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Hood Communist •

Lessons From Safiya Bukhari: Islam and Revolution are Complementary

Bukhari’s autobiography, “The War Before,” chronicles her journey as a revolutionary, and has become an important resource for those interested in exploring the intersection of revolutionary activism, dedicated organizing, and principled struggle. Moreover, the book is incredibly introspective and personal, with constant reflections on her Islamic faith, her deteriorating health, and the very physical and mental personal tolls that dedicating her life to struggle took on her body.
Grassroots Thinking •

African Power & Politics In Cuba’s La Marina Neighborhood

In that moment, I understood the struggles of La Marina and Black Cubans to be radically different from our struggle in the US, yet still deeply connected as examples of what to strive for. There, they are guaranteed basic rights within a system that grants them all equal opportunity. But that means that “it’s up to us, Black people, to continue the revolution within the revolution,” Kimbo told me.
In These Times •

HBO's DMZ Fails to Invent a Truly Revolutionary Society

In the center of downtown Atlanta, footsteps from the city’s busiest business district is the site of one of its most popular blocks for film production, and also a tent city. In July 2021, Atlanta police forcibly removed members of the Atlanta Homeless Union from the area to make way for the production of the new HBO Max dystopian miniseries DMZ. It was an on-the-nose moment — removing unhoused activists to film fictional activist characters, revealing once again that capitalist media productions centered on ​“radical” politics are just empty representation. DMZ is a prime project for promoting political inaction, confusion and propaganda.
Butter.ATL •

James Baldwin’s Enduring Relevance To Atlanta

In 1979 Walter Lowe, Jr, the first Black editor at Playboy, called his literary hero James Baldwin in France to convince him to cover something that had began to capture the American public’s attention: the Atlanta Child Murders. As the story goes, Baldwin was a bit familiar with the situation brewing in Atlanta, but from all the way in France was unable to fully understand what was taking place, and did not agree to take the assignment until he learned that the Playboy editor on the phone with him was indeed a Black man.
Butter.ATL •

Why Remembering ATL's Native American History Is So Important

The area that would eventually become the Atlanta we know and love, situated beside the Chattahoochee River, was originally inhabited by the Creek and Cherokee Native tribes. The space where Peachtree Creek — one of Atlanta’s major tributaries — flows into the Chattahoochee was originally a Native village named Pakanahuili, a Creek word meaning “Standing Peach Tree.” This Native village, a center of trading, culture, and harvest for the inhabitants, is responsible for the “Peachtree” street name.
The Independent •

Killer Mike, T.I. and Atlanta's Black Misleadership Class

The entire spectacle was a mishmash of scolding, empty political sloganeering, tone-deaf pleads for “peace” in response to systemic state violence, and the treachery of the Black misleadership class. In his 2018 article, Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford defines this class as both an “actual and aspirational class of political forces” readily prepared to “sell out the interests of the overwhelmingly working class Black masses” for the sake of capitalist, corporate, or imperialist interests.
Shadowproof •

Street Medics See Cuba As A Model For COVID-19 Response In Vulnerable Communities

Prevention is key to the successes of Cuba’s free and universal healthcare system, which is a direct result of the revolution’s progress. Some of their health achievements include one of the highest doctor-patient ratios in the world, a higher life expectancy rate than the U.S. and many so-called developed nations, accessible clinics in almost every neighborhood throughout the island, and the development of several successful vaccines and treatments.

In Cuba’s health care system, the profit motive is largely nonexistent, which many experts suggest is a key factor in the country’s incredible achievements. It is highly common for medical workers like Cabrera to make dozens of house visits a day, with rural communities and people outside of major cities or in poorer neighborhoods receiving regular care.
The Independent •

If you think calling Kamala Harris a cop was racist, you need to talk to black feminists

To be certain, Kamala Harris faces obstacles of oppression and perception as a black woman; few would argue against this. At the same time, however — to put it into her own words — Kamala is California’s “top cop.”

As the 32nd Attorney General of California, Harris was both a chief legal advisor to the state government and its chief law officer, with responsibilities including leading the California Department of Justice, enforcing state laws, supporting local law enforcement, overseeing law enforcement agencies, and even assisting as the chief legal counsel in state litigation cases. In short, a person in her position may be the most “cop-like” a person can be.
Wear Your Voice •

A Primer On Bolivia’s US-Backed Coup

“I am resigning just so that my sisters and brothers, leaders and authorities of the movement towards socialism, are not harassed, persecuted, and threatened,” Evo Morales, the democratically elected president of Bolivia, told the world in his somber resignation speech on November 10th. The speech came over two weeks after his supporters and members of his party were kidnapped, beaten, publicly humiliated, and assaulted by opposition forces; the images of Patricia Arce, mayor of Vinto in Bolivia, covered in red paint with her hair cut off and violently abused went viral, and serve as a representation of who’s behind the US-backed coup.
Academia •

