How do we, as a society, in a free, democratic dispensation, address the enduring legacy of spatial apartheid

July 9, 2026 by Leave a Comment

On July 2, 2026, the Constitutional Court of South Africa issued a “landmark decision”, a decision that should be read by every housing, anti-eviction, labor activist as well as every city planner and elected official in Cape Town, across South Africa, around the world, dominated as the world is by the brutality and complexity, by the logic and practice of expulsions, of global cities on a planet of slums. The decision begins, “At its core, this case raises a fundamental constitutional question: how do we, as a society, in a free, democratic dispensation, address the enduring legacy of spatial apartheid? The submissions in these matters have highlighted the crucial distinction between merely distributing resources and ensuring that those resources are distributed in a manner that actively dismantles historical inequalities shaped by race and class along geographical lines. A city’s architecture tells the story of its soul.”

A city’s architecture tells the story of its soul.

Where do you live? What is your city’s architecture? How has that soul baring, soul bearing architecture changed in the last ten, twenty, thirty years? In the past half century or so, when the world economy spawned both a planet of slums and a planet of global cities marked by mcmansionsa and, even more, formally and informally gated communities? A city’s architecture tells the story of its soul.

The judgment continues: “In Cape Town, as in most, if not all, South African cities, that story remains one of division – where the echoes of apartheid’s spatial planning continue to reverberate through its streets and suburbs. Every morning, thousands of Cape Town’s workers board buses, taxis and trains in the pre-dawn darkness, travelling for hours from the city’s periphery to its centre. Their daily journey is not just a commute – it is a living testament to the enduring legacy of spatial injustice that this case glaringly exposes before this Court. The main question in this matter is whether the State, as custodian of public land, has a legal obligation to address spatial divisions within Cape Town, or whether, through its actions, it is perpetuating divisions without breaching any legal duty.”

While many tumble from bed into their home-based workspaces and others commute perhaps a half hour to an hour or so to work, around the world it is considered normal that those who work the most hours and are paid the least spend the most time, inordinate amounts of time, getting to work and returning home. The impact of those treks is, at best, deeply corrosive, for both individual and community. And, of course, the impacts of these dire conditions are worsened by gender. This is urban design, and the feeling in too many places has been, “Yes, it’s `unfortunate’, but really, what can we do?” The Constitutional Court answered, as did activists and organizers, from movements such as Ndifuna Ukwazi and Reclaim the City who have been organizing and mobilizing on this particular case since 2016. A wild patience took them to this decision.

The decision goes on to explain the concept of social housing: “Pervasive spatial inequality could only be combatted by housing schemes seeking to ensure that access to areas of opportunity is more evenly distributed across the population so as to cure the deep geographical divides. This includes subsidising people’s occupation in areas they were previously excluded from, thereby fostering integration and improving the prospects of occupants. Government could bring this about by acquiring, developing, converting or upgrading buildings for integrated housing schemes. By placing segments of the population closer to economic opportunities and social services, social housing is exactly such a scheme. It strives to ensure that well-located, affordable and quality rental homes are made available to segments of the public in locations that enable them to benefit from greater proximity to economic opportunities and to health and educational facilities and social amenities. The importance of social housing, therefore, cannot be understated.”

The importance of social housing cannot be understated.

From there, the decision enters into the details of the case, which I won’t go into here. The decision is here; summary responses are here and here. They’re all fascinating. The key is that the Constitution assures the right to adequate and dignified housing, and that means, among other things, housing that supports a dignified life, dignified in and of itself, dignified in the context of the general society. It’s not enough to build a house “somewhere”. The location matters … as a matter of law.

Further, pipeline plans and projects that [a] did not emerge from any consultation with the disenfranchised communities, [b] continue to stick social housing in the far peripheries of the city, and [c] generally don’t materialize anyway are “not in compliance”. Translate: mean less than the paper they’re written on. The City of Cape Town was told to get serious about providing real, affordable, dignified housing in “amenity-rich” neighborhoods, to provide detailed plans which will be monitored by the court, and to rethink its approach to housing and, perhaps even more, to those in need of decent housing.

The final point is that the right to decent, dignified and adequate housing is and must be a codified, Constitutional right. If it’s not … make it so.

A city’s architecture tells the story of its soul. What’s in yours?

