Nneka M. Okona: The Imposition of Black Grief
For Black people in the United States, grief and loss are intertwined with our very being. Our ancestors knew the trauma of loss intimately…
Abby Zimet: Acts That Defy Humanity
The arrests offer little solace to friends and family grieving for a kind, joyful, “good human,” “quirky and true to himself,” “good spirit and soul” who attended church youth group and worked to be a good dad.
Rashad Shabazz: Black police officers aren’t colorblind – they’re infected by the same anti-Black bias as American society and police in general
Policing in the U.S. has, from its inception, treated Black people as domestic enemies.
Maria J. Stephan: Achieving a Multiracial Democracy
King understood that no single approach would be sufficient to combat the interconnected evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism.
Derrick Z. Jackson: Black College Students Are An Endangered Species Unless They Play Ball
One thing seems certain if the Supreme Court bans affirmative action in college admissions: The only Black men left on campus will be athletes.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Abolishing the Nation’s Largest Jail System
L.A. County activists are working to replace violent jails with mental health facilities, and to reallocate funding from incarceration toward social services.
Nicole Froio: Transforming Ourselves to Transform the World
The concept of cuerpo-territorio (“body-territory”) around which the Xinka women in Guatemala organize themselves recognizes the interconnectedness between human bodies and all other living beings.
Adrienne Maree Brown: Accountable to Our Ancestors
Lately it feels like ancestors are talking to me all the time.
Brett Wilkins: Albert Woodfox, Activist Wrongfully Imprisoned for 43 Years, Dies at 75
“Our cells were meant to be death chambers but we turned them into schools, into debate halls.”
Toi Derricotte: Black Boys Play the Classics
their slick, dark faces,
their thin, wiry arms,
who must begin to look
like angels!
Michael Simms: Brotherly Love
we’re afraid to look deprivation
in the eye, resent admitting our own dumb luck
Carlos Saavedra: Movements and Leaders Have Seasons — It’s Important To Know Which One You’re In
Learning to attune to the cycles of our own leadership can help us know when to do the right thing at the right time.
Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman?
I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?
Kenyatta R. Gilbert: John Lewis and the masks Black preachers wear on the public stage
Preaching, in their understanding, tells the truth about suffering in the contexts of fear and death. Ultimately it declares that evil and despair have an appointed end. Because of this, as John Lewis said in his posthumously publishe op-ed: “Each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up, and speak out.”
