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What’s Happening in France and Why Should We Care

And the government of current President Emmanuel Macron’s government has moved step by step to become a right-wing nightmare for French people whose ancestors come from Northern and Southern Africa.

Published

5 years ago

February 3, 2021

Kiki

France

A lot of Americans love France, especially its food and its politics. But “liberty, fraternity and equality” are slogans, and, as in the U.S., reality differs from the slogans

A racist, Trump-like figure, Marie Le Pen is now leading in the polls for next year’s French presidential elections.

Like the U.S., France has a police force with a reputation for brutality. Young Black and Arab men are hassled regularly. Police were caught recently on camera beating a Black man for fifteen minutes. Rather than reforming the police, Macron proposes to make it illegal to take pictures of them. And, as in the U.S, cameras are the only way to verify police behavior.

Macron implies that Islam is a threat to France and holds up cases of terrorism as evidence to support draconian new “security” laws. They now investigate 4- and 5-year-olds for “radicalization.”

As in the U.S., when an individual person of color commits a violent act, that whole community is looked on with suspicion, while a white person committing the same act is assumed to have an individual mental health problem.

Thirty-six organizations have made a complaint to the United Nations about Islamaphobia in France.

And, as in the U.S., there is economic discrimination.

The labor of people from the former French colonies was instrumental in defeating the Nazis in World War II and rebuilding the country from the devastation of that war. But whites ignored these contributions when distributing the new economic benefits of the post war world.

A Montaigne Institute study on fairness in employment indicates that a Catholic man named Michel would need to send our five resumes to obtain a job interview while a Muslim man named Mohammed would need to send out 20.

France is renowned for having a militant labor movement. Because of this militancy, the French people have hung on to more health benefits and job security than many other developed countries.

But this militancy has not often extended to fighting racism and Islamaphobia. In fact, a lot of the white Left in France has been silent on the issue for years.

French activist and thought-leader, Yasser Louati, argues that our two countries are headed down a similar political path. Americans may think we dodged the bullet with the defeat of Donald Trump, but the forces pushing toward fascism have not disappeared from either country.

In response, Louati suggests that anti-racists in both countries work together and internationalize the issues.

At first, I thought it might be difficult to involve Americans in such an effort given our general lack of knowledge about the truth of world affairs.

But the paradoxical impact of the pandemic has brought the people of the world together in a deeper way through our common real-world experience.

We’re locked up in our houses, required to mask, unable to travel, worried about finances and the death of family members. And a lot of us have joined Meet-Ups; language groups; virtual college classes and virtual international conferences, where we have been eye to eye with people from South Africa, France, Brazil, Mexico, Algeria, China, and dozens of other countries.

The technology to extend these experiences is expanding rapidly. It’s possible that one result could be an international revulsion against having our governments beat and discriminate against the brothers and sisters of the people we’ve been meeting in their living rooms.

A few possible steps toward solidarity:

French people have demonstrated in support of U.S. anti-racist movements. We can reciprocate in our protests and our speeches. The French government doesn’t like to have a spotlight on the ways that they do not live up to their slogans.

On an individual level, we can hunt for news about the struggles against racism and Islamophobia in France and elsewhere. A couple of links in English are: @yasserlouati on Twitter: CJL organization — https://www.cjl.ong/en/publications-en/, and CAIR.com
We need to get a deeper understanding of the struggle against Isamophobia and teach it to our children: https://educators4sc.org/topic-resources/teaching-about-islamophobia/
And more of us can start meeting our international neighbors from our living rooms: Here is one resource: meetup.com.

Kitty Kelly Epstein is a professor, the author of three books, and the host of Education Today on KPFA 94.1 FM

Kiki

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Poll Shows Support for Policies That Help Families Afford Child Care

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

Published

1 week ago

March 2, 2026

Oakland Post

By First Five Years Fund

New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

The national survey was conducted by UpOne Insight on behalf of the First Five Years Fund from January 13–18, 2026.

