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IBW21

IBW21 (The Institute of the Black World 21st Century) is committed to enhancing the capacity of Black communities in the U.S. and globally to achieve cultural, social, economic and political equality and an enhanced quality of life for all marginalized people.

A protester holds a Black Lives Matter sign in front of the White House.

Why the Black Lives Matter movement doesn’t want a singular leader

By Commentaries/Opinions

“We don’t need someone in the Senate or House to try to build their political career off of this moment.” By Laura Barrón-López — In 2015, thousands of Black activists gathered in Ohio for the first national Black Lives Matter convention to consider where the movement would direct its energy. Attendees in the crowd held up red construction paper to signal “no” to a handful of narrow options, like focusing…

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Healthcare workers walk out for Black Lives, 1199SEIU

Strike for Black Lives; Unions and Racial Justice

By News & Current Affairs

SEIU, the Teamsters, AFT, CWA, UFCW, UNITE HERE, ATU and the UFW joined dozens of other labor and community organizations in a national Strike for Black Lives. Meanwhile, unions are pushing the fight for racial justice beyond resolutions. By Martin Belam; Stephanie Luce — From Resolutions to Transformation: How Unions Are Organizing for Racial Justice Tens of thousands of Americans strike in protest over racial inequality 1 Tens of thousands…

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John R. Lewis, a civil rights titan and a formidable member of Congress for three decades, died at the age of 80 on July 17.

John Lewis, front-line civil rights leader and eminence of Capitol Hill, dies at 80

By News & Current Affairs

By Laurence I. Barrett, The Washington Post — John Lewis, a civil rights leader who preached nonviolence while enduring beatings and jailings during seminal front-line confrontations of the 1960s and later spent more than three decades in Congress defending the crucial gains he had helped achieve for people of color, has died. He was 80. His death was announced in statements from his family and from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…

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A Palestinian man rests by Israeli soldiers near the site of the old village known as Ein Hijleh, in the Jordan Valley near the West Bank city of Jericho, February 5, 2014.

Palestinians Are Fighting To Dismantle Apartheid

By Commentaries/Opinions

If you ask Palestinians in the Jordan Valley how they feel about annexation, many will say that they were already annexed long ago. By Salem Barahmeh, +972 Magazine — The view from my grandparents’ house in Jericho, the city where I grew up, looks on to the mountain ridges of the Jordan Valley that thunder down into the Dead Sea. Over the horizon of those mountains, from a Mediterranean Sea…

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Deante Campbell of Sanford joins student protesters during a demonstration June 4 against institutional racism at South Portland Police Station.

Teenagers lead the way in Black Lives Matter movement

By News & Current Affairs

Nationally and in Maine, young people of color are leading protests and asking their local leaders to address systemic racism. By Megan Gray, Press Herald — Mariam Beshir spent the days leading up to her graduation from Gorham High School organizing a Black Lives Matter march in her town. She wanted to celebrate. But she knew that Tamir Rice should have graduated from his own high school this year if…

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