542 Search results for "fighting"

African Traditional Religions prepared me to grieve my mother
I’ve learned it’s best not to try to control how the memories of my mother show up, or what emotions they are wearing when they enter. This one is dressed in a rare crossbreed of inconsolable laughter and a stabbing sob, and it’s seeping out of my iphone from wherever the speaker is located on […]
Anti-Asian Violence—it runs deeper than hate
by Diane Wong Since the start of the pandemic, there has been an alarming increase and series of violent hate crimes against Asian Americans. In the last two months alone, Pak Ho a 75 year old Chinese American was killed in Oakland Chinatown, Vicha Ratanapakdee a 84 year old Thai man was violently shoved to […]
Black Joy is movement work
by Gloria Oladipo Black joy is revolutionary. Full stop. Oftentimes, white people misinterpret Black liberation movements as movements only about pain, movements only about anger, only about violence and death. And, of course, they involve those things. But joy is foundational. Joy is fundamental. Joy is what we’re fighting for. Joy is what we’re fighting […]
The price of radical concession
by Inigo Laguda August 26th 2016: Colin Kaepernick tells NFL Media why he’s been sitting through the national anthem. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people,” he exclaims in an exclusive interview. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would […]
The God Shop, Part 1
By Donnie Moreland It was no later than 6:23 am, on September 19th, when Officer Jacob Dochavney discovered the two bodies in the Tacoma River. He waited to call it in. He was three days from his two week vacation he’d been hollering about since February. He was supposed to be going to Las Vegas […]
My mother proved protection is possible without police, even if she doesn’t know it
Sometimes, an answer is not an answer to everyone. Sometimes, whether something is an answer depends, like seeing a blue or gold dress or hearing yanny or laurel in that auditory illusion. Or like when Black people are finally allowed in token numbers to receive a few of the laurels we hear we should always […]
My daughter saves me from my anxieties with the embrace of her little arms
by Donnie Moreland It’s the eve of what folks are calling the “most important presidential election of our lives.” I’m being told to prepare. I’m being told to panic. I strap both ends of my cloth mask around my ears to drop my ballot at a county library. This is the second time I’m having […]
When the Ancestors tell you to go to therapy
There aren’t enough accessible therapists to go around. I met this reality after an Ifa divination that I got while I was in Cuba, and my dreams for an entire year afterward, told me that I needed to focus on my mental health. My ancestors were LOUD about the mental work that I needed to […]
We are no good to the dead, and yet we believe the grieving owe us their tears
In my family, we have a tradition of cooking and sitting with the grieving, especially when they have no words. Especially when the tears have been ripped out and the well to produce more has disappeared. We honor the lives of the folks who’ve been lost, beaten, and violently shredded from this world by sitting […]
Airgo x BYP with Jawanza Malone
Black Youth Project has joined forces with AirGo for a year-long #BYPSpotlight series, featuring our favorite Black academics and activists. Jawanza is the Executive Director of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, or KOCO, a nearly 50 year-old community stalwart fighting for the communities of the Kenwood Oakland neighborhood. Jawanza talks about his journey as a […]
High rates of femicide make it hard to be a Black woman in this world
CW: graphic descriptions of femicide For, while the tale of how we suffer is never new, it always must be heard. -James Baldwin My grandmother once said to me, “the hardest thing anyone can be in this world, is a black woman.” Although I’ve carried these words with me throughout the years, it is now, […]
For Black people in the face of all this death, sadness is the work
Recounting sad shit depleted me, so I stopped writing publicly for a long time. I stopped towards the beginning of this absurdity of a year, but I’m still as exhausted as ever. I got tired of feeling like for Black people in the face of all this death, there’s only so much we can do. […]