(by Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Matthew Hirsch / GroundUp)

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Why don’t you go back …

June 28, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Stories change and yet remain the same, sometimes over time, sometimes in translation, sometimes just because, just because they’re haunting. Here’s an example, perhaps. In the 1950s, Baltimore, where my family lived, was deeply, though by that point largely “informally”, segregated. It was called “neighborhood charm”: White neighborhoods, Black neighborhoods. White neighborhoods were either Jewish or Christian. Then White Christian neighborhoods divided into White ethnic zones. I was six at the time of this story.

I lived in a working- to lower middle class Jewish neighborhood. I was playing with the girl next door, as we often did. We got into an argument … as we often did. At one point, I said something, I don’t remember what, that infuriated her, infuriated her so much that she trembled, looked at me, speechless, and then said, “Why don’t you back to where you came from?”

We had come from Europe, Holocaust survivors. My mother was Belgian, my father was Polish, I was born in Belgium. My parents “spoke with an accent” (welcome to America). I knew my neighbor had no idea where I came from and doubted she knew that Belgium existed. So, with that knowledge, I replied, “Where do you think I came from?”

Silence.

Silence.

Then her face lit up and she said, gleefully and loudly, “Africa!”

That’s the story.

Where did she learn “Africa!”? When did she learn “Africa!”? How did she learn “Africa!”? Those are the questions I’ve had for decades. But today, as I watch xenophobic movements, including on the African continent, rally and march, I wonder as well at the joy she felt, the deep, satisfying pleasure she felt, when she could say, “Africa!”

Some stories stay with you.

(by Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Ad Reinhardt, “Abstratct Painting” / MoMA)

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States of abandonment: In evictions, who abandons whom?

June 14, 2026 by Leave a Comment

“Zones of abandonment … accelerate the death of the unwanted. In this bureaucratically and relationally sanctioned register of social death, the human, the mental and the chemical are complicit: their entanglement expresses a common sense that authorized the lives of some while disallowing the lives of others.”
João Biehl, Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment

This story is about a day in the life of Sherry Gudger, a resident of Halethorpe, in Baltimore County, in Maryland. Sherry Gudger is a single mother living with multiple sclerosis. On or around August 7 of this year, Sherry Gudger received a notice stating that she would be evicted on the 25th of August. According to Ms. Gudger, she “did her best to remove her personal possessions from her third-floor apartment”. She didn’t manage to remove everything. August 25th was the first day of school for her 8-year-old son. Ms. Gudger walked her son to school, returned to the apartment, and found that all her belongings had been thrown away. These belongings included “her passport card, clothing, work tools, her eight-year-old son’s bed, and other furniture.” The trashing of her estate was completely legal. Baltimore County has a “Placement of Personal Property” ordinance, which says that a tenant’s belongings removed during an eviction “shall be considered abandoned”. Sherry Gudger has joined a lawsuit challenging both the loss of her possessions and the law itself. The action was “lawful”, but was it right? Further, and really, did Sherry Gudger “abandon” her personal property … or was she abandoned by the processes of eviction?

These questions have already been asked and answered. In 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit struck down a similar law in Baltimore City. According to Maryland Legal Aid, representing Sherry Gudger, “In that case, the court held that tenants are entitled to clear notice that they could permanently lose ownership of their possessions during an eviction and that due process requires a meaningful opportunity to determine whether property was truly abandoned.”

Sherry Gudger explained, “I became part of this lawsuit because I believe everyone should be treated fairly. A lot of people are going through hard times right now, and what happened to me and my family could happen to someone else. People deserve to know what can happen to their property and have a chance to recover the belongings that are important to them.”

People deserve to know, and people deserve a chance to recover. For residents, and often for neighbors and friends, evictions are an existential crisis. That crisis does not endow the State or any entity with the power to reduce them to nothing. That’s what was supposed to happen in Halethorpe. Management told maintenance to go in, grab everything and dump it. Sherry Gudger was supposed to simply disappear … but she refused and refuses to do so. She refuses to be a citizen of the state of abandonment, a zone of social death through forced and unremarkable disappearances. It’s just business as usual. People deserve to know. People deserve a chance to recover. I believe everyone should be treated fairly.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Julie Shields / “The things people told me“)

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From 1976 to 2026, neither peace nor ceasefire have ever been keywords. So what?

June 6, 2026 by Leave a Comment

“The blues remembers everything the country forgot”
Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson, “Bicentennial Blues”

What does it mean to forget the meaning of peace? Of ceasefire? Or, what does it mean to never have known?

