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Black Liberation

The Pendulum Swing Of Black Liberation

December 23, 2021 Bedour Alagraa, ROAR Magazine. , , ,
In June of last year, I wrote a piece about the call-and-response between movements for Black liberation in the United States and elsewhere, focusing on the upheavals that happened in Sudan in late 2018, and of course the protests that erupted in Minnesota and spread across the country after the murder of George Floyd in May of last year. In this piece, I encouraged all of us to refuse the enclosures of hemisphere, market, nation and language, to embrace urgency and refuse to concede to the divisions presented by nation, market and geography. This piece focused on the activation of struggles, and less so on the reality that each movement for liberation was met with a deepening repression and political conservatism.

bell hooks – Rest In Power

December 17, 2021 Robin D.G. Kelley, Portside. , , ,
Gloria Watkins/bell hooks Presente! Here we go again. Another passing of an intellectual giant, a Black revolutionary love warrior and fugitive from an academy that doesn't love us. After nearly two years of relentless premature deaths, we lose four comrades in six or seven days (Julius Scott, Greg Tate, Tyler Stovall, and now bell hooks), all in their 60s. Too much. I discovered bell hooks in 1981, when I read Ain't I a Woman in college and realized that we can't claim to be radical without being feminists, and as Barbara Smith told us, feminism is not white-owned. bell refused to be disciplined by the academy, living life on her terms and writing for a much larger audience when it wasn't in vogue.

How The Black Education Movement Took On The Racist Schools System

December 15, 2021 Emmanuel Onapa, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The fight to end racial disparities that continue to blight the British education system has been energised by the Black Lives Matter  movement, with a growing number of campaign groups joining the push to bring about real change in UK schools. Grassroots organizations such as No More Exclusions (NME)  are aiming to end exclusions that disproportionately impact Black boys, while the Black Curriculum  is leading the fight to make Black history mandatory on the UK curriculum. And the fact it has already helped to do so in Wales suggests things may finally be changing. But this is not a new fight. Decades before these groups were formed, the Black Education Movement (BEM) – a radical community collective of the 1960s and 1970s – took on the establishment and fought for equality in the schools system.

On Contact: The Black Agenda

December 11, 2021 Chris Hedges, RT. , , ,
Glen Ford, who died in the summer of 2021, was one of the country’s most insightful political commentators and radical journalists. He appeared several times on this show. He spoke for the marginalized and excoriated the elites. Glen was the co-publisher of the radical Black Commentator. He co-founded Black Agenda Report with Bruce Dixon and Margaret Kimberley in 2006. Glen repeatedly called out the Black political elites, exposing for example New Jersey Senator Cory Booker’s close ties with right-wing organizations such as the Manhattan Institute and the Bradley Foundation and Booker’s advocacy of neoliberalism, austerity programs, school privatization, and other initiatives that are at the forefront of the war on the poor, especially poor Blacks.

Update On Cali And African Liberation Day

May 31, 2021 Black Alliance for Peace. , , ,
Saturday morning, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) got word the neoliberal, right-wing Colombian state was deploying its military into the predominantly Afro-Colombian city of Calí. To top it off, the internet was not working. That prompted us to put out an alert on Twitter. Later in the day, we heard from our folks that the internet appeared to be up and running again. But we remain vigilant because the national government had deployed the military to Calí and other cities after issuing a decree on Friday forcing governors and mayors to cooperate with the militarized response to the national strike. This move came after a month of unrest and severe state repression sparked by opposition to the government’s attempt to impose an austerity plan that would have transferred the economic crisis created by neoliberalism onto the backs of the working class.

Jared Ball: Black Liberation And Socialism With Frank Chapman

April 5, 2021 Jared Ball, I Mix What I Like. , ,
Frank Chapman is a community organizer, Executive Director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, Field Organizer of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and a member of the Central Committee of Freedom Road Socialist Organization. He is also a published writer, with articles on Truthout and Freedomways. In 2019, Frank published his first book, a memoir entitled The Damned Don't Cry: Pages from the Life of a Black Prisoner and Organizer.

Statement On Behalf Of The Family And Committee To Free Chip Fitzgerald

April 4, 2021 Committee tp Free Chip Fitzgerald, Left Voice. , , ,
On Sunday, March 28, 2021, at 3:04 p.m., our brother, uncle, cousin, comrade and friend, Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, joined the ancestors. For a week, he lay barely conscious in a Los Angeles hospital as he struggled to extend his life after suffering a massive stroke in California’s gulag known as Lancaster. Chip’s strength and dedication to life remained intact as he defied those doctors who said he would not make it through the night in the hours after his initial arrival at the hospital. A stalwart soldier, he fought until his very last breath. Chip died as he had lived: fighting. A Service is being planned which may be in a month or so due to COVID, followed by a memorial. We want to also thank the many thousands who put their voices together to free Brother Chip.

Why We Say: Fuck Black History Month

February 5, 2021 Ready for Revolution, Hood Communist. , , ,
Since its founding in 1920 as Negro History and Literature Week, Black History Month has served as an “annual celebration of achievements by ‘African Americans’ and a time for recognizing their central role in U.S. history.” Many of us share fond (and some unpleasant) memories of the yearly church programs, school assemblies, and essay contests all organized around that shared sense of identity and history of perseverance.   But as critical and principled Africans that know what’s happenin’, the time has passed for us to engage with what this month has come to represent. We can look as recently as the liberalizing of “Black Lives Matter” to see an example of how Black political agendas can be stolen and repurposed.

Defund The Police Is Not Abolition

January 26, 2021 Greg Felton, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The demand to defund the police has become a central narrative responding  to the graphic killing of Black people. Black organizers must now discuss if this strategy can move us closer to community control of public safety and unpoliced Black neighborhoods. The defund demand has a number of important branches  but at its root it is a call to mobilize community energy towards winning votes at local budget hearings. This effort is not just about the vote but reflects a firm belief in U.S. democracy which at this exact moment may be the most mistaken political stance possible. During the Jan. 6th meeting at the U.S. Capitol we witnessed a show of strength  that could not have happened without deep police collaboration.

The Black Alliance For Peace Calls For People(s)-Centered Human Rights

December 16, 2020 the Black Alliance for Peace. , ,
The global economic crisis of neoliberal capitalism—exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic—has exposed the ethical, moral and political contradictions of the liberal interpretation of human rights that contends these rights can be viewed separately from the political economy, global structures and power relationships. Operating from the false premise that human rights are objective and politically neutral, neoliberals began weaponizing the framework in the 1990s as an instrument that rationalized naked imperialist interventions. Humanitarian interventionism and the “responsibility to protect” became the contemporary white-supremacist expression of the “white man’s burden” that involved “saving” natives in the global South from their autocratic rulers.

Health Justice And Black Liberation: Dána-Ain Davis

October 18, 2020 Gwendolyn Wallace and Roberto Sirvent, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
It is not only that state violence is a public health issue, but what I want people to understand is that state violence bleeds into particular public health issues—specifically, reproductive health issues.  It is parastatal violence as well, by which I mean those practices and institutions that work in parallel and intersecting ways with the state. Think about this: some of the research I did for my book Reproductive Injustice  shows both subtle and blatant examples of state and...

Health Justice And Black Liberation: Shay-Akil McLean

October 13, 2020 Gwendolyn Wallace and Roberto Sirvent, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The way that people treat each other has biological consequences, meaning that our relationships to one another, institutions, and resources are directly linked to quality of life, life expectancy, and quality of death. State violence is a public health issue because what it does is differentially distribute morbidity and mortality to those that are deemed enemies of the state. All of forms of state violence entail the denial of basic needs and the self-determination of the people in one dimension and/or additional others.

Health Justice And Black Liberation: Ugo Edu

October 4, 2020 Gwendolyn Wallace and Roberto Sirvent, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
I remember always wanting to be a doctor—perhaps because my parents are Nigerian—and having a genuine concern with people’s health. I soon became disillusioned with treatment and the competition that entailed pre-med education as an undergrad at UCLA. Nonetheless, I decided public health better suited my interest and desire to develop preventive interventions. Public health left out too many factors to be the only means by which I felt I could contribute to health—I decided to study medical anthropology, simultaneously exploring other disciplinary offerings. My current work draws on all these aspects of my academic trajectory.

Movement For Black Lives’ Statement On Killing Of Breonna Taylor

September 25, 2020 Movement for Black Lives. , , ,
“The Movement for Black Lives and our millions of supporters around the globe stand with the family and community of Breonna Taylor in light of today’s toothless and gravely insufficient indictment brought against one of the officers who killed her. Alongside her community, we are outraged and prepared to activate our base to continue to organize for meaningful action for Breonna.  “Even though three officers have Breonna’s blood on their hands, only one was charged, and with three counts of first degree wanton endangerment, a class D felony implying a low-level of responsibility for the death or injury.

On Contact: New Black Militancy

September 20, 2020 Chris Hedges, RT. , , ,
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the rise of the new black militancy with film director and producer Mobolaji Olambiwonnu. "The police murders of young black men and women in the United States, an average of three a day, along with a constant judicial and police harassment of those living in what Malcolm X called our own internal colonies have given rise to a new black militancy. Nowhere was this more evident than in Ferguson, Missouri following the murder of the teenager Michael Brown on August 9, 2014.
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