By Jess Clarke
Today’s emerging resistance movements can draw on a long and varied history to challenge the reactionary US government. Racial justice organizing has been the leading edge of progressive change for generations, and lessons learned and leadership from Black liberation struggles are key to moving beyond resistance and toward revolutionary abundance.
How a New Partnership Can Overcome COVID-19 Racial Disparities
By James Head
From the early days of the pandemic, as stark disparities in low-income Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities in hospitalization, infection, and death rates began to emerge, we knew that this unprecedented health crisis called for an unprecedented solution. Now, more than 18 months later, the crisis has not only persisted, but became even more complex. For example, compulsory vaccination in schools, universities and indoor public spaces remains a contested issue, despite the highly contagious Delta variants making a case for the vaccine. Vaccine equity is also proving to be a serious racial justice issue, even as the pandemic spirals with these new ever-morphing variants. A look at the numbers makes that crystal clear.
"The Kingdom of Heaven in a Single Blade of Grass.
An excerpt from The Earth Is the Only One Telling the Truth by Kelly Curry
...the apocalypse has already happened then that means that we are living in the beginning...
THIS is the beginning. We are standing in the Garden of Eden... again...
“Kelly, everything with you is just so intense...there are problems in the world...there have always been problems in the world, you can’t force anyone to change and you can’t fix everything.”
He is full of frustration. His brow is furrowed almost in disbelief...there is a profound sense of worry, concern and loss.
“Where is my Kelly the one who told me not to worry so much...that my joy was all the world needed?”
Right now I’m seeing his pure love and I’m seeing myself through his eyes.
I can’t push back because… he’s right.
For the first time ever I can feel the tension and the weight of the burden of being who I have been my entire life... someone who sees what’s broken in our society and feels a need to fix it. The weight of that, the sorrow is unsustainable, and that deep sorrow is not good for me and I know it.
As he looks at me I can hear my mother’s voice—from when i was a kid.—when she started worrying about me. ”Baby, you gotta to learn how to work with joy…”
A festival of environmental justice theater pieces.SUNDAY OCTOBER 25, 2020 7 pm Pacific Time
Twelve short theater pieces will be presented from the San Francisco Livestream of Same Boat Theater Collective as part of their world spanning festival.
This section contains excerpts from Mujeres Mágicas - Domestic Workers Right to Writeby Las Malcriadas
The book is edited and translated by Karina Muñiz-Pagán and Argelia Muñoz Larroa.
by Karina Muñiz-Pagán
Creative Expressions, a Catalyst for Social Change
Editor's Note: Early morning on New Year’s Day 2009, 22-year-old Oscar Grant III was shot and killed in Oakland, California by a Bay Area Rapid Transit agency police officer. Grant was unarmed. His face—pressed down against the cement. Onlookers video-phoned the horrific spectacle as his life was taken from him.
By Christine Joy Ferrer
People are angry. Sometime after the midnight hour, a 22-year-old black man was murdered on New Year’s Day—another innocent victim of police brutality. His name was Oscar Grant, shot and killed in Oakland, California by a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency policy officer. Onlookers video-phoned the horrific spectacle: Grant surrounded by officers, unarmed, bleeding to death on the station platform, his arms shackled behind his back, his face pressed against the cement.Several hours later, Laron Blankenship, a friend of the deceased, locked himself in a sound studio. He flashed back to the words Grant had spoken to him one day, “No matter what happens, even if I was to die, don’t quit doing this music thing.” His hands trembling, crying and near broken down, Blankenship produced a compelling rap anthem dedicated to Grant, “Never be Forgotten.” He sings, “I know for a fact your soul is still alive and you will never be forgotten.”