In 1976, the year of the United States Bicentennial, the Welsh activist scholar Raymond Williams published Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Williams was careful to state, and repeat often, that his work was a vocabulary, not a dictionary, that it was imbedded in and woven through the social and political usages and tendencies of both his time and the times that produced his times, and the people that made and were made by, in and through those times. In 1976, Williams’ vocabulary included neither peace nor ceasefire. Nineteen words comprised the total of C-words. From capitalism to culture, C was the largest collection of words in his vocabulary. Peace did not figure in among the nine words beginning with P, from peasant to psychological. In 1976, no one gave peace a chance … and why would they? Has anything changed since then?

In 1976, the year of the United States Bicentennial, Gil-Scott Heron and Brian Jackson wrote and recorded Bicentennial Blues. The song investigates reasons the United States is the “home of the blues”. A few stanzas in, after the initial explanation, the song explains:

“The point is
That the blues has grown
The blues is grown now, full grown
And you can trace the evolution of the blues
On a parallel line with the evolution of this country
From Plymouth Rock to acid-rock
From 13 states to Watergate
The blues is grown
But not the home
The blues is grown
But the country has not
The blues remembers everything the country forgot

It’s a bicentennial year and the blues is celebrating a birthday
And it’s a bicentennial blues

America has got the blues and it’s a bicentennial edition
The blues view might amuse you
But make no mistake, it’s a bicentennial year
A year of hysterical importance
A year of historical importance”

And here we are, 2026, a year of hysterical importance, a year of historical importance, a year, five decades later, in which the blues remembers everything the country forgot.

In 1982, June Jordan published “Apologies to all the people in Lebanon”. The poem opens:

“I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?

They said you shot the London Ambassador
and when that wasn’t true
they said so
what
They said you shelled their northern villages
and when U.N. forces reported that was not true
because your side of the cease-fire was holding
since more than a year before
they said so
what
They said they wanted simply to carve
a 25 mile buffer zone and then
they ravaged your
water supplies your electricity your
hospitals your schools your highways and byways all
the way north to Beirut because they said this
was their quest for peace
of mankind isn’t that obvious?”

Here we are, decades later, and the “quest for peace” remains invasion, destruction, devastation, and death, and we continue to say, “I didn’t know and nobody told me and what could I do or say, anyway?” Where is the vocabulary, where are the culture and society, in which peace and ceasefire are keywords, words of critical significance, rather than invitations to say, “So what?”

The illustration below appeared in yesterday’s issue of The Guardian. How many more times will we see such illustrations? So what?

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Illustration: Fiona Katauskas / The Guardian)

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With “seclusion rooms” in schools, the war on children with disabilities continues

May 17, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Salmon River schools seclusion room

 

This week, NPR reported rampant abuse of Native American children in schools in a district in upstate New York: “Native kids with disabilities were held in wooden boxes. Sweeping reforms are coming”. The story is deeply disturbing. Schools built wooden boxes, “timeout” spaces”, and confined children with disabilities, children in majority Mohawk districts, into those boxes. Now the state says it’s going to do something, something `sweeping’, about those atrocities, about “seclusion rooms”. If history is any judge, they’ll need a big broom, one to cover the whole of the United States.

The story concerning upstate New York first broke last year. December 18: “Salmon River educators placed on leave over allegations that students were locked in box”: “Educators in the Salmon River Central School District have been placed on administrative leave, and the superintendent has been reassigned amid allegations that special needs students were restrained in wooden boxes at school. In addition, the district has shifted to remote learning for Friday.” At first, the Superintendent said the pictured box that was circulating on social media was not used to discipline children. Within two days, not only did he have to recant that, he had to admit there additional boxes. December 18: “Salmon River school admits to using wooden boxes as `timeouts’”: “Organizers said the box was designed for a specific 8-year-old student who is on the spectrum and non-verbal.” Faced with a child with serious needs, they bought a box to hold that eight-year—old. December 20: “A ‘Timeout Box’ in an Elementary School Draws Outrage: ‘This Is Not OK’”: “In a district in which more than 60 percent of students are Native American — and where schools sit alongside the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation — community members said that the episode recalled the well-documented harm and trauma that generations of Native American children faced in boarding schools.” In March, an “independent” study found “no abuse … but … many compliance violations”. The more recent study, by the state, has found that those breaches of “compliance” constituted abuse. Meanwhile, in New York State, seclusion rooms were already prohibited. But now that prohibition will have “sweeping” energies applied to it.

