257 Search results for "movements"

Everything Else Keeps Going: Women of color and the tentacles of abuse in movements
by Amber Butts How many Black and Brown women have been asked to hold something so everything else can keep going? Nightmares—living ones—are why many do not come forward, especially in movements that keep the abuser’s name, knowingly or not, as part of how the work understands itself. What was done stays, and the weight […]
11-year-old Naomi Wadler reminds America that movements for our lives must include Black girls and women
“I am here to say ‘never again’ for those girls, too!” 11-year-old Naomi Wadler said at the March for Our Lives rally in D.C. Saturday, spotlighting America’s need for a longer collective memory when victims are Black women and girls. Wadler’s speech earned the breakout success designation among nationwide marches and speeches for gun reform. “I represent […]
From the Million Woman March to #Metoo: How movements created by and for Black women are appropriated
by Jacquelyn Iyamah In October of 1997, an estimated 750,000 Black women congregated on Ben Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia for the Million Woman March. Spearheaded by Phile Chionsesu and Asia Coney, the march provided a forum for the issues that mainstream women’s rights movements often dismiss—the issues affecting Black women. Concerns about the abuses against […]
‘For the People’: The Radical Artists Collective Repping Chicago Movements [INTERVIEW]
For the People Artists Collective (FTP) is entering a new season. This past year, their actions and art supported the successful #ByeAnita campaign, which advocated against the re-election of former State’s Attorney, Anita Alvarez, for her role in the Laquan McDonald video cover-up. The video showed the young black man being shot 16 times by […]
Video: BYP100’s Jessica Pierce talks activism, youth-led movements
BYP100 member and national co-chair Jessica Pierce recently appeared on PBS with a couple of other young activists. Pierce, who has been involved in activism since her days at University of California at Santa Cruz, talked the importance of youth-led protests, and why she insist of being part of them.
Music is an Instrument for Movements
Music is an instrument for movements. It is an apparatus strategically utilized by those who fight in the name of the struggle. It is a means to an end that places final solutions in the context of what is only a hope of achieving genuine equality. Music is voice, and voices, and collectives who speak […]
Civil Disobedience, Gay Rights Movements, and the Black Single Mothers Who Don’t Benefit From Marriage
Silje Sande an American Professor, discusses something called “The Necessary Tension.” She writes “In a democracy the tension between civil obedience and disobedience is a necessary tension.” She argues that Civil Disobedience confronts and holds accountable the norms that exist in society today. I think that black single mothers and families around the country should […]
How Has Oakland Fed You?
Oakland has raised generations of Black organizers, artists, and families whose relationships to the city reach well beyond the neighborhoods where they grew up. Among them is writer, editor, and organizer Amber Butts, whose maternal grandparents were Black Panthers and whose paternal grandparents brought their Black Baptist traditions from Alabama to Oakland in the 1970s. […]
The Danger Of Memorializing Men Like Justin Fairfax and Africa Bambaataa
On April 16, former Virginia Lt. Gov Justin Fairfax shot and killed his wife, Cerina Wanzer Fairfax before turning the gun on himself and taking his own life. In the immediate aftermath of this tragedy, there were many social media memorials, mostly from men, mostly focusing on their relationships with Justin Fairfax. It should never […]
What is critique and who gets to do it?
by Dr. Ravynn K. Stringfield I am not sure when we began to construct “the artist” and “the critic” as two distinct entities, but I am concerned about who gets pushed out of being seen as a credible critic when the two are separated. In her lecture “The Individual Artist,” collected in The Source of […]
We have to recognize the dangers of “male-identified” womanhood
by Jenn M. Jackson, PhD A few weeks ago, I posted on Threads about the ways that male-identified women are harmful to building community. I said this in reference to the numbers of Black women who work tirelessly defending Black men like Chris Brown, Bill Cosby, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and so many others who commit […]
Print Never Left: Black Writers on Archiving and Self-Published Print Media
by Dr. Ravynn K. Stringfield Social media is currently flooded with messages from people encouraging others online to “get into print media” or “go analog,” while simultaneously bemoaning the loss of politically aware print media that centered marginalized voices—RIP Bitch Media—and a dearth of media that represent our experiences. However, for Black artists, writers and […]