Black America

The ‘Black And Green’ Campaign

December 22, 2024 Cinnamon Janzer, Next City. Create! Banking, Black America, Fossil Fuels, Reinvestment

Since the Paris Agreement went into effect in late 2016, 60 of the world’s largest private banks have funneled $6.9 trillion to the fossil fuel industry. Despite a wave of banks pledging to no longer finance the private prison industry between 2019 and 2021, many others are still funding the two largest U.S. private prison companies that have relied on bank loans to operate and expand. Tackling such global financial systems can seem impossible, but not when you talk to Stephone Coward, head of the Bank Black & Green campaign, an effort to funnel capital into Black-owned banks that commit to not funding the fossil fuel or mass incarceration industries.

The White Settlers’ Bizarre Economic Strategy Of Terrorizing Black People

December 15, 2024 Jon Jeter, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Black America, Economic insecurity, Jordan Neely, Lynching, Murder, White Supremacy, White Vigilantism

That jurors on Monday exonerated an ex-Marine for strangling an African American panhandler who was in mental distress while aboard a New York city subway car was not entirely shocking but does signal to many Blacks a sharp escalation of whites’ historic campaign of racial terror. Daniel Penny, who is white, was charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide for applying a chokehold to the neck of 30-year-old Jordan Neely, a slightly built homeless man who had done nothing more than shout at passengers aboard an uptown F subway train on May 1, 2023.

The Dobbs Decision: Increased Black Maternal Deaths

December 12, 2024 Efia Nwangaza, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Abortion Bans, Abortion Rights, Black America, Black Women, Health Care, History, Maternal Mortality, Reproductive health

The Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, which overturned Roe v. Wade, has profound implications for Black women. The decision effectively removed the federal constitutional right to abortion, allowing states to set their own abortion laws. It denies women the human right of bodily autonomy, a cornerstone of self-determination. The concept of “States Rights” emerged in debates over the balance of power in the U.S. Constitution (1787), a strong central government versus states' rights to guard against “federal overreach.”

Fear Is Still The Motivation For Black Voters

December 1, 2024 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! 2024 US Presidential elections, Black America, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Elections, Fear, Kamala Harris, Voting

The always prescient Glen Ford wrote those words in February 2016 as he correctly hypothesized that Black voters would continue their tradition of supporting the candidate they believed was most likely to defeat a republican in that presidential election year. Eight years later his words still ring true. Donald Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris has engendered anger, fear, and retrograde politics, but surprisingly little criticism of the Democratic Party which failed its most loyal voters so spectacularly. The Kamala Harris/Tim Walz campaign raised more than $1.5 billion , more than the Donald Trump/J.D. Vance campaign was able to raise.

Requiem For A Failed Presidential Campaign And A Party

November 9, 2024 Dr. Wilmer J. Leon, III, Popular Resistance. Educate! Black America, Democrats, Elections, Kamala Harris

Trump has prevailed…AGAIN! Why? Don’t ask why Harris lost; ask yourself why did this “race-baiting xenophobic religious bigot,” win. AGAIN! It’s too easy to chalk this up to or write this off as being a “masterclass in white privilege.” It’s too simplistic to attribute this cataclysmic failure to “hatred towards Black women.” Too many Democrats, their pundits, and some analysts are trying to write this historic blunder off as America will “never elect a Black woman as president”. Stop it! The bad lies are the lies you tell yourself. Even worse are the ones you tell yourself and believe.

How Trump Won And What Black People Should Do

November 8, 2024 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! 2024 US Presidential elections, Black America, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris

On the evening of November 8, 2016, this columnist realized that Hillary Clinton had lost. She hadn’t yet conceded, the polls were still open on the west coast, but she lost Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to Donald Trump. When he turned these formerly democratic states republican, he secured a victory in the electoral college and became the 45th president of the United States. Late that night and in the early morning hours I wrote, “Dump the Democrats for Good” and pointed out what is still true eight years later. “Black people are now in fear and in shock when we ought to be spoiling for a fight.

Clark Atlanta University Launches New Black Southern Labor Institute

October 31, 2024 Mirtha Donastorg, Portside. Create! Atlanta, Black America, Labor Movement, Worker Rights and Jobs

Clark Atlanta University has launched a new institute focused on labor issues and training a new generation of leaders to help Black Southern organizing and collective bargaining efforts. Jobs With Justice, a nonprofit network of labor unions, community groups and activists, is partnering with Clark Atlanta on the new Institute for the Advancement of Black Strategists, which was announced in late September. Erica Smiley, executive director of Jobs With Justice, said policies against organized labor disproportionately impact Black workers because more than half of Black Americans live in the South.

Louisiana’s CRT Ban Continues Long History Suppressing Black Education

October 16, 2024 Jesse Hagopian, In These Times. Resist! Black America, Critical Race Theory, Education, History, Louisiana, Suppression, Systemic Racism

As more than 700,000 students across Louisiana recently headed back to the classroom, a troubling reality looms: Black history wasn’t allowed in with them. In an increasing number of states, books on Black history and lesson plans about systemic racism are barred from schools — and Louisiana has followed suit. Gov. Jeff Landry’s executive order in late August bans critical race theory (CRT) — on top of previous restrictions already in place — and makes Louisiana the latest state to pass a law prohibiting antiracist education. Incredibly, laws preventing honest education about race impact nearly half of all public school students in the United States.