The story is disturbing in itself. It’s equally disturbing because it’s so unsurprising. Here’s some news from the past few months. March 11: “50 Minnesota school districts still using ‘seclusion’ rooms”: “More than 50 Minnesota school districts continue to use so-called seclusion rooms …. The 50 school districts maintain 194 registered seclusion rooms across 100 school buildings across the state.” Two weeks ago, in Amherst, Massachusetts, parents of children with disabilities urged their local school board to remove seclusion rooms, also known as “`reflection rooms’ or `blue rooms’ — padded isolation rooms”. At the end of February, the Virginia Beach School Board unanimously voted to limit the use of seclusion rooms. The change follows two years of discussion and “scrutiny” after the isolation of an 11-year-old student with autism led to his death: “Virginia Beach reported the highest number of seclusions among school divisions in Virginia in the 2024-25 school year.” There’s much sweeping needed.

Charles Bell, author of the recently published No Restraint: Disabled Children and Institutionalized Violence in America’s Schools, noted, “44 states have laws that limit the use of restraint and seclusion to emergency situations or ban it altogether. Minnesota, for example, bans the use of seclusion for children who are in third grade or younger. And 41 of these same states have laws that schools must notify parents each time their child is restrained or secluded. Various news organizations, such as ChalkBeat, have found that schools in North Carolina, Michigan and Illinois have violated restraint and seclusion laws. In some cases, schools use terms such as `quiet room’ and `timeout’ to circumvent laws that mandate reporting restraint and seclusion to parents and government agencies.”

What are these seclusion rooms teaching children, not only the children thrown into the boxes but also those who watch? We have asked this question since 2010. We asked in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023. It is too late to “discover” the atrocity and torture of seclusion rooms. The time for discovery is long over. Across the country, children with disabilities and children sitting with them are being traumatized and tortured, all in the name of education. What is the lesson here? What exactly are children meant to learn, the ones thrown into solitary, the ones watching their friends go into solitary? Why are we so invested in seclusion and restraint of children, generally, and of children living with disabilities, particularly?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo credit: Chrissy Onientatahse Jacobs / NPR)

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Empty words that empty us: ceasefire

May 13, 2026 by Leave a Comment

because your side of the cease-fire was holding
since more than a year before
they said so
what
June Jordan, “Apologies to All the People in Lebanon”

Today, The New York Times (finally) thankfully revealed the truth we already know and have known: “Russia-Ukraine War Shows Cease-Fires Have Lost Meaning Under Trump”. For the past few years, we have watched Israel establish “ceasefires” with one entity and another, only to continue the devastation. The same goes for Russia in Ukraine. The same goes for Israel and the United States in Iran. The only problem with this “discovery”, with this truth is that it ignores a history of devastation masquerading as ceasefire and of the devastating ceasefire masquerading as peace.

In 1982, June Jordan wrote “Apologies to All the People in Lebanon”, first published in the Village Voice, July 20, 1982. This is the poem as it appeared in 1982 in its entirety:

“Apologies to All the People in Lebanon

I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?

They said you shot the London Ambassador
and when that wasn’t true
they said so
what
They said you shelled their northern villages
and when U.N. forces reported that was not true
because your side of the cease-fire was holding
since more than a year before
they said so
what
They said they wanted simply to carve
a 25 mile buffer zone and then
they ravaged your
water supplies your electricity your
hospitals your schools your highways and byways all
the way north to Beirut because they said this
was their quest for peace
They blew up your homes and demolished the grocery
stores and blocked the Red Cross and took away doctors
to jail and they cluster-bombed girls and boys
whose bodies
swelled purple and black into twice the original size
and tore the buttocks from a four month old baby
and then
they said this was brilliant
military accomplishment and this was done
they said in the name of self-defense they said
that is the noblest concept
of mankind isn’t that obvious?
They said something about never again and then
they made close to one million human beings homeless
in less than three weeks and they killed or maimed
40,000 of your men and your women and your children

But I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?

They said they were victims. They said you were
Arabs.
They called      your apartments and gardens      guerrilla
strongholds.
They called      the screaming devastation
that they created       the rubble.
Then they told you to leave, didn’t they?

