By Michael Harriot, The Root — Money is a social construct. We accept the idea that a dollar issued by the U.S. government is worth more than Monopoly money….
Understanding what the conversation about reparations is, and isn’t, about. By Richard North Patterson, The Bulwark — In 2014, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote his seminal essay “The Case For Reparations.” Five years later…
By Keith L. Alexander — This article was originally published by The Washington Post in December of 2017 CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Blocks away from Harvard Law School, renowned civil rights attorney…
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…
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…
By Thalif Deen, IPS — UNITED NATIONS, Apr 12 2019 (IPS) – The civic space in several African countries, including Tanzania, Burundi, Zambia, Sudan, Mozambique, Somalia and Eritrea, is gradually shrinking…
Calculating the Damage from a Century of Drug Prohibition. By Alfred W. McCoy, TomDispatch — We live in a time of change, when people are questioning old assumptions and seeking…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…