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Veronica Curry and other Black Lives Matter activists and supporters during a rally on Interstate 5 in Sacramento, California, March 22, 2018

Sacramento Is Seething Over the Police Killing of Stephon Clark

By News & Current Affairs

His fate has sent a collective shudder of horror through the city’s African-American community. By Sasha Abramsky — After the white hearse, trailed by a van from the funeral company that repaired Stephon Clark’s broken body, pulled into the Boss Bayside church in South Sacramento, dozens of mourners began filing in to view the dead man. It was 1 pm on March 28, a hot, cloudless day, more than a…

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Protesters against gun violence at the March for Our Lives in Los Angeles

Why Focusing on People of Color Will Help the Movement for Gun Control Succeed

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Sonali Kolhatkar — Any discussions of gun violence and the regulations needed to curb it are incomplete unless they include an analysis of how racism plays a role. Government data show that “black Americans are, on average, eight times more likely to be killed by firearms than those who are white.” Gun violence by police against ordinary Americans also disproportionately affects people of color—a fact that the Black Lives Matter movement has…

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Demonstrators carry banners as they march during a protest in Ghana's capital Accra, March 28, 2018

‘Ghana not for sale’: Protesters march in Accra against military deal with US

By Editors' Choice

A controversial pact, in which the US military wants to invest $20 million and get access to Ghana’s runways and communications, set off rallies in the West African nation, with people chanting their country is “not for sale.” Thousands of people flocked to the streets of Accra, the capital of Ghana, to protest a military deal the government recently signed with the US. As part of the agreement, Washington would…

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Women demonstrate with street vendors in memory of Mame Mbaye in Madrid, Spain, on March 16, 2018. Hundreds of people, mostly black, protested in Barcelona by the death of Mame Mbaye, street vendor in Madrid who lost his life after the harassment by the municipal police of Madrid

Black Nationalist Women and Global Visions of Freedom

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Keisha N. Blain — The #MeToo movement in the United States is one of the contemporary expressions of women’s political power and evidence of women’s commitment to dismantling systems of oppression that give rise to sexual harassment and assault. The fact that a Black woman founded the movement is not surprising; especially considering the crucial role Black women have always played in shaping US and global politics. During the 20th century, a dynamic…

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Alex King and D'Angelo McDade at the March for Our Lives, Washington, DC, March 24, 2018

What Happens When You Put Young People of Color at the Center of #NeverAgain

By Commentaries/Opinions

Gun control becomes only one part of the larger solution to violence in our communities. By Lori Bezahler — The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have catalyzed a social movement demanding an end to gun violence. While their leadership and moral authority have undoubtedly taken the movement to another level, youth-led activism against gun violence is not, in fact, new. In Florida in 2013, for example…

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Stokely Carmichael of SNCC at Florida A&M University, 1967

The Absence of Political Economy in African Diaspora Studies

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Charisse Burden-Stelly — The Black Studies movement, inaugurated in the late 1960s by student- and community-based demands for a “more relevant education,” represented the intellectual expression of political Pan-Africanism in United States colleges and universities. According to St. Clair Drake, “Pan-Africanism ha provided a distinct global focus for Black Studies since the programs became a part of the campus scene in the late sixties and early seventies…

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Shooting survivors Tyra Hemans and Emma Gonzalez from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School at the March for Our Lives, Washington, DC, March 24, 2018.

The Adults Have Failed, So Students Are Leading the Way

By Commentaries/Opinions

It was young people who made possible the largest gun-control rally in a generation. By George Zornick — Sydney Neal was already planning to attend the March for Our Lives in Washington when tragedy struck her community on Tuesday. A student opened fire at the nearby Great Mills High School, killing 16-year-old Jaelynn Willey and wounding another student. On Saturday morning, Neal, the president of the association of student councils…

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