By Herb Boyd — From far and wide, comrades of Don Rojas came with passages of praise for the ailing journalist, who was defined by many as a freedom fighter. Rojas, diagnosed with bone cancer and undergoing debilitating treatment, must have felt some comfort with the outpouring of love and genuine respect from a coterie of renowned speakers last Saturday evening at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn.
May 11, 2019, Brooklyn, NY — A special gathering to pay tribute to Don Rojas, one of the great progressives and freedom fighters of our time and to provide financial support for him and family during his courageous fight against bone cancer. Program will include an ensemble led by Ahmed Abdullah and poetry/rap by Talib Kweli and words from Prof. Sir Hilary Beckles, Rev. Herbert Daughtry, Danny Glover, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Mireille Fanon-Mendes France, Viola Plummer, Dr. Ben Chavis, Assemb. Charles Barron, Dan Coughlin, Dr. Brenda Greene, Dr. Todd Burroughs, Gary Byrd, Dr. Ron Daniels and others.
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…
A Fundraising Tribute to Don Rojas with Prof. Sir Hilary Beckles as Guest Speaker, Danny Glover, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Dr. Ben Chavis and Several other Prominent Public Figures to Present Solidarity Greetings. The event is Saturday, May 11 from 4 to 7 pm and open to the public at House of the Lord Church, which is located at 415 Atlantic Avenue and Bond St. (Take the A train to Hoyt/Schemerhorn).
By Eric Levitz, New York Magazine — In recent days, as Democrats debated the definition of “reparations,”Joe Biden rationalized his opposition to integration, and socialist congresswomen started demanding the rebirth of a nation, inquiring minds wanted to know: What would Ta-Nehisi say? Throughout the Obama years, Ta-Nehisi Coates provided politics-watchers with a regular source of historically grounded, bracingly well-written punditry and reporting. But since 2016, the writer’s ambitions have led him off of…
By Julia Craven, Huffington Post — Let’s say you’re driving down the street and someone rear-ends you. You get out of your car to assess the damage. The person who…
Marijuana reform can help black communities. That doesn’t make it “reparations.” By P.R. Lockhart — New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon is facing criticism after suggesting that giving black people access to marijuana licenses could serve as a “form of reparations” for black communities. The controversy started after Nixon, who is challenging current Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the state’s upcoming Democratic primary, appeared at the NYC Cannabis Parade on May…
Kanye West wants freedom—white freedom. By Ta-Nehisi Coates — I could only have seen it there, on the waxed hardwood floor of my elementary-school auditorium, because I was young then, barely 7 years old, and cable had not yet come to the city, and if it had, my father would not have believed in it. Yes, it had to have happened like this, like folk wisdom, because when I think of that…
By Constance Grady — We Were Eight Years in Power, the new book by Ta-Nehisi Coates, is not precisely new. It’s a collection of eight articles Coates wrote for the…
Author/journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates address as the keynote speaker at the Harvard conference on “Universities and Slavery” followed by his discussion with the President of Harvard.
By Darryl Pinckney Ta-Nehisi Coates, New York City, 2012 In Langston Hughes’s “Let America Be America Again,” a poem published in 1936, a narrator speaks for those who struggle—the poor…
By Chauncey DeVega The well-being and political interests of African-Americans are routinely sacrificed on the mantle of political expediency in the United States. To wit. During an interview last week,…