Marvin Rees’s triumph as mayor defies Bristol’s racist pastPosted in Arts, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United Kingdom on 2016-05-09 21:43Z by Steven |
Marvin Rees’s triumph as mayor defies Bristol’s racist past
The Guardian
2016-05-08
Source: Marvin Rees
The descendant of enslaved Africans is now running a former slave city. His symbolic victory gives hope – and should not be forgotten
While much has been said, rightly so, about a Muslim now leading London, we must not lose sight of the symbolism and enormous significance of Marvin Rees being elected mayor of Bristol this weekend.
Rees, the working-class son of an English mother and Jamaican father, makes history as the first directly elected city mayor in Europe of African or Caribbean heritage.
And that’s important, because the city of Bristol and its governance cannot effectively be understood without seeing it, in part, through the prism of race…
Read the entire article here.