Didn’t you read the leaflets that they dropped
from their hotshot fighter jets?
They told you to go.
One hundred and thirty-five thousand
Palestinians in Beirut and why
didn’t you take the hint?
Go!
There was the Mediterranean: You
could walk into the water and stay
there.
What was the problem?

I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?

Yes, I did know it was the money I earned as a poet that
paid for the bombs and the planes and the tanks
that they used to massacre your family

But I am not an evil person
The people of my country aren’t so bad

You can expect but so much
from those of us who have to pay taxes and watch
American TV

You see my point;

I’m sorry.
I really am sorry.”

Later, an epigram was added: “Dedicated to the 600,000 Palestinian men, women, and children who lived in Lebanon from 1948-1983.”

In 2024, Faisal Mohyuddin wrote “Ceasefire Haiku”. At the center of this sequence of haiku, these four verses:

“Shame: a legacy
Your descendants will decry,
Bemoan, be cursed by.
____

To remain silent
Is consent, is wrong, is more
Deadly than more bombs.
___

You can’t really see
Me, except as your conscience-
Cleanser, your blindfold.
___

When I condemn crimes,
You call me culprit, settle
My heart to scrub yours.”

Forty-two years separate those two poems. Easily half of Lebanon’s population have lived all of their lives in a “ceasefire” in which the guns never ceased firing and the bombs never stopped falling. In fact, easily three quarters of the world have lived their lives in the ceasefire, a ceasefire in which guns never ceased firing and the bombs never stopped falling. While Trump’s actions are egregious and worse and Netanyahu’s programme of genocide is a legacy our descendants will decry … they are not a new invention. They are merely the latest phases in this, the Age of Ceasefire. May peace be with you. I’m sorry. I really am sorry.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Aliaksei Lepik / Unsplash / LAist)

 

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On record-breaking: When you care enough to send the very best …

May 5, 2026 by Leave a Comment

 

“Whoever’s homeless now, will build no shelter;
who lives alone will live indefinitely so”
Rainer Maria Rilke, “Day in Autumn”

Today, it is reported that homelessness in Western New York state hit “a record high”. The current level is “the highest recorded since data collection began in 2005, and 24% up from just last year.” Today it’s also reported that “England is facing its twelfth consecutive record high in the number of children living in temporary accommodation.” Elsewhere, it was reported, “The number of children who are now homeless and living in temporary accommodation in England is at the highest level since records began as the country’s spiralling housing crisis has left more people than ever without a home.” Finally, last week it was reported, “A quarter of the way through 2026, eviction filings in Minnesota are outpacing 2025, the highest year for filings on record …. In Minneapolis, where much of Operation Metro Surge was focused, filings climbed sharply between January and March, surpassing last year’s rate of eviction filings in the city. And statewide through mid-April, eviction filings are still above 2025’s record pace.”

What is a record? a record high? a record pace? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, from its first appearance to today, a record is “the documentation or recording of facts, events, etc.” At its root, it meant “piece of evidence about past events, memory, account, story, discussion, negotiation, agreement, judgement.” Additionally, a record is “the best performance or most remarkable event of its kind; spec. the best officially recorded achievement of a particular kind in a competitive sport.” “To break (also beat) the record” means “to surpass the previous best performance in a particular activity”.

Month in, month out, somewhere “it is reported” that evictions or homelessness are breaking the record, are surpassing “the best performance or most remarkable event of its kind, the best officially recorded achievement of a particular kind.” On one hand, we have the situation in which evictions are not recorded. There is no national data base that records evictions or eviction filings. We have the great work of the Princeton University Eviction Lab as well as innumerable other local and regional dashboards. None of them records “informal evictions” and “self-evictions”, but they do great work, nevertheless.

On the other hand, what is the point of keeping a record if little to no substantive action emerges from the recording. We have records and no records, memory without a trace of memory, calls and cries without reception or echo. Every day, we surpass the previous best performance in the particular activity that is merely ourselves.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image credit: Guerrilla Girls, “What’s the Difference between a POW and a Homeless Person?” / Tate)

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The racist `normal’ of deed theft: near death, near-death, or nearly dead

April 28, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Sustaining today’s waves of spectacular violence is a web of everyday violence, the violence of the normal. This week’s example of that is deed theft. In Brooklyn last Wednesday four people were arrested at a protest against deed theft “after gathering outside a brownstone in support of a woman who is fighting attempts to evict her from the home.” The woman in question is Carmella Charrington, and her family has owned their home, that building, for decades. But like so many other families of color, and in New York especially Black families, ownership does not convey dignity, security or intergenerational wealth. For too many Black families, home ownership means living with a target on their backs.