Black Residents In Cancer Alley Try A Last Legal Defense Against Pollution

October 16, 2024 Lylla Younes, Next City. Resist! Black America, Cancer Alley, Environmental Justice, Louisiana, pollution, Public Health, zoning

On the banks of the lower Mississippi River in St. James Parish, Louisiana, on sprawling tracts of land that break up the vast wetlands, hulking petrochemical complexes light the sky day and night. They piled up over the past half century, built by fossil fuel giants like Nucor and Occidental. In that time, they replaced farmland with concrete and steel, and threaded the levees with pipelines that carry natural gas from as far away as West Texas. When the plants came, the lush landscape of this part of south Louisiana deteriorated. “The pecans are dry. They don’t yield like they used to,” said Gail Lebouf, a longtime resident of the region.

From Axis Of Resistance To Political Cuckolds

October 10, 2024 Jon Jeter, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Axis of Resistance, Black America, History, Israel, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, South Africa

The assault on the Palestinian Authority’s headquarters in the West Bank occurred only days after Israel began its siege of Gaza in October of 2023, leaving the building pockmarked with bullet holes. It might be surprising to know, however, that the assailants were not the Israeli Defense Forces, nor any settler mobs but the throngs of Palestinians who live under occupation and assembled outside the government building in Jenin to protest Israel’s control of the quisling Palestinian Authority, known as the Sultah. The Los Angeles Times wrote of the dispute: Disgusted with the authority’s inability to protect its own people or stand up to Israel, militants in the crowd aimed their bullets at the government compound after its security forces tried to break up the demonstration.‘

How Feed Black Futures Is Challenging Structural Racism

September 19, 2024 Tina Jenkins Bell, Resilience. Create! Black America, California, Food and Agriculture, Food Apartheid, Racism

Don’t call it a food desert. “Food apartheid” is closer to the truth. Describing a place as a food desert, says food sovereignty activist Sophi Wilmore, “implies that this is a natural phenomenon—that the lack of healthy, fresh, nutritious foods in certain neighborhoods is par for the course, normal, organic.” On the contrary, says Wilmore: The real issue is structural racism, and unjust systems that keep people impoverished, hungry, and positioned for incarceration. Wilmore is the co-executive director of Feed Black Futures, a community-based, Black, queer-led food sovereignty organization in California that connects Black and brown farmers with Black mamas and caregivers whose lives and families have been impacted by incarceration and the criminal legal system.

The Paradox Of Progress For Black Americans

September 8, 2024 Algernon Austin and Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Counter Punch. Educate! 2024 US Presidential elections, Black America, Elections, Report

As the country moves rapidly toward the 2024 elections, Black Americans are experiencing the best economic conditions they’ve had in generations. Record low unemployment rates, record low poverty rates, and record high levels of income and wealth paint a picture of Black prosperity. Yet African Americans remain mired in great economic insecurity, reflected in their low opinion of the economy, widespread asset poverty, and ongoing economic inequality between Black and white households. The best Black economy in generations, in short, isn’t enough. To overcome centuries of inequality, we’ll need dedicated public policy.

Farming While Black

August 29, 2024 Next City. Create! Black America, Farming, Food and Agriculture, Racial Justice

Once upon a time, 14%of farmers in the United States were Black. That was in 1910. But that number has dwindled. Today, Black farmers comprise less than 2% of all growers across the country. On this week’s episode, our host Lucas Grindley notes: “That's more than 14 million acres of lost land.” This loss, along with the discrimination and violence perpetrated against African-American farmers and the current movement of more Black people returning to agriculture and land stewardship, is the subject of the documentary “Farming While Black,” which was released in 2023. Mark Decena, the writer and director of the documentary, describes it as a Venn diagram of social justice, climate justice and food sovereignty.

James Baldwin At 100

August 15, 2024 Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post. Educate! Black America, Black August, James Baldwin, Racism

James Baldwin would have celebrated his 100th birthday on Aug. 2, had he lived so long. He didn’t: He died young. He was but 63 on Dec. 1, 1987, the day he slipped away at the shabby-grand house in Saint–Paul-de–Vence, France, where he had lived since 1970, a refugee from … from a lot of things, not least America and what it was on the way to becoming. There is a long, strange story behind the house and Baldwin’s residence in it, told satisfactorily in Jules Farber’s not-brilliantly-written James Baldwin: Escape From America, Exile in Provence (Pelican Publishing, 2016). Harlem, Paris, a Swiss hamlet where he was the first black man the townsfolk had ever seen...

The Farmers Who Can’t Afford Farms

August 14, 2024 Joseph Bullington, In These Times. Educate! Black America, Black Farmers, Food and Agriculture, Student Debt, Worker Rights and Jobs

Running a small farm is complicated enough. For Tessa Parks — who raises cattle and hay with her spouse, Wyatt, on the gentle, farmed-over hills outside Northfield, Minn. — the challenges include bottle-feeding calves, braving bad weather to check on the herd at pasture and dealing with customers at the farmers market. Climate change doesn’t make it easier, as it lends intensity to droughts and storms and increases livestock disease risks. But for Parks, a 28-year-old beginning farmer, the complexities don’t end there. Farming, for her, also means juggling relationships with five different landowners the couple rents a patchwork of hayfields and pasture from.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources