FILE - Protesters dance and march in New York, June 14, 2020. At no point have black trans people shared fully in the gains of racial justice or LGBTQ activism, despite suffering disproportionately from the racism, homophobia and transphobia these movements exist to combat. (Demetrius Freeman/The New York Times)

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 . . .

Caribbean intellectual Claudia Jones reading at a desk

The Responsibilities of Caribbean Intellectuals

Aaron Kamugisha is Professor of Caribbean and Africana Thought at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus The tradition of Caribbean intelligentsia insists on a grounding with the masses against the elites. What then are the responsibilities of Caribbean intellectuals? I draw my definition/sense of the intellectual here from figures as diverse as Antonio Gramsci, Edward Said, Claudia Jones and Audre Lorde. For the purposes of this essay I am twinning the thought of George Lamming and Walter Rodney – specifically Lamming’s succinct description of an intellectual as someone whose fundamental orientation is a life of the mind, . . .