515 Search results for "defense"

If last week’s rather desultory and occasionally poorly rendered post on The Fab Five was any indication, my love for Jalen Rose and the rest of the Fab Five is immense and endures even today.  I appreciate many of the things they symbolized.  Just like back in ’91, many do not hold this cohort of […]

Oscar Grant Trial: Gripping Testimony Opens Defense Julianne Ong Hing, June 23, 2010 Johannes Mehserle’s defense opened Tuesday with more than three hours of tense, emotional testimony from Oscar Grant’s good friend Jackie Bryson, who was on the train platform with Grant when he was killed. Defense attorney Michael Rains worked to paint Bryson as […]

by Amber Butts My maternal grandmother, Audrie, who was a second mother to me, was my first entry point in witnessing mutual aid in practice. She became a widow before the age of 21, followed by a long bout of alcoholism and depression. She experienced her share of heartbreak. She and my maternal grandfather were […]

by Donnie Moreland The first time I held a gun, I was afraid. The scenario was all too awkwardly cinematic to not be memorable. It was on a vacation with my mother to my grandparents’ South Carolina home. Sitting in their entertainment room, my grandfather entered with two guns. A magnum revolver and shotgun. He […]

by Donnie Moreland My grandfather—my mother’s father—participated in the first sit-ins in Greenville, South Carolina. My grandfather is a military veteran. He patrolled the tomb of the unknown soldier, was employed as a manufacturer with the Department of Defense and was a supervisor, in the Pentagon, when Flight 77 made contact with the building at […]

Editor’s Note: June is LGBTQ Pride Month. At Black Youth Project, we will be exploring gender, sexuality, transgender issues and queer theory, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics and the things surrounding them. by Jamila Dawn Mitchell Transgender identities will no longer be considered a mental health disorder by the […]

By DJ Ferguson My mother, no stranger to emotional blackmail, had no hesitation in using it on behalf of her god in an attempt to reconvert me. “Don’t you think God (Yahweh) ever mourns?” she asked, hoping to get me to feel sorry for the possessive West Asian shepherd god whom I no longer worship. […]

Marianne Williamson makes me physically ill, and seeing people support her compounds my nausea. The Democratic candidate made waves last week when she delivered an impressive answer about reparations to Don Lemon post-debate:  “[T]here were 250 years of slavery followed by another 100 years of domestic terrorism… given that there were 4 to 5 million […]

I don’t want to live in a world where all I have is my reputation. I don’t want my worth to be determined solely by what others say and think about me based on standards I never agreed to, but such is the nature of capitalism. In the age of The Influencer, we are being […]

This essay contains discussions of racialized sexual violence and mentions r/pe and molestation.  by Mekleit Dix The Handmaid’s Tale is a wildly popular American Television show based on a novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood. It portrays a dystopian nightmare: sterility in women becomes a widespread epidemic resulting in a break down of […]

Editor’s Note: This month at BYP, we will be exploring Black Liberation & Organizing, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics. How do we hold politicians accountable to Black communities? Is that even possible? What should be our role in the electoral politics? What does abolition look like in practice? What […]

By Donnie Moreland “Where do you keep the shells?” Earl whispered. Willis, enamored with the searing heat of a bullet having ripped through his shoulder, seemed to hear his nephew retroactively. “Jesus….Lord.….I can’t remember.” Earl looked back to the door, accepting he was just going to have to wait here. Wait to know their enemy, […]