Last summer the Southwest chapter of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party started the Pan-African Community Garden with the help of comrades, relatives, neighbors, and social justice organizations in Tiwa territory (Albuquerque, New Mexico). We did this without non-profit status, corporate sponsorship, grant funding, or financial backing of any kind – spending very little out of pocket when it came to the construction and maintenance of the garden. We also did this without any formal experience as a chapter undertaking such a project – meaning we had never built something like this together before. And yet in just a bit . . .
Local Organizing Updates
The Jackson-Kush Plan & the Struggle for Land
While the land relationships that dominate this society have implications for every relation in society, the recent crisis of gentrification and forced removal in low income Black communities, along with the volatile boom-bust real estate cycles, has made the struggle for adequate housing the most pronounced battleground in an increasingly intense war over the vision for the future of how we relate, prioritize and manage access to land. . . .
#SoyPorqueSomos – a Black women-led Project for a New Colombia
This article was written before the March 13 primaries when Francia Marquez received more than 780,000 votes. She received more votes than any Black politician in Colombian history. Would her outstanding performance, surpassing even candidates from right-wing parties, be enough to secure her the nomination to run as vice-president candidate in the frontrunner party Pacto Historico?* Francia Márquez Mina, a 40-year-old Black female activist from the predominantly Black and forgotten region of the Colombian Pacific coast, is shifting the terms of political debate in the second ‘Blackest’ nation in South America. Francia, the first Black woman to run for the . . .
How Afro-Colombians are Fighting White Feminism
To truly protect and liberate Black women in Latin America we must move away from the dominant liberal white feminist movement and instead call for the end of neoliberal led armed conflict, racist over policing, and demand Land rights and the redistribution of Land back to Black and Indigenous folx! . . .
Misogyny and Homophobia in Kenyan Leftist Spaces
The rallying cry you will hear at almost every leftist gathering in Kenya is “Liberation for the masses! End all forms of oppression!” Often, it is men who send out this noble clarion call for emancipation from the shackles of capitalism and all the ills it represents. But, whose liberation is it anyway? What oppression are we ending when many leftist movements in Kenya harbor persons who hold on to harmful patriarchal attitudes like misogyny and homophobia? . . .
Abolitionist Efforts to Trangress the Prison Walls
Incarcerated radical intellectuals elucidate the nature of political struggle and its various arenas. Alongside these writers are solidarity groups that propagate their writings and intellectual products. Through a close reading of Black Communist trans prisoner Alyssa V. Hope’s legal efforts and writings, this article unearths how a pen-pal relationship transformed into a comprehensive abolitionist community. This case study provides an ex-ample of how abolitionists are grappling with the need to support the material needs of marginalised communities while still building otherwise possible worlds separate from a failing welfare state. Mutual aid projects, like the one formed by Hope’s supporters, showcase that otherwise possible worlds are not only possible, but they are being created right now be-fore us. . . .
Who’s Afraid of Community Control?
Over the last year, in response to right-wing reactionaries, Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been centered as the primary fight for Africans in the U.S. From state to state, legislation has been passed to ban books written by Africans that detail the U.S’ racial history. As such, the discussion on the education of African children has been put front and center while the reality of how African children are taught in U.S colonial schools is obfuscated. . . .
Black Queer Liberation in Brazil
Latin America’s Black and Indigenous liberation movements have served as the grassroots foundation to Latin Liberation since the inception of colonization in the region. Specifically in Brazil, which stands as example of Latin America’s Afro-Indigenous Identity, the struggle for decolonization, abolition, and Land Back is currently being carried out by some of the most marginalized, including the Black Queer community. . . .