pm
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48 hours to go until we are LIVE on #ItsBloodyComplicated🎙️
Our next prime minister could be , but has he shown the leadership we need for a better future?
We are joined with and to find out 👍
Join us 25th Apr 6pm 👉 ow.ly/P0sk50NLzAu
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We will never tackle any racism in isolation, or unless we acknowledge how little we know about different racisms, how different minorities get racialised, or how prejudices intersect. We. All of us. Nobody is really immune
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And as shocking as it is coming from an MP, especially from one you admire and respect, it is also a reminder of a generalised lack of information about different racialised minorities
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Saddening and shocking to read Diane Abbott's letter and painful to see these assumptions that downplay racism when it targets Jewish, GRT and Irish communities
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📰 Coming up on the Press Preview tonight from 10:30pm
is joined by and to take a look at tomorrow's front pages
📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube
📱 Watch live: trib.al/hV7zjfN
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Looking at some Trumpian front pages, like this one, on Sky's Press preview this eve, 10.30pm and 11.30pm
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SUNDAY EXPRESS: ‘Activist’ civil servants target @SuellaBraverman #TomorrowsPapersToday
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Brilliant interview with the brilliant Amira Hass on the Israeli protest movement, escalating violence against Palestinians and more
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Today is the first Eid without my dad. I knew we weren’t alone but I cannot believe the numbers are so high. The Tories cannot get away with this.
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EXC: 43,000 people died before an ambulance arrived last year amid record 999 delays mirror.co.uk/news/politics/
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With its immoral and cruel asylum plan, the Conservative government has helped Rwanda's tyrannical leader Paul Kagame to present himself as offering a haven for people fleeing dictatorship
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But do people want a party that posts pictures of an Indian heritage PM claiming he does not want sex offenders put in prison?
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People don't want more excuses from politicians – they want answers.
Labour is the party of law and order
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1
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.: "it is not fine to say that the PM thinks its ok that adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should not go to prison... [that] is clearly not even a dog whistle, its a fog horn, its disgusting, no Labour party worthy of that name should be doing it"
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So that's what it looks like when no one sails over to colonise you 🥲
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Oxford in 1810 and 2015. This is how history, culture and traditions are preserved.
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