Category: politics
statesofchange.us
Movement Voter Project has identified 42 local groups working in key battleground states to fight voter suppression, mobilize voters, and build infrastructure that will lead to lasting change. All net proceeds from this fundraiser will be distributed by Movement Voter Project to these grassroots organizations working on the ground.
States of Change was organized to support this meaningful and much-needed work.
statesofchange.us
Danny Lyon, Merci Gonaives, Haiti, 1986. Artist website, Instagram.
Ed Ruscha, Desert, 1984. Artist website, Instagram.
bell hooks
On love, dissension, radical openness, language, freedoms, et al.
The Slowdown, 409
How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This, by Hanif Abdurraqib.
… that is the wrong question
Traci K. Smith
Defund Toolkit
Concrete steps toward divestment from policing and investment in community safety via Interrupting Criminalization
Interrupting Criminalization: Research in Action is an initiative at the BCRW Social Justice Institute led by researchers Andrea J. Ritchie, Mariame Kaba, and Woods Ervin. The project aims to interrupt and end the the growing criminalization and incarceration of women and LGBTQ people of color for criminalized acts related to public order, poverty, child welfare, drug use, survival and self-defense, including criminalization and incarceration of survivors of violence.
#DefundPolice is a demand to cut funding and resources from police departments and other law enforcement and invest in things that actually make our communities safer: quality, affordable, and accessible housing, universal quality health care, including community-based mental health services, income support to stay safe during the pandemic, safe living wage employment, education, and youth programming. It is rooted in a larger Invest/Divest framework articulated in the Movement for Black Lives’ Vision for Black Lives.
Related : Black Panther Party’s Ten Point Plan.
We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine The Destiny Of Our Black Community.
We Want Full Employment For Our People.
We Want An End To The Robbery By The Capitalists Of Our Black Community.
We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter Of Human Beings.
We Want Education For Our People That Exposes The True Nature Of This Decadent American Society. We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History And Our Role In The Present-Day Society.
…
We Want An Immediate End To Police Brutality And Murder Of Black People.
We Want Freedom For All Black Men Held In Federal, State, County And City Prisons And Jails.
…
We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace.
Ibram X. Kendi
Let’s revisit a 2018 post, in which Dr. Ibram X. Kendi appeared in a segment of On the Media.
Here are choice excerpts from the show’s transcript.
… the assumption about where racism thrives, namely among the uneducated, the hateful, the poor. […] this prevailing narrative is centuries old and completely wrong.
Those who were producing racist ideas were doing so to justify existing policies that typically benefitted them. So, in other words, instead of ignorance and hate leading to racist ideas and racist ideas leading to racist policies, racist policies have been leading to racist ideas and racist ideas have been leading to ignorance and hate.
In Western European slave markets at the time, sub-Sahara Africans were typically more valuable, primarily because their skin color made it more difficult for them to run away, in contrast to the more plentiful slaves in the slave market of Eastern European Slavs. And so, then they had to create a justification that defended why they were exclusively slave trading in African people.
When you make it [the argument that racism being fundamentally] about ignorance, you’re not making it about power and policy and structures and systems, that the problem centrally is not America’s institutions, is not the American story, is not American capitalism, that the problem is ignorant individuals. So it allows people to deny how fundamental racism has historically been to America.
It also allows people to believe that I as an activist can go out and educate people. I know the path in which that can be done. It’s a lot harder though as an activist to say, okay, you know what, the fundamental problem is power and policy. So it allows for some people to go the easier route as it relates to anti-racist reform.
There’s actually more violence occurring in impoverished black neighborhoods than there are richer black neighborhoods. It’s the same among all the other racial groups. [LAUGHS] In other words, there’s an actual correlation between violence and unemployment rates. The problem is not people, the problem is actually unemployment. And then it changes the calculus of how we, of course, fight violent crime.
His books, Stamped from the Beginning, 2016, How to Be an Antiracist, 2019, and Antiracist Baby, 2020.
Further readings : Antiracist reading list, The Atlantic, Center for Antiracist Research.
Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
A bundle, of games, comics, and what-not, hosted by itch.io with content from 1000+ creators. The campaign is a response to the killing of George Floyd and in solidarity with blacklivesmatter.
All proceeds will be donated to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Community Bail Fund split 50/50.
itch.io is an open marketplace for independent digital creators with a focus on independent video games.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Geographies of Racial Capitalism with Ruth Wilson Gilmore
An Antipode Foundation film directed by Kenton Card.
… capitalism requires inequality and racism enshrines it.
It started racial without what people imagined race to mean which is black people and it will continue to be racial without what people imagine they’re not raised to be which is white people
Abolition geography – “all liberation struggle is place-based”
Prisons and Class Warfare: An Interview with Ruth Wilson Gilmore via verso.