“Like a lot of Black women, I have always had to invent the power my freedom requires: All my life I’ve been studying revolution. I’ve Been looking for it, pushing at the possibilities and waiting for that moment when there’s no more room for rhetoric, for research or for reason: when there’s only my life or my death left to act upon. Here in the United States you do get weary, after a while; you could spend your best energies forever writing letters to the New York Times. But you know, in your gut, that writing back is not the . . .
Nicaragua
I Witnessed the Truth about Nicaragua
Entering adulthood alongside the dwindling of 2020 uprisings for Black liberation (that I had naively seen as the beginning of the end), I felt very stuck. Understanding I am a poor queer Black woman, I saw myself facing a world where the options presented for survival were dehumanizing at best, and the innate dream of living as a free person essentially destroyed. I wanted to fight the liberal tendency of American youth to begin with strong spirits of resistance, before colleging, working and/or drugging, and ultimately, laying down into the nuzzle of the . . .
Black & Indigenous Solidarity Takes Root in Ecuador
Last week the Black and Indigenous Liberation Movement (BILM) organized a coalition congress between Black and Indigenous communities throughout Abya Yala, which includes the regions of North, Central, and South America, and the Caribbean. BILM held the congress in Quito, Ecuador which has been the center of nationwide strikes throughout this year. This strike led by Indigenous and Black community leaders, against rising food and fuel costs, awakened a decades long issue of the Ecuadorian government excluding Indigenous and Black Ecuadorians politically, socially, and economically. The strikes brought together Black, Indigenous, student, and women groups, to bring the country to . . .
Hashtag Activism and US Imperialism
The abundance of “hashtag activism” has created a false sense of importance for the everyday individual being driven by weaponized empathy to speak out about a cause or injustice happening internationally. This false sense of importance, brought on by the use of hashtags as awareness, is ignited by already held biases about the colonized world, which inevitably leads to both overt and covert calls for western intervention to “save” whoever has been deemed needing of saving. The use of hashtag activism has certainly all but replaced in-person community organizing. It has allowed an array of people across the country and . . .
Imperialist Meddling in Michigan Election Shows Our Strength
Zionist and imperialist efforts to influence U.S. elections are not surprising, nor is their concern solely about policy towards Israel. The broader goal is to kill solidarity between the oppressed in this country and revolutionary forces abroad lest they find common ground and change the political landscape here. It was as unlikely a scenario as anyone might have imagined. Leading up to the recent primary elections, Adam Hollier, a Black Michigan state senator, became the beneficiary of more than $4 million spent on his behalf by a super PAC of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in the contest . . .
Día de la Alegría: Celebrating Revolution in Nicaragua
Holidays in the United States celebrate awful events such as the settler colonists declaring independence from Britain so that they might take indigenous lands and protect slavery. There is also Thanksgiving, the commemoration of genocide turned into a day when Americans should think grateful thoughts before spending more than they can afford in order to celebrate Christmas. Christmas is ostensibly a religious holiday but is rarely treated as such. Labor Day was created to prevent acknowledgement of May 1, May Day, which commemorates just one example of U.S. state repression which took place in Chicago in 1886. But this columnist . . .
Complicity, Imperialism, & the Summit of the Americas
The U.S. excluded Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from the recent Summit of the Americas held in Los Angeles. While there was widespread condemnation against the U.S., only six heads of state had the courage to decline the invitation. An opportunity to strike a blow against U.S. imperialism was lost. And so it was that another historical opportunity was missed by the countries of the Caribbean, Central and South America, with the exception of a few who had the courage to take a stand. The majority of leaders from the region, those who Maurice Bishop so aptly called “yard fowls”, and . . .
Understanding Imperialism by Understanding Abuse
Imagine… and then recognize that the abused partner is experiencing the same things as the masses of those experiencing the effects of imperialism and (neo)colonialism. And they have fought, and continue to organize and fight for self determination. . . .