Surveilled and Harassed For Playing Malcolm X Speeches: Mikisa Thompson’s Resistance
"I’m just trying to survive as Black woman who wants to do the work to help dismantle white supremacy," says Mikisa Thompson. Content note for anti-Blackness and descriptions of police surveillance and harassment. “It seems like we cannot do anything that brings
You Cannot Be Pro-Cop and Pro-Black: How ‘BlaKkKlansman’ Fails Us
BlacKkKlansman isn't a story of infiltrating hate, but a harsh reminder of how easily pro-police propaganda can disguise itself in radical Black aesthetic.
This essay contains spoilers for Spike Lee's “BlacKkKlansman” and mentions of racist violence, police brutality, sexual assault. By Vanessa Taylor With the tagline “infiltrate hate”, Spike Lee’s latest joint, “BlacKkKlansman”, boldly burst onto the scene this summer with a marketing campaign that focused on its basis as a true story. At its simplest, that is true. “BlacKkKlansman” is a biographical dramedy based largely on Ron Stallworth’s 2014 memoir, Black Klansman. However, to say that the movie adaption holds completely true to either Stallworth’s memoir or the history it draws from would be a lie. Although adaptations often take liberties and make changes when bringing true stories to the big screen, “BlacKkKlansman” and the way it treats this particular story brings up questions about what kind of responsibility adaptations such as this has to its subjects as well as its audience. The film follows Ron Stallworth, the first Black officer to work for the Colorado Springs Police Department. Stallworth is able to use his position to launch an investigation of the Ku Klux Klan, assisted by fellow officer Flip Zimmerman. As a Black man, Stallworth can only infiltrate the KKK via phone calls, so Zimmerman is the one who portrays him in any face-to-face interactions with the hate group. To understand the criticisms which cite the film as cop propaganda, it’s necessary to parse out fact from fiction. In Slate, writer Jasmine Sanders breaks it down for us. The film very briefly touches on the issue of anti-Blackness within the police force, but largely portrays the problem as belonging to one cop, Landers, who shot and killed a teenage boy prior to the film’s beginning, harasses Kwame Ture, and sexually assaults Stallworth’s love interest, Patrice.SUPPORT WEAR YOUR VOICE: JOIN US ON PATREON
This Labor Day, Don’t Forget About Incarcerated People.
This Labor Day all activists, organizers, advocates, and progressives need to remain cognizant of the plight of the incarcerated, whose labor often is left out of the discourse.
By Devyn Springer While Labor Day has become synonymous with simply being known as the long weekend filled with barbecues, cheap cocktails, and laughs with friends, it is historically much more than that; it is meant to be a celebration of the radical trade unionists and organizers of the early Labor Movement which is responsible for many of our worker’s rights today. Moreover, it should be a celebration of the worker, the contributions to the world the laborers make, and a transgression against current abuses and exploitations workers face. This year massive protests and demonstrations across the country have taken place to demand high minimum wages, particularly the #FightFor15 organizations call for a $15 minimum wage. In other parts of the country immigrants folks are also marching for the rights of immigrant workers, especially in relation to the recent news that Trump has declared war on DACA recipients. While these causes are important, noble, and timely, there is a population of workers whose plight and labor is overlooked each year: the incarcerated. In our conceptualization of “labor,” “laborers,” and “workers,” we often naturally overlook the labor of incarcerated people, which is not a coincidence. Not just their labor, but their conditions and lives as well are often overlooked in most public discourse, as the prison system is this way by design. In most states, the geography of prisons alone is enough to create this erasure; state and federal prison facilities are often places on the outskirts of towns, hour-long drives away from cities. Incarcerated populations are, often quite literally, out of sight and out of mind to the general public, thus the plight of their struggles and their labor is naturally disregarded.Related: A Primer on the Prison Industrial Complex in America
The Women’s March Isn’t the Only March on Washington this Weekend
Donald Trump has officially been sworn in as the President of the United States. The people of the United States are not here for it. Marginalized populations all over the country are letting it be known that they will not
Homophobia in the Black Community and the Rise of the Hotep
How Supposedly 'Woke' Hoteps Foster Hatred Toward Queer and Trans Blacks Before our good, righteous Hotep brothas hijack national conversation that is currently underway about the state of the LGBTQ community in America -- prompted by the recent tragedy in Orlando --