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Editors’ Choice

Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind

By Editors' Choice

In three decades of advocating for prison abolition, the activist and scholar has helped transform how people think about criminal justice. By Rachel Kushner, New York Times — There’s an anecdote that Ruth Wilson Gilmore likes to share about being at an environmental-justice conference in Fresno in 2003. People from all over California’s Central Valley had gathered to talk about the serious environmental hazards their communities faced, mostly as a…

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The ExxonMobil refinery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is part of a large concentration of chemical and oil companies known as "Cancer Alley." A new report finds that the fossil fuel industry is denying the reality of air and water pollution, or even shifting the blame for this pollution to those disadvantaged communities who are suffering the impacts of the industry's projects.

NAACP Reveals Tactics Fossil Fuel Industry Uses to Manipulate Communities of Color

By Editors' Choice

By Ben Jervey, DeSmogBlog — The fossil fuel industry regularly deploys manipulative and dishonest tactics when engaging with communities of color, often working to co-opt the respect and authority of minority-led groups to serve corporate goals. That is according to a new report, “Fossil Fueled Foolery,” published today by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which outlines the top 10 manipulation tactics that the group’s members and…

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‘The neo-Nazi terror group National Action has called for a ‘white jihad’.’ A National Action march in Darlington, County Durham.

White supremacy feeds on mainstream encouragement. That has to stop

By Editors' Choice

Rather than making concessions to bigots, politicians must confront them. It’s the only way to end the violence. By Gary Younge, The Guardian — On 19 April 1995, Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring another 684, in the deadliest act of domestic US terrorism to date. A white supremacist, among other things, he was radicalised by what he…

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Hans Sloane collected this specimen of cacao in Jamaica in the 1680s. Sloane often collected on or near slave plantations, taking advantage of slavery’s infrastructure to advance his science.

Historians Expose Early Scientists’ Debt to the Slave Trade

By Editors' Choice, Reparations

By examining scientific papers, correspondence between naturalists, and the records of slaving companies, historians are now seeing new connections between science and slavery and piecing together just how deeply intertwined they were. By Sam Kean, Science Magazine — At the dawn of the 1700s, European science seemed poised to conquer all of nature. Isaac Newton had recently published his monumental theory of gravity. Telescopes were opening up the heavens to…

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The Second Pan-African Congress, Palais Mondial, Brussels, September 1921.

Is a United States of Africa Possible?

By Editors' Choice

Is a united Africa, freed from the legacy of colonialism, possible? The Pan-African movement has been advocated by many different voices, underpinned by a belief in the common destiny of the peoples of Africa. By Hakim Adi, History Today — It is more than 60 years since the All-African Peoples Conference convened in Accra, Ghana in 1958. It was a notable event in the history of Pan-Africanism. Organised by two…

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"The Iron Man" sculpture of a hockey player next to the Prudential Center in Newark, where the New Jersey Devils hockey team plays. In the background, signs can be seen for Dinosaur Bar-B-Cue BBQ and Rock Plaza Lofts luxury apartments.

Where Gentrification Is an Emergency, and Where It’s Not

By Editors' Choice, Gentrification

Gentrification is geographically limited in cities, but a new study shows where it has become a crisis, particularly for low-income black households. By Brentin Mock, CityLab — Ron Daniels, president of the Baltimore-based civil-rights network Institute of the Black World 21st Century, assembled a group of some of the foremost African-American social-justice advocates, thinkers, and influencers to Newark this weekend for an emergency summit on gentrification. The emergency is that too many…

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Buildings at Princeton University’s Princeton Theological Seminary are pictured in Princeton, N.J. Last year, the university released a report on the school’s role in American bondage. Although the seminary did not own slaves and slave labor was not used on constructing the school, slave owners were major donors and responsible for as much as 40 percent of the seminary’s revenue.

‘We are therefore demanding …’ : Reparations in the Christian church

By Editors' Choice, News & Current Affairs

By Wyatt Massey, Frederick News Post — The Rev. Dr. Ernest Campbell said no, James Forman could not speak at his church service the next day. Campbell was the senior pastor at Riverside Church, a predominantly white church on the west side of Manhattan. Forman, a black civil rights leader, wanted to read something to the congregation at the next day’s service on May 4, 1969, according to a history…

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