One of the four arrested demonstrators was New York City Council member Chi Ossé. The protest occurred Wednesday, April 22. On Friday, April 24, New York City Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani created the Office of Deed Theft Prevention. Mayor Mamdani began his remarks with a reminder that none of this is new: “In 1644, a man named Paulo d’Angola was deeded land on the corner of Bleecker and Thompson, in what would later become Greenwich Village. He and 10 others were the first enslaved people brought to New York. And after 20 years of bondage, they had won their liberation. Property held a promise of dignity, stability and opportunity. Property was the physical proof of freedom. After the English took over New York City in 1664, they seized the land that belonged to him and his fellow freedmen. Centuries have passed, but still, d’Angola’s story is no relic of history. It is one deeply familiar to too many in this city. I am talking about deed theft. Deed theft not only disproportionately robs Black and Brown New Yorkers of their homes, it also robs them of the stability that a home provides.”

This story of theft is no relic of history. It is the normal. Last year, the Furman Center noted, “In 2024, the New York City Sheriff’s office reported at least 3,500 deed theft complaints alone over the previous decade. That number is likely an undercount because not all victims of deed theft report the issue to the police.” The New York Times has reported repeatedly on the plague of deed theft. 2015: Real Estate Shell Companies Scheme to Defraud Owners Out of Their Homes. 2019: Why Black Homeowners in Brooklyn Are Being Victimized by Fraud. 2022: He Runs a New York Real Estate Empire. Did He Steal It? Yes, he did steal it, from Black communities, households, families.

While the Office of Deed Theft Prevention is welcome, the question of the accepted prevalence of this form of violence against Black communities remains. The problem was documented for years and often, and yet “somehow” continued to grow.

As Marissa Jackson Sow noted, in her 2022 article “Whiteness as Contract”, “Black people’s possession of property—as owners or occupiers—is consistently and persistently threatened, whether by deed theft or discriminatory property tax assessments, by unfair utility pricing structures, immigration policy, or modern-day lynch mobs. Black people are tenants at best and trespassers at worst; they are natural-born persons, but not part of the American body politic; they are not contractors, but often the objects of the contract or the consideration therefore. Because Black people are present but not persons within the United States, they are not legally or politically alive; moreover, even physically speaking, while alive, Black people are often near death, near-death, or nearly dead.”

In early February, Chi Ossé and other housing advocates called on New York State Governor Kathy Hochul to impose a temporary eviction moratorium on deed theft cases. It’s a matter of life and death, of beginning to address the normal in which Black people are near death, near-death, or nearly dead.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Graham Dickie, The New York Times)

 

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I do know this can’t happen to anyone else, ever again: is this the end of childhood?

April 22, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Five years ago, the United Kingdom public was “shocked” to learn the story of child Q, a 15-year-old Black girl in Hackney. Child Q was at school. She was “suspected” of having cannabis. The police were called. The police strip-searched the child. The child was menstruating. Of course, the police found no contraband: “A council report found that racism had been a likely factor in her treatment.” Child Q said, “Someone walked into the school, where I was supposed to feel safe, took me away from the people who were supposed to protect me and stripped me naked, while on my period. I can’t go a single day without wanting to scream, shout, cry or just give up. I don’t know if I’m going to feel normal again. But I do know this can’t happen to anyone else, ever again.” Today, Dame Rachel De Souza, the UK’s Children’s Commissioner, released a report, “Police powers and children – strip searching and use of force.” In the intervening five years, many children have been strip-searched. A disproportionate number of those children are Black.

On one hand, the number of reported strip-searches has dropped. That’s it for “good news”. On the other hand, “Children of Black ethnicity are more likely to be strip searched than children of other ethnicities …. Between July 2023 and June 2024, Black children were almost 8 times more likely to be strip searched than White children and around 5 times more likely than Asian children, meaning there has been no improvement to disproportionate strip searching of Black children since the last data collection period. Over a quarter (27%) of strip searches between July 2023 and June 2024 were of a child aged 15 years old or younger …. There are ethnic disparities in both the use of force and the contextual factors surrounding the use of force. Black children are over-represented in use of force incidents and higher proportions of Black children have their size, gender, or build listed as a contextual factor in the use of force report than their Asian, White and Mixed ethnicity counterparts.”

