Geert Wilders, the rightwing Dutch politician was in New York last week to lend support to his American counterparts at a rally in lower Manhattan near the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Then this happened:

On a packed block of demonstrators between Murray and Warren streets, Wilder’s words were drowned out when a slim woman with brown curly hair blew one of those long plastic horns that blared throughout the South African soccer games in June. A big man with a bald head tried to grab it. There was pushing and shoving. A row or two behind, a man in shorts and a red polo shirt bellowed for police. “Get her out!” he screamed. “Grab her by the neck and force her out!” A pair of cops, both African-American women, eventually unhinged the metal pens and escorted the woman with the vuvuzela and two of her friends away. “Pull your bushels over your head and go home,” yelled the man.

The Village Voice.

Further Reading

Writing while black

The film adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel ‘Erasure’ leaves little room to explore Black middle-class complicity in commodifying the traumas of Black working-class lives.

The Mogadishu analogy

In Gaza and Haiti, the specter of another Mogadishu is being raised to alert on-lookers and policymakers of unfolding tragedies. But we have to be careful when making comparisons.

Kwame Nkrumah today

New documents looking at British and American involvement in overthrowing Kwame Nkrumah give us pause to reflect on his legacy, and its resonances today.