In my third part of the “After the Fire” series for The Root I touch on politics, #BlackLivesMatter and the current social justice movement. In “Black Voters Matter,” I talk to several people, including Van Jones, Rev. William Barber II, Jeff Johnson, Patrisse Cullors, Charlene Carruthers, Cornell William Brooks and many more. Check it out. Continue reading
For The Root a first in a series of long-form pieces by your truly started running this Sunday. The stories, as part of “After the Fire” series, go in-depth about the state of the movement, where its been, where it’s headed and what it’s facing. The first story, “How to Burn What Can’t Catch Fire,” looks the brief, unfinished history of digital movements around racial justice. Upcoming pieces will look at divisions, politics and challenges. Continue reading
Thursday for The Root I wrote a piece about a nonprofit collective that fell apart in Baltimore like so many have before. It was meant to bring all the groups together so they could fight for various causes, but struggles to find successors who could get along and the founders moving on to other things lead to its demise, to the detriment of Baltimore’s youth. This is a similar pattern that plays out at all social justice nonprofits, where members come together around one charismatic leader, but fall apart once that leader is gone. Continue reading
One of my pet peeves has been the recent push to turn Martin Luther King, Jr. Day into a generic national “Day of Service.” It annoys me not because I hate volunteerism (volunteering is great!) but because we all know damn well Martin Luther King didn’t live his life under threat of death constantly to eventually die from an assassin’s bullet because he wanted to paint poor people’s houses on weekends. No, he died for the long-denied rights of black people. We need to #ReclaimMLK, and I wasn’t alone in these thoughts. Continue reading
Wrote a piece for new African American web portal NBC BLK on how the Oscars are super not diverse this year. Heck, no women were even nominated for their writing or directing. It was a sausage-fest devoid of melanin. Continue reading
Families fight. All of them do. But most are able to do that without taking it to the courts. And most families aren’t the scion of a Civil Rights icon. Unfortunately for the King family, they’re famous whether they want to be or not and they can’t, for some reason, get along. For The Root on Tuesday I drafted a timeline of all the familial legacy squabbles and disputes between the children of Martin Luther King Jr. Continue reading
Over the weekend news site ATTN published my reaction to Jay Z’s recent statements that he thought Hip Hop music did more for Civil Rights than some Civil Rights activists. While I agreed that Hip Hop has been influential, let’s not pretend that racists can enjoy black art while despising black people. Continue reading