Groundings: A Revolutionary Pan-African Pedagogy for Guerilla Intellectuals

Walter Rodney’s utilization and subsequent coining of the “groundings” pedagogical model, along with his conceptualization of the "guerilla intellectual", are among the most potent manifestations of a (Black) critical pedagogy or educational praxis with this unique intention. Within this framework, history and theory are not only weapons of the pedagogical process but are transformed—through the guerilla intellectual—into weapons of the struggle and, as Rodney’s life shows as testament, eventually into a facet of the struggle itself. This essay seeks to explore Walter Rodney’s life, his development and use of the groundings model, and to explain why his conceptualization of the guerilla intellectual is not only still relevant today, but how his development of an Afrocentric pedagogy model maps out a powerful educational framework which can be applied for the liberatory purposes of contemporary struggle. We also consider the absence of Rodney and the Pan-African tradition from too much of the radical pedagogy and general radical canons, though this is starting to change.
Mondoweiss •

The illusion of electoral politics from Palestine to Black America

Electoral politics are asked to carry that which they cannot hold; or possibly more aptly, electoral politics are made to be the face of a change which they’ve never known. As the elections in Israel and the possible ousting of Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s prime minister have dominated Western headlines over the course of several weeks now, the illusion of the power of a vote must once again be called into question.
Mondoweiss •

A look at Washington DC’s Museum of the Palestinian People

A feeling of family welcomes you when you walk into the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington DC. Conversations flow, anecdotes and oral histories echo all around. Walls covered with pictures show faces and legacies that invite connection.

“There are connections that are happening,” says AnaMichele Babyak, social media and development coordinator. “People are coming in, they’re meeting people, and visitors are connecting to each other and the history. And we say that’s very inherent in
PAPER Magazine •

The Violent Implications of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Shows

Despite the shallow gimmick of the film's interactive style, Bandersnatch raises for me a number of pressing social and political questions. Important in analyzing any film is paying close attention to the way violence is framed — the way the director and writers choose to deliver, handle, contextualize, and rationalize violence within the short universes they create. Given the interactive ability thrust onto viewers during Bandersnatch, the gaze of violence in this film becomes a crucial moment in defining, or — anticipating the potential popularity of this new interactive film style — redefining the ways in which violence is manifest bidirectionally in film and how that reverberates throughout society.
Truthout •

DeRay Mckesson's Misguided Case for Hope

There are two histories which have always battled each other, publicly and loudly: domination’s history—the history of the class in position to dominate the masses—and the people’s history, which is the history of colonized and oppressed peoples struggling and triumphing from the ground up. Between these two histories, narrative and autobiographical writings have been a key tool in correctively challenging the historical narratives placed onto oppressed and colonized people, from the era-defining writing found in Malcolm X’s autobiography, to the consciousness-shaping contours of Assata Shakur’s Assata. And still, one must wonder if such a definitive, important piece of autobiographical writing has come from our generation yet, or if any attempts have been made. However, as we move into a new generation characterized by celebrity activists steeped in social media rather than intellectual study, it seems domination’s recent history finds a comfortable bedfellow in the work of some high-profile activists, including activist DeRay Mckesson’s On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope.
Mondoweiss •

The symbol of political prisoners resonates beyond borders

Among all movements of oppressed people, but particularly those of Black and Palestinian people, political prisoners become the face and embodiment of this unjust carcerality, recognizable figures from Angela Davis’ afro to Ahed Tamimi’s smile. We hold closely to these figures, and to the incarcerated, not because they are necessarily lionized but because they represent an integral key in breeding international, intercommunal solidarity.
Mondoweiss •

Extracting a legacy of Black, Southern organizing for Palestine

The particularity of racism’s history in the South has not been overlooked, and has given way to an understanding of immense commonality between contemporary Palestine and the Jim Crow apartheid system in the U.S. It should come at no surprise, then, that some of Palestine’s most well-known voices of solidarity from the Black community have come from those with Southern backgrounds, using their lived experiences through Jim Crow to call for action. Both Alice Walker and Angela Davis lived through the violent apartheid system of the South in the 1950s and 1960s, and have many times written and spoke about this connection of what they have seen in Palestine and experienced during Jim Crow. In an interview with Democracy Now, Walker went as far as to say it is actually worse in Palestine than what her family experienced under Jim Crow. Writing in 2012 after visiting Palestine, Davis stated: “we here in the U.S. should be especially conscious of the similarities between historical Jim Crow practices and contemporary regimes of segregation in Occupied Palestine.”
Medium •

Florida Prisoners To Launch ‘Operation PUSH’ Strike Against Prison Slavery

Incarcerated people in Florida have announced a prison strike called ‘Operation PUSH’ beginning Monday, January 15th, coinciding with MLK Day. The organizers plan to disrupt as much economic flow of the prisons as possible by waging a labor strike; according to their statement published on Fight Toxic Prisons, they will not attend shifts in the kitchens, cleaning and laundry services, or facility maintenance services, including other jobs that exploit the labor of prisoners to maintain the prisons. Their demands are noble and straightforward: end prison slavery by receiving fair payment for their labor, stop price gouging through ‘outrageous’ commissary/canteen prices, and re-introducing parole incentives for those with life sentences and inhumanly long sentences.
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