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Saamakan Maroon community of Suriname today

Suriname slave records go digital as the country celebrates “Keti Koti”

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Ray Chickrie — Today, July 1, Suriname celebrates the 155th anniversary of the end of slavery, emancipation or Keti Kota. It is also known locally as Maspasi. Slavery came to an end in 1863 in Suriname, but prior to that enslaved Africans waged wars of liberation and freed themselves from bondage (Maroons) and signed treaties with the Dutch. The Netherlands signed peace treaties with the Nyduka (Akkan) in 1760,…

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Sen. Kamala Harris

African-American Senators Introduce Anti-Lynching Bill

By News & Current Affairs

By Vanessa Romo, NPR — Congress’s three African-American senators introduced a bipartisan bill Friday to make lynching a federal crime. Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Tim Scott, R-S.C., drafted the bipartisan legislation, which defines the crime as “the willful act of murder by a collection of people assembled with the intention of committing an act of violence upon any person.” It also classifies lynching as a hate…

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Electoral Justice Project

The Movement for Black Lives Steps into the Electoral Arena

By News & Current Affairs

Experienced electoral organizer Jessica Byrd from the M4BL Electoral Justice Table talks with Organizing Upgrade editor Rishi Awatramani about the EJP strategy for electoral engagement… Rishi Awatramani interview with Jessica Byrd, Portside — In 2017, the Movement for Black Lives launched its Electoral Justice Project (EJP). The EJP is building a strategic political home with organizers from more than 50 Black Organizations around the country that are winning Black civic…

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Jasmine Ball, 33, lost her twin daughters who were born prematurely. Photograph: Talia Herman for the Guardian

Why are so many of San Francisco’s black mothers and babies dying?

By News & Current Affairs

In one of the wealthiest US cities, the racial disparity in birth outcomes is stark: ‘Why isn’t this sounding a bigger alarm?’ By Leslie Casimir, The Guardian — Jasmine Ball was barely five months pregnant with twins when the labor pains jolted through her lower body. Rushed to the hospital, the doctors told her that her cervix had dilated completely. There was nothing they could do to stop the babies…

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Young woman at a student protest in London against fees and cuts in 2010

The Black Studies Movement in Britain

By News & Current Affairs

By Kehinde Andrews, Black Perspectives — In 1967, the Afro-Caribbean Self-Help Organisation (ACSHO), based in Birmingham, started one of the first Black supplementary schools in the UK, sparking off a movement that transformed how mainstream schools treated their Black children. Supplementary schools refer to voluntary education programs run by concerned parents, teachers, and community members because of the racism faced in the school system.

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Louise Brown, 83, at the Poor People’s Campaign rally in Washington, D.C., on June 23. The movement aims to link a broad array of issues: systemic racism, poverty and inequality, ecological devastation and the war economy.

The Poor People’s Campaign Is Using Civil Disobedience to Win Back America

By News & Current Affairs

The 50-year-old anti-poverty movement has seen a revival in the era of Trump. By Teke Wiggin, HuffPost — When lifelong civil rights activist Louise Brown took the mic at a Washington, D.C., rally on Saturday, she had a stark message for the thousands of people assembled before her to protest poverty. “I’m 83 years old, and only the strong survive,” she shouted. In a call to arms, she recounted how…

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Sonja Bonnett and other members of the Coalition to End Unconstitutional Tax Foreclosures in front of Bonnett's new Detroit home, which the group acquired for her.

“Make it right”: Coalition wants reparations for Detroit’s “unconstitutional foreclosures”

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Sarah Cwiek, Michigan Radio — One Detroit family celebrated getting a new home Thursday, as they also called for other families like them to receive similar compensation as victims of what they call “illegal” foreclosures. The Bonnett family lost their home to property tax foreclosure in 2015. Nearly one in four Detroit properties was tax-foreclosed between 2011 and 2015. Some researchers, led by Illinois Institute of Technology and visiting…

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