60 Search results for "self determination"

With the recent celebration of Kwanzaa, I am reinvigorated with hope as I learn to internalize the principles each day offered. I couldn’t help but place special emphasis on the principle Kujichagulia (Self Determination) which means, “To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves in order to stand up for ourselves.” […]

By Dominique Hazzard I don’t really care about the Oscars. I’m not a movie buff, I think awards shows are boring, and I don’t give a huge amount of weight to the artistic judgements of a bunch of hand selected old white men with ballots. Being too invested in receiving affirmation from whiteness and white […]

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 […]

By Donnie Moreland It must’ve been 2015 when I first viewed Debbie Tucker Green’s Second Coming (2014). It’s a film which asks the question, what if the nativity story took place between two working class Black folks already raising a little boy in South London.  It’s a mesmerizing dreamscape of rage and longing, orbited by […]

Hope everyone’s Christmas was complete with family and happiness. If you thought that such a spirit lives for a few moments in December, you are indeed wrong and perhaps exhausted. There follows more family time and appreciation for any Black souls that share, also, a need for little historical significance in their life. Today is […]

In May 2008, I was in the North Lawndale community on my way home from work when I was attacked. I was attacked by 8-12 black children ranging from ages 10 – 12.  They were throwing rocks, bricks and etc , because I had refused to give the youngest one money. I didn’t fight back. […]

by Amber Butts Immigration policy in the United States has always enforced racial hierarchy, and the Trump administration further developed an aggressive removal process against Black immigrants. Expanded policing partnerships, broader detention authority, and rhetoric that cast immigrants as criminals and predators created conditions that pushed Black immigrants into detention and deportation at strikingly disproportionate […]

by Vanessa Anyanso I don’t know what it’s like to be a therapist during “normal times.” I, a Nigerian American born and raised in the Washington, D.C. area, moved to Minneapolis in Fall 2019 to start my doctoral program in Counseling Psychology. The world shut down for the pandemic in March 2020. In May 2020, […]

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 […]

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 Jari Bradley During the peak of the pandemic in 2020, there were numerous online poetry readings being held for the public to attend. I was just finishing my Master of Fine Arts program after three years on the East Coast, and with all the calamity that the world felt comprised of at that time, […]

Directed by Cai Thomas, Change the Name follows Black girls on Chicago’s West Side as they organize to rename a school that still bears the legacy of an enslaver. Through Thomas’s attentive lens, we don’t just see a campaign—we witness strategy, tenderness, and clarity from young people who are shaping the city in their image. […]