Key findings include:

• Parents need help: 80% of voters say the ability of working parents to find and afford child care is either in a state of crisis or a major problem.

• This is an affordability issue: 82% believe federal child care funding will help lower costs for working families — including 69% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 94% of Democrats.

• And there continues to be strong support (62%) for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program that makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of families to afford safe, quality care for their children while parents work or go to school, including a majority of Republicans, 63% of Independents and 72% of Democrats.

• Support for funding child care programs remains strong: 75% believe child care funding should be increased or kept at current levels — including 75% of Republicans, 85% of Independents, and 97% of Democrats.

• 74% say funding for child care is an important and good use of tax dollars, including a majority of Republicans, three-quarters of Independents, and nine in ten Democrats.

FFYF Executive Director Sarah Rittling said, “Voters across the country are sending a clear message: federal child care and early learning programs work. These investments help parents stay in the workforce, strengthen families, and support healthy child development. They have also long had strong bipartisan support in Congress. At a time when affordability is top of mind for families, continued federal funding is essential to ensure child care remains accessible and within reach.”

First Five Years Fund works to protect, prioritize, and build bipartisan support for quality child care and early learning programs at the federal level. Reliable, affordable, and high-quality early learning and child care can be transformative, not only enhancing a child’s prospects for a brighter future but also bolstering working parents and fostering economic stability nationwide.

We work with Congress and the Administration to identify federal solutions that work for families with young children, as well as states and communities. We work with policymakers to identify ways to increase access to affordable, high-quality child care and early learning programs for children. And we collaborate with advocacy groups to help align best practices with the best possible policies. http://www.ffyf.org

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Oakland Post: Week of February 25 – March 3, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – February 25 – March 3, 2026

Published

1 week ago

March 1, 2026

Oakland Post

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Trump’s MAGA Allies are Creating Executive Order Plan to Steal the 2026 Midterms

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

Published

1 week ago

February 27, 2026

Oakland Post

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Correspondent

A group of MAGA pro-Trump activists, who say they are working in coordination with the White House, are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that would claim without evidence that China interfered with the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential to President Joe Biden by over 7 million votes. Since Trump lost to Biden in 2020, he has repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” without evidence. The report of a group of “Trump allies” preparing an executive order to give Trump power over elections was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lies around the right-wing campaign that pushed falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen was trafficked through right-wing media, particularly Fox News. Fox News was then sued for defamation for the claims by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox lost the case and had to settle for the largest defamation amount on record of $787.5 million in April 2023.

The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

The story in The Washington Post arrives as Trump increasingly signals that he may take actions that would alter the result of the 2026 midterms. The Republicans are widely expected to lose as their approval ratings plummet as a result of a failing economy under Trump. Over 50 members of Congress have announced they will retire this year and not return in 2027.

The Trump Department of Justice, which now has a large image of Trump on the side of it, “sued five new states Thursday [Feb. 26, 2026] demanding access to their unredacted voter rolls — escalating a campaign that has been rejected by multiple federal courts and faces resistance from Republican-led states as well,” according to Democracy Docket, a group that works to protect voting rights.

Trump claimed back in late 2020, the last year of his first term, that he had the authority to issue an executive order related to mail-in voting for the 2020 elections — which he would then lose. But the Constitution states that control of elections lies with the states. As the GOP works to place hurdles in front of voting, Democrats worked to make voting easier.

In March 2021, President Biden signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to expand voting access as part of the Biden Administration’s effort “to promote and defend the right to vote for all Americans who are legally entitled to participate in elections.”

Trump’s focus is clearly on altering the November 2026 midterm elections. Trump’s polling numbers and the elections and special elections that have taken place around the U.S. over the last year clearly indicate that Republicans are about to be hit by a blue wave of Democratic victories.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the founder of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and hosts the show LAUREN LIVE on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke