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The mum of alleged murdered toddler Grace Thorpe has posted a heartbreaking message following the tragic death of her daughter.

Grace died on Thursday after suffering injuries at a home in Dale Street, New Marske on Tuesday.

In a new post on Facebook including a picture of her daughter, Grace's mum wrote: "I love you more than you will ever know."

Middlesbrough man Adam Jackson, 26, was charged with murdering the two-year-old on Friday and has made his first court appearance.

Jackson appeared at Teesside Magistrates Court on Friday afternoon after his arrest earlier this week

He was brought into courtroom, wearing a grey t-shirt and face covering. He spoke only to confirm his name, address and date of birth.

Magistrates were told during the five-minute hearing that due the severity of the alleged offence, the case must be sent to crown court.

Jackson, of Parkside, Ladgate Lane, Middlesbrough, was remanded into custody and no pleas were entered.

It is alleged Jackson murdered Grace on Tuesday.

He will next appear at Teesside Crown Court on Monday and a further plea hearing has been scheduled for December.

Flowers, cuddly toys and candles have continued to be left at the scene of the alleged murder.

Several neighbours attended the address laying flowers as a mark of respect.

One woman attended the property, laying a bunch of flowers under the police cordon, saying: We just couldn't believe it happened. So close to home as well.

Everyone lit candles in the road last night and held a one minute silence.

She added that the incident has shocked the community.

A large police presence remained at the scene on Friday morning before Jackson was charged with Grace's murder.

Crime scene investigators were spotted leaving the property with brown evidence bags as enquiries continued.

A police van, two cars and a crime scene investigation vehicle remained parked outside the house, with a police car at the rear of the property.

Police cordons were also erected across the front and back of the house.

The upstairs curtains have now been opened as net curtains hang in the front window.

Police have remained on scene since Grace was taken to hospital in a critical condition on Tuesday by emergency services.

She was taken to the Royal Victoria Infirmary for treatment, but on Thursday she tragically passed away.

Cleveland Police began an investigation into the circumstances around how the little girl came to be injured and Jackson was subsequently arrested on suspicion of murder.

Details have not yet been given about the nature and type of Grace's injuries.

The air ambulances, two road ambulance and police officers were called to the tragic incident.

Graces family are being supported by specially trained officers as inquiries continue.

Read more from the original source:
Mum's heartbreaking message to Grace Thorpe as man is accused of toddler's murder - Teesside Live

The killing of George Floyd by a white police officer was the catalyst for widespread anti-racist protests in the US this summer. Though Floyds death took place thousands of miles away, the cry for racial justice was felt deeply in the UK. Britons stood up against racism, declaring support in their thousands for the Black Lives Matter movement via a succession of passionate protests.

More than 260 towns and cities held protests in June and July from Monmouth in south Wales to Shetland in Scotland. British historians described them as the largest anti-racism rallies since the slavery era and at the heart of many of these protests was a new generation of young black Britons.

Although the protests were inspired by the movement in the US, the protesters anger was rooted in the British experience. They carried handmade placards with the names of Mark Duggan, Sean Rigg, Sheku Bayoh and others killed by British police. They chanted for the Windrush generation and the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire, and decried the high Covid-19 death rate among members of the BAME community.

In a groundbreaking series in August, titled Young, British and Black, the Guardian interviewed 50 protesters, from Glasgow to Newcastle and Abergavenny to Falmouth, on what inspired them to organise the countrys biggest anti-racism rallies for centuries. As well as citing the painful experiences of growing up black in the UK, they said they were fighting for a radically more equal society.

We catch up with five protesters to find out what has happened since and where the movement for racial equality goes next.

A student and co-organiser of one of the first UK Black Lives Matter protests in May, Natasha has since helped found All Black Lives. It is a youth-led campaign, with a group who held Black Lives Matter protests every Sunday for 10 weeks in several major UK cities. All Black Lives was behind the march through Bristol in June when demonstrators toppled a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston.

Since the spring, weve managed to ride the momentum to form established teams in London, Manchester, Bristol and Birmingham, says Natasha. They have been working to get their message across on social media, holding several panels throughout Black History Month, and producing informative videos. Theres even talk of venturing into politics, she says.

All Black Lives has a number of demands, which include the abolition of the Metropolitan polices gang violence matrix and changing the school curriculum to include more black history.

But its struggles go beyond the UK. Weve been doing a lot of protests with EndSARS [a movement against Nigerias special anti-robbery squad], says Natasha.

Over the past six months, Natasha says she has become more resilient. Ive learned so much, but Im always keen on learning more If you learn how the house is built, youre going to know how to dismantle it.

On the day the Young, British and Black series was first published, Benitha Iradukunda was shocked to find her face on the front page of the paper. My university saw it and mentioned it on their social media and my old high school teachers messaged me sending well wishes, she says.

Iradukunda was one of the organisers behind the Black Lives Matter rallies in Edinburgh. The group is now setting up a charity, the African Caribbean Society for Scotland, to support the black community in a range of issues, from health and education to economic empowerment. The organisation has held online Black History Month events, including a series of interviews and a DJ set.

Ive also started a podcast called Speak Your Truth, which features conversations with black people in the Scottish community, says Iradukunda. A lot of people think activism should be a really big in-your-face thing, but there are little things you can do, like have conversations.

She also feels that the Black Lives Matter movement has helped shift discussions about racism in the UK, which have tended to focus on the south of the country.

People down south are always shocked that black people live in Scotland. They dont realise how big the community is here, she says. Were 1% in Scotland, but were very present

After participating in protests in Northampton, Tr Ventour was invited to London to take part in a Black Lives Matter panel event. While he is excited by the broadening interest in black British history, he feels there is more to be done.

When we celebrate black people in Black History Month, its very much acceptable black people, like Walter Tull. So when we do black history are we acknowledging the diversity of black lives? I am not sure we are, he says. Ventour also wants the focus to include black LGBT history and is keen for the movement to have a conversation about intersectionality. When you look at blackness in the context of LGBT, specifically trans people, they are victims of not just police violence, but violence in general.

He admits he was surprised at the number of people who rose up and joined the Black Lives Matter protests. So many more people care than I thought, he says. The protests have shown there is still community in Britain, despite everything. In places like Northampton, I think thats really important.

Since the protests, many people have congratulated 17-year-old Lexia Richardson for speaking about her experience of growing up and going to school in a predominantly white area. I think a lot of people I work with didnt realise how much racism I had been through, she says.

Several black and Muslim people got in touch with Richardson to tell her they had gone through similar things.

She is currently working on a Black Lives Matter project for the school where she was previously a pupil and wants to ensure conversations on racism in the UK continue. At her sixth form college, she is happy to hear people discussing the protests and whether the movement is needed in the UK. But she is most proud of the impact she has had at home.

Getting my voice heard has helped my younger siblings, she says. They feel like its OK to follow in my pattern. My 11-year-old brother made a movie about BLM to show to his class. I thought: Wow, I could have never done that at that age.

Shekinah Swamba, who works part-time in Waitrose, has had customers ask if she was the one that organised Black Lives Matter protests in the area. A branch manager approached me and said well done. We sat down and had a chat. He wanted to know what he could do in our branch. I gave him some suggestions, such as mentoring, she says. John Lewis and Waitrose announced a mentorship scheme soon after; through it, Swamba is paired up with a woman in Liverpool.

Swamba has since helped set up the Local Equality Commission, which works to combat racial and economic inequality in rural communities. My role is a mentorship programmer, she says. I want to create an environment where people can be supported in various disciplines and have their voices heard on all matters of interest.

She has also met with her local MP and taken part in panel discussions. Up until June, I never felt confident to say that I moved schools because I received a lot of racism; I always dodged the question, she says. Now I feel more confident in myself and I have got a lot more self-belief.

Read more from the original source:
How Black Lives Matter has inspired a generation of new UK activists - The Guardian

During the northern summer, anti-Trump sentiment fused with anti-racist activism in the US, causing huge numbers of Americans to protest all around the country.

President Donald Trump has been voted out of office, but the issues at the heart of Black Lives Matter remain as critical as ever.

In fact, the high turnout for both sides in the election demonstrates two things: the power of the movement and the need for it to continue.

But where does Black Lives Matter go from here?

If you cant name the three Black women Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi who coined the phrase Black Lives Matter in 2013, theres a good reason for that.

Seeking to avoid what they saw as the mistakes of the Civil Rights Movement, they stayed low-key and used social media to facilitate local activists taking responsibility.

The 2020 US election has decisively demonstrated the power of this strategy, because it took varied local organisations to activate important pockets of Black voters, Latino voters, and young voters.

During the summers large protests, hundreds of thousands of people registered to vote, including a surge in Black voter registration.

Activists learned their tactics from a long tradition. Decentralised organisation, often led by women, has always been integral to African Americans campaigns for rights. The Civil Rights Movement succeeded because of the work of women such as Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer, which culminated in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

But in 2013, a conservative-leaning Supreme Court ruled sections of the Voting Rights Act were unconstitutional. Nine states including seven in the south, where voting had been closely supervised by the federal Department of Justice were now able to limit the franchise.

In other words, those in power could resume discriminating against voters. So too could other states, now the threat of having such supervision imposed was removed. Voter suppression efforts, which were already a problem, have abounded since.

African American women were the backbone of the Democratic Partys 2020 electoral success.

Along with Kamala Harris successfully running for vice president, some 130 Black women ran for Congress with almost 100 on the Democratic side.

Democratic politician and activist, Stacey Abrams, also led a new organisation, Fair Fight. Together with other organisers, it made Georgia a swing state by registering roughly one million additional voters since 2016. Nearly two-thirds are voters of colour.

Read more: Before Kamala Harris, many Black women aimed for the White House

In Atlanta and cities elsewhere, such as Detroit and Milwaukee, Black voters registered and turned out.

Not all African American voters favoured Democratic candidates, of course, but the proportion was high enough to deliver key states to the party. Importantly, the proportion of Black women who voted for Trump was small and, in Georgia for example, it was under half that of Black men.

The Black Lives Matter movement is much more expansive in its aims than either defeating Trump or putting a Democratic president in the White House.

Joe Biden has heeded those aims, noting during the campaign and in his first speech as president-elect that one of the nations major challenges is systemic racism.

Surveys this year have also shown unprecedented sympathy for Black Lives Matter causes among white Americans. While support has fallen in the months since protests following George Floyds death in May, unexpected groups of white people have demonstrated a concerted commitment to protesting.

The record-breaking turnout for Trump, especially given the appalling failure to manage the COVID crisis, suggests the successes of Black Lives Matter have also generated a parallel backlash.

Trump certainly used the visibility of the protests to anchor his campaign around anti-Black Lives Matter rhetoric and sentiment. He tweeted LAW AND ORDER! many times, in his trademark all caps. When asked in the presidential debates about racism and racial inequality, he pivoted to this theme.

Read more: Republicans have used a 'law and order' message to win elections before. This is why Trump could do it again

Trump also railed against critical race theory and teaching history in schools that focused too heavily on racism.

Republicans joined Trump in attempting to frighten voters, by claiming Biden would heed the vision of Black Lives Matter activists to defund and abolish the police.

More than 70 million voters seem to have been persuaded or at least not dissuaded by Trump and Republicans racist dog-whistling.

Anti-racist organisers knew long before Biden was even picked as the Democratic candidate it wouldnt matter who won the White House, because true change comes only from grassroots activity.

The mission will be helped if the broad anti-racist coalition that seemed to emerge mid-year can be sustained, even without the galvanising presence of Trump in the White House.

In electoral terms, all eyes now move to Georgia, where it is likely that two run-off ballots will determine the balance of the federal Senate.

The boost to Abrams profile in the past week will be a boon for fundraising. Black Lives Matter organisers and Democrats will hope national attention also brings out reluctant voters and sustains the interest of first-time voters.

By the same token, Republicans will hope their own successful All Lives Matter rhetoric and tactics can provide sufficient ballast to win the two seats and retain control of the Senate.

In the medium-term, activists nationwide will continue to work to mitigate the varied forms of voter suppression, because these disproportionately affect voters of colour. The apparent closeness of the presidential election a mirage produced by Republican state legislatures decision not to count mail-in ballots until election day drew a great deal of attention to this widespread disenfranchisement.

Read more: Joe Biden wins the election, and now has to fight the one thing Americans agree on: the nation's deep division

The long-term targets of Black Lives Matter activists are harder to pinpoint. But they include police violence, incarceration levels, and the many other injustices that stem from systemic racism, whether in the United States or other countries, including Australia.

In all arenas, the dispersed nature of the organising and the key role played by African American women will remain absolutely vital.

See the original post here:
What now for Black Lives Matter? Whatever happens under Biden, the role of African American women will be vital - The Conversation AU

Bernice Bigham, a 75-year-old Louisville resident, wore a T-shirt into the voting booth that summed up her feelings. It read, in all caps, Black Voters Matter. On the back it said, Its About Us.

Im fearful, said Ms. Bigham, who voted for Mr. Biden. Every time theres a killing, Im calling around to make sure that my Black son and my Black grandsons are OK, and thats no way to live its awful.

And in Flower Mound, Texas, Brooke Wright, 39, often voted Republican because she opposed abortion, but this fall she voted for Mr. Biden. On down ballot races, she and her husband selected women and minority candidates.

Ms. Wright, who is white and goes to an evangelical church, had gone to her first Black Lives Matter protest this summer. Tears streamed down her face as she held a sign to support her husband, who is Black, and their two biracial young sons.

The protests made me want change so much, she said. I was ready to have the hard conversations with people who didnt understand why I didnt vote Republican anymore, instead of quietly staying out of those conversations.

There is also evidence that the protests helped Mr. Trump.

Downtowns tore all to hell, said Teresa Stidham, 43, a white Louisville resident, noting that the windows of many buildings in downtown have been covered by plywood for months. She said that she voted for Mr. Trump primarily because he would fight for the working class, but that the citys civil unrest was an important factor, too.

In Minneapolis, Adrian Anderson, a retail worker, said he was turned off by the vandalism and looting of businesses in the aftermath of protests over the killing of Mr. Floyd.

See the rest here:
Voters Say Black Lives Matter Protests Were Important. They Disagree On Why. - The New York Times

As it became clear that the votes cast on Election Day in several key states would take time to tally, President Trump started the drumbeat to stop the count before all ballots had been accounted for. But Democratic activists were prepared to rally for counter-demonstrations. In Pennsylvania, where officials had cautioned that ballot-counting would take longer than usual, protecting the states 20 Electoral College votes seemed especially crucial. Within hours of Trumps tweet, organizers in Pittsburgh held a Count Our Votes rally a combination block party and demonstration, organized with tools and knowledge built over the course of months or years.

The rally was coordinated by a group of local protest organizations, including One Pennsylvania, which covers a coalition of activists in the Keystone State. We flagged this as an issue ourselves six months ago, said Erin Kramer, One Pennsylvanias executive director. Together with fellow activist groups like 1Hood Power and Pittsburgh Protests, the group tapped into an established infrastructure.

For protests like Thursdays Count Our Votes rally, Pittsburgh Protests organizers use Signal ideal because of its disappearing messages function to spread the word, contacting smaller coalitions, reaching out to local journalists, and coordinating rides to and from events. They research counter-protests (often using privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo) and share their work privately with fellow organizers on Slack. Its a process that was stress-tested around Black Lives Matter protests this summer when the threat of police crackdowns and far-right reprisals made privacy and security of utmost importance.

Pittsburgh Protests, a coalition of Black organizers and activists in the western Pennsylvania city, is a hyperlocal group that formed after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. It coordinates a listing of local actions by groups including One PA, Pittsburgh Feminists for Intersectionality, No Cop Money PA, and 1Hood Power. Over the summer, Pittsburgh Protests held weekly demonstrations around the city of Pittsburgh and advised volunteers on how to keep communications secure.

Zarah Livingston, one of the Pittsburgh Protest organizers, said the group is careful about what technology they use and recommend to communicate with each other. All the tech they use puts the privacy and security of their members first, Livingston said, with settings that allow history and data to be deleted in the event someones phone is compromised or confiscated at a protest.

I find Slack and Signal useful when Im trying to reach people I need to talk to immediately, when were moving quickly, Kramer said. Ive been surprised at how unhelpful Twitter and Facebook have been for organizing local protests, she added, pointing to the case of an area reporter who tweeted a story about Q and had his account temporarily blocked. The fact is that they cant differentiate between a conspiracy theory and someone reporting on a conspiracy theory, Kramer said of Twitter. However, Facebook is still useful for publicizing events like the protest, which was announced on One PAs Facebook page.

Kramer said a key to One PAs efforts is its intersectional approach, not limiting to just one group or cause, but connecting with smaller groups with a progressive agenda to help pool resources and amplify each others messages. It worked to build consensus among many smaller, like-minded groups, Kramer said, adding that she saw 2020 as the year that ideologically aligned groups pro-environment, pro-choice, anti-racism began coordinating among themselves and trusting each other.

So when it became clear last week that the president and his supporters were going to try to stop voting in Pennsylvania, 1Hood and One PA already had plans for Count Every Vote demonstrations in place. And in addition to tools like Slack and Signal, they used tools developed by national organizations for progressive- and left-leaning groups, specifically tailored for mobilization.

Mobilize, for instance, is a kind of Eventbrite for politics. It connects volunteers with events and organizers help with some of the logistics of coordinating them. It was used by most 2020 Democratic presidential campaigns, including President-elect Joe Bidens, as well as for Thursdays Pittsburgh protest.

At the national level, 2016 was a wake-up call for progressives who realized that they needed more digital tools to reach out to would-be voters, not just on Twitter and Facebook where trolls abound and messages can get lost, but in online spaces more tailored to funneling people who wanted to demonstrate or contribute to the organizations that needed their help.

Mobilize and payments processor ActBlue became the hallmarks of the digital organizing infrastructure built in the wake of the 2016 elections. That infrastructure was tested over the summer as thousands protested the death of George Floyd and pushed for police reforms. So by the time the election finally rolled around, left-leaning activists were braced for anything and were well-prepared.

Building networks that can be tapped for actions at a moments notice takes time and patience. Shaniqua McClendon, political director at Crooked Media, said its Vote Save America effort started in 2018 ahead of the midterm elections. When we started Vote Save America half of it was just about voter education and people getting the information they needed to vote, McClendon said in an interview with The Verge. But the other half of it was to get people plugged in.

Crooked Media, which produces the Pod Save America podcast, was founded in 2017 by former staffers in the Obama administration, partly out of their dissatisfaction with how the media covered elections, McClendon noted. But the other part was, they were always hearing about all these bad things happening in the news, but no ones ever telling people what steps they can take to actually change and affect these things.

McClendon, who has experience working on political campaigns, is sensitive to the notion that local groups on the ground may feel wary of people coming down from D.C. to tell them how to do their work. She said Vote Save America has built trust by relying on the local grassroots organizations and letting them take the lead. So people allow Vote Save America to be a partner to them, and they trust us because we have worked with other groups, she said.

McClendon said when she joined the team in 2018, Crooked Media co-founder Jon Favreau told her, We have all these people and they are willing to do whatever we recommend to have an impact so we need to start harnessing that and using it a bit more strategically, she said. She pointed to the efforts around saving the Affordable Care Act in 2017. The podcast hosts and others told listeners to call Congress and tell their representatives they didnt want to see the ACA repealed. So many people called that they ended up shutting down the Congressional switchboard.

So I think kind of the big lesson is our people, our audience, McClendon said. They are primed and ready to take action. They just need a little bit of direction on what is the most impactful thing they can do with their time.

Traditional social media like Facebook and Twitter, however, arent built for organizing and long-term power building, Mobilize CEO Alfred Johnson told The Verge. Mobilize launched in 2017 with the goal of harnessing some of the enthusiasm that fueled large events like the Womens March in 2017.

It was immediately clear that there were not effective ways of moving online audiences into discreet, effective actions, Johnson said. Over the past three years, Mobilize has been used by more than 4,000 organizations, with about 4 million volunteers on 13 million shifts, or actions, he added.

The mistake people often make is they think the election is the end, when the reality is, you have to take a longer view of organizing to make change over a period of many years, Johnson said. You may win along the way, but you need to sustain movements, and keep them growing.

Presidential campaigns, Johnson said, typically build all of their digital tools and tech in-house, but those tools usually die when the campaign ends. The digital campaign built by Hillary Clintons team for the 2016 race, for instance, was entirely unusable for other campaigns, he said. Thats the value of tools like Mobilize and ActBlue: They persist across electoral cycles and can keep organizing the things that matter.

The coronavirus pandemic accelerated the push to organize online, Johnson said. Until March of this year about 75 percent [of events] were in person, and when COVID happened essentially 100 percent our activity went into virtual events, he said. Organizing was fundamentally changed, it flipped into this mode where everything had to be virtual which was an enormous catalyst. He admitted he was concerned that when COVID hit, mobilizing might shrink to nothing. But the volume exploded, he said, with 12x the amount of volunteering in 2020 as in 2018.

McClendon said she felt hopeful after hearing President-elect Bidens speech on Saturday, in which he thanked the organizations that helped him win. I think he is well aware that the people who turned out in Black communities in Georgia and Milwaukee, and in Detroit thats what made the difference for him, she said. What Democrats have to figure out now is whether theyll continue to only go after white, working-class voters or center their work around the Black and brown communities that helped Biden win, she added.

Vote Save America now has its sights set on the two runoff elections for Georgias Senate seats, working with Stacey Abrams who McClendon and Johnson both agreed was a key factor in making Georgia a battleground state in 2020 and her Fair Fight voting rights organization as well as the campaigns of Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.

McClendon said Vote Save America has worked to push the idea among its volunteers that just because they cant vote for a particular candidate in another state doesnt mean the election doesnt affect them. If the Senate and House arent controlled by Democrats, it makes it harder for Biden to deliver on a lot of his campaign promises, she noted.

So we explain how all of this is interconnected and from the top of the ticket all the way down to school board race, McClendon said. We have to care about all of these elections, so thats how we plan on getting people excited.

Read more:
Count Every Vote got its power from the Black Lives Matter movement - The Verge