Tag: Austin

Black women who have confronted the abuses of America’s white authority have suffered its punishment throughout our history. Anarchist Lucy Parsons, born in 1853, is one of the few Black women mentioned in labor histories – usually as the wife of the martyred Albert Parsons, who was executed in the wake of Chicago’s Haymarket Riot of 1886.

With the storm approaching New Orleans, I spoke to Dwight Henry, co-star in the film, “Beasts of a Southern Wild,” currently in Bay Area theaters. I spoke to three men who are riding the storm out: Parnell Herbert, Angola 3 activist and playwright, Mwalimu Johnson, community organizer and prison abolitionist, and Malik Rahim, former Black Panther.

This is the month we wear our Blackness with pride – so walk on, walk on. I want to thank Rhodessa Jones, Shaka Jamal, Pat Jamison, Elaine Lee, Walter Turner, Vera Nobles and Elouise Burrell for your leads and references for South Africa.

The issue at stake is not only one of increased food insecurity, but an attack on food sovereignty or peoples’ right to produce their own food. Land grab is a violent act to take away peoples’ right to food, access to their ancestral land, their social and historical ties, and their overall right for human dignity.

Oakland has never had a dominant rapper who’s a woman in its long rap history. Today, the Sobrante Park bred Silence the Violence activist and rapper Queen Deelah is the one who is turning heads from the Town all the way to Austin, Texas. Recently while I was in Austin, I ran into Deelah, the transplant who had taken over the sleepy Texas city in a matter of months.

"In a decision announced this morning, the Supreme Court upheld the 1965 Voting Rights Act - a law that has done more to expand and strengthen our democracy than any other," said Donna Brazile, who learned first hand as Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000, the first election stolen by George W. Bush, mostly by suppressing the Black vote. "It's good news - but the fight to protect voting rights doesn't end there. Attacks on this critical law will not stop. And voter suppression tactics will continue to plague our elections."