Black Maternal Health Week is a week of information sharing, panel discussions, and uplifting Black Birthing People usually falling on the second week of April each year. For about the last 5 years this week has grown into a larger scale event from one or two days to a full week of events. As a community, we should be able to support our Black Birthing people from conception to postpartum and beyond. . . .
Organizing 101
The Myth of Good Ideas
This essay was originally published in Tenement Yaad Media, a Caribbean focused media platform. As people who want ‘good’ for Jamaica, one of the realities that we all have to accept is that there is no objective “good” or anything that everyone will support and agree on. We have to do away with the liberal illusion of ‘objectivity’ including the ideas that debates are just about finding the best ideas, that there are things that will ‘work for all’ of us, and that maybe “our leaders” just have not thought about them yet. This type of thinking is something we . . .
Trans women are not the enemy. Patriarchy is.
Previously published on Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women. Two years ago, when we were planning to organize the first ever Adventures Live festival, we had invited about 7 feminists and activists from different African countries to be speakers at the event. This included an African trans woman who was invited as a speaker for one of our panel conversations. I had helped to organize travel logistics and as such had been in communication with this speaker. We communicated via email and whatsapp and I built a cordial working relationship with her. I was inspired by her work as . . .
African History – An Underused Weapon for Liberation
Mama is excited. She grabs her husband’s arm and smiles broadly as their daughter marches proudly to the microphone. She is perhaps 11 or 12-years-old, but at this moment, with her head held high and her perfect erect posture, she possesses the poise of a young woman twice her age. What happens next is magic – at least it is in the minds of the girl’s adoring parents who have been mesmerized from the moment their pride and joy first emerged from stage left. The young orator places her portfolio on the lectern, and while making her best efforts to . . .
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? . . .
Information Warfare for the Revolution
There are many comrades amongst the socialist, anti-imperialist, and world-wide pan-African movements doing great propaganda work on social media right now. Among the cacophony of celebrity worship, consumerism, individualism, and roasting you can find here and there gems of information – well researched and presented. Invitations to conversation and deeper exploration. A light in the dark shown by principled revolutionary socialists, revolutionary nationalists, and anti-imperialists across the globe. These comrades are to be commended for making use of these platforms in this way. But what the last three weeks have revealed is that lights in the dark here and there . . .
Organizing to Free the Land with Kali Akuno
In this episode of Hood Communist Radio, I sat down with Kali Akuno, the founder of Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi. As someone that’s inspired by, and believes in the vision of the New African Independence Movement, I wanted to talk to Kali to hear about how that history influences the work of Cooperation Jackson. We talked about why African people must lead the movement for climate justice, and why it’s a mistake for us to dismiss the rise of the far right in the US as some sort of fringe moment in history. It’s all good stuff that everyone should hear, particularly those of us who are new to the concept of “Free The Land”. . . .
Prisoners of War
Our ancestors, our elders, our (New) Afrikan Liberation prisoners of war suffering the most heightened forms of bestial oppression in america’s concentration camps, deserve more than flowery tributes and toothless appeals to a conscienceless empire. Only the naive or willfully ignorant can not see the failure of the ‘left’ to truly acknowledge the existence of or work toward the release of our political prisoners and prisoners of war. . . .