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In 2016, 65 black and undocumented immigrants met in Miami to build and connect with each other. The first of its kind, this convening resulted in the establishment of the UndocuBlack Network, whose goal is to advocate for and amplify the stories of undocumented black immigrants in the U.S.

Undocumented Black Migrants Build an Informal Organizing Network

By Editors' Choice

By Carla Pineda, Law at the Margins — Editor’s note: This article is part of “We the Immigrants,” a Community Based News Room (CBNR) series that examines how immigrant communities across the United States are responding to immigration policies. The five-part series is supported by a Solutions Journalism Network Renewing Democracy grant. The truth became clear to Sadat Ibrahim early. At the age of 18, he knew his life would be difficult as…

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How race influences convictions. Source:: National Registry of Exonerations.

The Deadly Peril of White Privilege

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By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, The Hutchinson Report — Now how do you explain this? Scott Paul Beierle casually strolls into Hot Yoga Tallahassee in Tallahassee, Florida and just as causally blazes away inside and when the smoke clears, two innocents are dead and a score others are wounded. Beierle is not gunned down by police but just as casually murders himself. Then explain this. Beierle was not some nameless, faceless kook,…

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Imperial Federation Map of the World showing the extent of the British Empire. The Empire in red in 1886, by Walter Crane

British Empire is still being whitewashed by the school curriculum – historian on why this must change

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By Deana Heath, The Conversation — Jeremy Corbyn has recently proposed that British school children should be taught about the history of the realities of British imperialism and colonialism. This would include the history of people of colour as components of, and contributors to, the British nation-state – rather than simply as enslaved victims of it. As Corbyn rightly noted: “Black history is British history” – and hence its study should be…

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You Can't Have Capitalism Without Racism - Malcom X.

The American Economy Is Rigged — And what we can do about it.

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NOTE: No mention of the centrality of racism and sexism the plays in “rigged” capitalism. I put rigged in quotes because it’s redundant to call capitalism rigged! Capitalism has always been rigged against the vast majority of the people: those exterminated or enslaved by capitalism’s founders and those who eventually became the proletariat all over the world. Hence, this essay is fundamentally flawed in its attempt to explain why their…

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Stacey Abrams giving the keynote speech at the Georgia State Democratic Convention in Atlanta, last August.

Stacey Abrams and the Black Women Reshaping the Left

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She and political strategists like Jessica Byrd and Kayla Reed are designing a new theory of the Democratic coalition. By Brittney Cooper, The New York Times — For too long, the Democratic Party has been comfortable with black women only running conventions or registering voters — doing background work. The party expects black women to be its backbone, as when 98 percent of black female voters in Alabama cast their ballots for…

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Trumpism Is ‘Identity Politics’ for White People

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The president’s closing argument in the midterm elections lays bare the logic of his appeal. By Adam Serwer, The Atlantic — After Democrats lost the 2016 presidential election, a certain conventional wisdom congealed within the pundit class: Donald Trump’s success was owed to the Democratic abandonment of the white working class and the party’s emphasis on identity politics. By failing to emphasize a strong economic message, the thinking went, the party had…

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Civil rights organizations have sued Georgia’s Republican secretary of state for failing to register 53,000 new voters, most of them black. Reuters/Christopher Aluka Berry

Georgia election fight shows that black voter suppression, a southern tradition, still flourishes

By Editors' Choice

Georgia’s refusal to process 53,000 voter registrations, mostly filed by African-Americans, is the latest in a long history of black voter suppression in the South, from poll taxes to literacy tests. By Frederick Knight, The Conversation — Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp has been sued for suppressing minority votes after an Associated Press investigation revealed a month before November’s midterm election that his office has not approved 53,000 voter registrations – most…

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How 2018 Became the ‘Year of the Black Progressive’

By Editors' Choice

White Democrats are becoming more liberal; black Democrats aren’t. That fact is driving black candidates to win by executing a savvy strategy. By Theodore R. Johnson, Politico Magazine — It’s too soon to award the moniker, but 2018 may well be remembered as the political “Year of the Black Progressive,” much as 1992 was the “Year of the Woman.” Black women are taking office as mayors in major cities such…

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The crowd at a get-out-the-vote rally during a speech by Michelle Obama, Miami, Florida, September 2018

Fighting to Vote

By Editors' Choice

By Michael Tomasky, The New York Review — The Embattled Vote in America: From the Founding to the Present by Allan J. Lichtman Harvard University Press, 315 pp., $27.95 If you grew up, as I did, in the 1960s and 1970s, watching (albeit through a child’s eyes) the civil rights movement notch victory after victory, you could be forgiven for thinking at the time that that happy condition was normal.…

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James Forten

This Black Activist Was One of the Richest Men in Early America

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A Black sailmaker was helping to lead the anti-slavery movement long before it was popular in America. By Sean Braswell, OZY — In the spring of 1842, several thousand Philadelphians poured into the streets for one of the largest funerals in the city’s history. It was a remarkable sight: An interracial procession that included everyone from poor Black laborers to wealthy White merchants to sea captains and shippers. On that…

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