“My people are being killed.” By Sarah Emily Baum, Teen Vogue — Veteran organizers, like Nupol Kiazolu, the 19-year-old president of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, are familiar with the ebbs and flows of a protest. She stood nose-to-nose with Nazis in Charlottesville. She’s fled law enforcement with rifle sights set on her chest. She knows it means risking her life, even before the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the…
By Don Rojas — Today America is at a crossroads, a turning point…at an intersection of the old imperial order at home and abroad with the birthing of a new order, “a new normal” if you will. For millions of people in America, the unprecedented street uprisings of the past 10 days offer a glimmer of hope that after 350 years of oppression, meaningful change may actually be on the…
By David Abdulah, Movement for Social Justice — “It is not easy to describe a crisis so profound that it has caused the most powerful nation in the world to…
By Zamira Rahim and Rob Picheta, CNN — Protesters have marched in the US for six consecutive nights over the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer. Their anger over…
By Steve Strunsky, NJ Advance Media — He was only 9 at the time, but Newark Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose can still remember the rioting sparked by police brutality against a black man in 1967 that left 26 people dead and the city scarred for decades. When plans were announced for a protest Saturday in Newark over the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer, Ambrose said he couldn’t…
“Nothing about this movement is really black friendly.” By Nick Charles, NBC News — As protests erupt over stay-at-home orders and the clamor to reopen the economy becomes louder, the coalition of people storming state Capitols — some armed with semi-automatic weapons and most not wearing masks or observing social distancing guidelines — have had one thing in common: Almost all of them are white. African Americans, for the most…
By Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald — A massive crowd of anti-government protesters in Haiti cranked up the pressure for President Jovenel Moïse to step down Friday, taking their resignation demands to the United Nation’s peacekeeping headquarters in Port-au-Prince, where they asked the international community to stop supporting the country’s leader. Tying up traffic in front of Toussaint Louverture International Airport, the demonstrators — who later burned tires in front of…
The party was the natural political conduit for the protest movement. It must not betray that trust. By Gary Younge, The Guardian — With just a few thousand votes between the two candidates for governor, election night during the US midterms in Wisconsin could not have been more tense. The slender lead kept flipping between Republican and Democrat as various precincts reported their results. Then shortly before midnight a local news presenter suggested,…
“I want a country where black people and LGBTQ individuals can walk freely. As a woman, I want to walk around without being afraid I’ll get raped.” By Gislene Ramos,…
Migrants are leaving not only because they fear gang violence, but because they are terrified of the brutal government. By Peter Tinti, Vice — Nineteen-year-old taxi driver Diego is not interested in politics. But his hometown of El Progreso—a transit hub in central Honduras, where everyone seems to have a friend or relative who has “gone north” to the US—has long been a hotbed of popular resistance. In 1954, workers…
You can’t fight injustice with decorum. By Sarah Leonard, The Nation — Michelle Obama’s 2016 declaration that “when they go low, we go high” quickly became the unofficial motto of the anti-Trump resistance. But instead of being used against Trump himself, this attitude is now being wielded against protesters confronting his administration’s obscene immigration-detention policies. Even in the face of family separations, a racist travel ban, and overt, violent white…
By Sharon Cohen — The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. marching arm-in-arm with other civil rights activists. Cesar Chavez hoisting a picket sign in a farm workers’ strike. Gloria Steinem rallying other feminists for equal rights. During the 1960s and into the 1970s, amid the turbulence of protests for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, every movement seemed to have a famous face — someone at a podium or at the front of a march who possessed a charismatic style, soaring oratory and an inspiring message.