The report finds this State violence committed on the bodies, souls, minds and lives of Black children results from “adultification bias”: “The disproportionate use of force against Black children can be attributed to adultification bias where racialised children, particularly Black children, are perceived as older, more dangerous, and more guilty than their White peers. This bias shifts the police’s focus away from a child’s actual vulnerability and children are more likely to be treated with suspicion than raising safeguarding concerns.”

The police “saw” adults where there were children. Why? Because they were trained to. Trained as police officers, trained as adults, trained as people living in a racist society.

The report concludes, “The racial disproportionality in strip searching Black children has seen no signs of improvement.” Finally, the report notes that “the vast majority of children are still being searched for drugs, rather than weapons, where the risk of immediate harm is less clear.”

We live in an age in which children are disposed of like so much worthless garbage, largely because of the color of their skin. Remember the slaughter of 168 schoolgirls caused by the U.S. bombing of Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Iran? That was February 28,2026, less than eight weeks ago. Outside of the schoolgirls’ families and communities, who’s talking about that today? Where is the horror? What was “the risk of immediate harm”? How has it become so easy for adults to forget our responsibility to protect children from harm?

In June 2025, an Egyptian mother and her five children were arrested and thrown into Dilley detention center, in Texas. Her 18-year-old daughter, Habiba El-Gamal, wrote a letter which concluded, “This place broke something in us. Something that I don’t know if we will ever be able to fix.” That letter was read to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. As of yesterday, the El-Gamal family were still held at Dilley.

Something has been broken, something in us, something that I don’t know if we will ever be able to fix. We have become the risk of immediate harm. Can we still say we do know this can’t happen to anyone else, ever again?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: London World)

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In New South Wales, where are the First Nations women? In prison, still discarded and ignored

March 19, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Last week, the New South Wales Auditor General released a report, “Support for First Nations peoples in custody and post-release to reduce reoffending.” To absolutely no one’s surprise, the report shows that the state has failed to address the needs of incarcerated (or any) Indigenous people, or, better put, the state has successfully tortured Indigenous adults and children. As today’s Guardian notes, the “damning” report found “the number of Aboriginal adults in the state’s prisons reached record levels in December, exceeding the previous high that was set six months earlier. Last year also marked a record number of Indigenous deaths in custody, after 12 people died. In the decade to 2021, the number of young people in custody was steadily declining. But data shows trend has now reversed. The number of youths in prison overall increased by 34% in the two years from June 2023. Meanwhile, more than 60% of First Nations adults released from prison in 2023 reoffended within 12 months, according to the latest data.” What the Guardian report missed is the centrality of gender. First Nation women and girls live and die and suffer at the heart of these horrifying, and again altogether unsurprising, numbers. Where are the women?

Consider the numbers: “As at December 2025, 33.9% of adults in NSW custody (4,452 people) were First Nations, the highest number and proportion on record. First Nations women made up 44.8% of all women in custody and First Nations men made up 33.1% of all men in custody…. As at December 2025, 2,196 (36.1%) adults on remand were First Nations (pending further court action, usually after being refused bail), the highest number and proportion on record. 48.7% of all women on remand were First Nations, and 35% of all men on remand were First Nations.”

The report found that First Nation incarcerated adults often have greater difficulties accessing programs and supports because they are “overclassified”. Overclassified means they are disproportionately punished for minor offenses. The study found that between 2023 and 2024, the average rate of First Nations women charged with offenses while in custody was 101; the average rate for non-First Nations women as 51. Again, that means that out of 100 First Nations women, 101 were charged with offenses.

3.4% of the New South Wales population are First Nation adults and young people. In December 2025, 33.9% of New South Wales prison population were First Nations. That is the highest proportion on record.

Again, none of this is surprising. In 2018, Human Rights Watch issued a report, which noted, “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in prison are the fastest growing prison population, and 21 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-indigenous peers.” A version of that statement, “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in prison are the fastest growing prison population”, had appeared in major reports in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015,2016, and 2017. Now it’s 2026, and where are the women? In cages that pass for justice, in systems that ignore their needs, desires, lives, humanity, in a world that discards their past, present and future.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Kelly Flannagan, “Trying To Do My Time” / The Torch)

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