By Nehemi’EL Ibrihim-Simms Group Personality: Internal Contradictions of the Conscious Participants Since we believe that we are about social “change” or development, can we answer the question of “why have our structures fallen ?” I am trying to describe a personality of the sector of our population that I am called “conscious participants.” “Anytime that… Continue reading Too Much Political Education, Too Little Quality Ideological Struggle Part Two “Group Personality: Internal Contradictions of the Conscious Participants

A part of our return to righteous living and sovereignty as Afrikan people are dealing with the complexity of myth and folklore and their intersection with the development of an Afrikan national consciousness. On the one hand, myth, and folklore, primarily oral modalities, have always occupied an important area in our culture because of a… Continue reading The Afrikan Offensive in Haiti: A Retrospective 

by Terri Frick  “The sin of capitalism is secrecy: the deliberate concealing of the character, methods, and result of efforts to satisfy human wants.”—W.E.B. DuBois Recognizing the patterns of capitalist exploitation as it evolved into the modern era is a critical part of disclosing the methods that allow it to function unabated across time and geography.  DuBois refers to the hidden nature… Continue reading The Real Body Politic 

By Renee Johnston “The Vernon Philosophy of Black Media Avoidance calls for an immaterial boycott of commercial pop cultural products as any seemingly redeemable content either isn’t really or exists only to further confuse, weaken or diminish the capacity for critical, radical and countervailing thought.” – Dr. Jared A. Ball (iMixWhatiLike) Multiple news outlets and social media creators have been praising Kendrick Lamar… Continue reading The multiple applications of the Vernon Philosophy: It can even be applied to SuperBowl halftime shows

By Nehemi’EL Ibrihim-Simms The dominant narrative of the Maafa starts with the arrival of Western Europeans on the coasts of West and Central Africa. Upon arrival, the narrative goes on to say that Europeans encountered a seriously primitive and disorganized population of native people. Due to this disorganization they were able to raid villages, and… Continue reading The Maafa Re-Explored: A Mulit-Civilizational Explanation of Modernity’s Creation

By Jordan McGowan If you know anything about the Shakurs in Oak Park, Sacramento, then you know we love to talk about “r/evolution is love.” If we are being honest, it serves as our guiding politic. But love looks and comes in many ways, doesn’t it? So, what does that mean to you, me, all… Continue reading (2024 wrap up) “Learning To Be User-Friendly: Lessons from R/evolution Is Love”

By Don Hammonds Genocide and enslavement is the program of colonial politics for dealing with the perceived threat that is indigenous populations. European colonizers waged multifaceted warfare against the indigenous peoples of occupied ‘America’ seeking to privatize land for the acquisition of gold and silver. Thus, ‘primitive accumulation’ founded the U.S. and world capitalist social… Continue reading U.S. History, A Brief Critique

By- Nehemi’EL Simms  “As long as we think that we should get Mississippi straightened out before we worry about the Congo, you’ll never get Mississippi straightened out.” – Malcolm X, 1964 U.S Courts Grant Imperialist Companies Immunity In March of 2024, a federal appeals court in the District of Columbia refused to hold Alphabet Inc.,… Continue reading Democratic Republic of Congo: A Case Study on Neo-Colonialism

By Cameron Hassan Frederick Douglass’s assertion that “power concedes nothing without a demand” serves as a foundation for understanding how systems of oppression operate, particularly in the U.S. political landscape. The 2024 election exemplifies how power responds to the demands of marginalized communities, often attempting to pacify them through symbolic gestures rather than meaningful change.… Continue reading Horizontal vs Vertical Morality:  A Pan-Africanist Critique of the 2024 President Elections 

By Austin K. Cole “It is not enough to hate and believe in the past to make a revolution. Hatred and belief in the past are sufficient prods for the rebellion phase. We must love and be future-oriented if we wish to carry out the revolution.” ― Ghassan Kanafani “One day I know the struggle… Continue reading Black/African Liberation & Grassroots Economies pt. IV: Collective struggle is our past and future

By Charisse Burden-Stelly On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump will sit alongside Grover Cleveland as the only U.S. President to serve two non-consecutive terms. As Margaret Kimberley explains, the Democrats share a large portion of the blame, failing to move Biden aside early enough to run a viable candidate, giving Kamala Harris the Democratic nomination without… Continue reading Harry Haywood, Black People, and the 2024 U.S. Election

By Quenton Spencer The date is October 17th, 2024. The ideological battle has been lost, temporarily. The masses of black folks in America are invested in Kamala becoming president of the empire. Following the murder of Sonya Massey and then the immediate wave of Olympic media coverage by the American propaganda machine, patriotism, and ambivalence seems… Continue reading The Dallas Question 

by Austin K. Cole “I could blend the acceptance of the supernatural and a profound rootedness in the real world at the same time with neither taking precedence over the other. It is indicative of the cosmology, the way in which Black people looked at the world. We are very practical people, very down-to-earth, even… Continue reading Black/African Liberation & Grassroots Economies pt.1: ‘Rootedness’ for our people, our economies, our liberation

By Cameron Hassan In its most basic form, reconciliation is the act of making conflicting views or beliefs compatible. Many of us, born and raised in the United States, once believed that we had fully assimilated into the American ethos—that we were active participants in its democracy, granted the same liberties and rights as white… Continue reading False Promises: The Illusion of Assimilation and the Reality of Exploitation

By Wolfgang G. Bronner There tends to be a lot of ideological confusion in the Tennessee ecosystem; this comes as no surprise since words such as conservative, moderate, liberal, progressive, or even radical have seemingly lost all meaning. To understand why these words have lost meaning, it is necessary to connect what will be said to how… Continue reading Tennessee has a lot of A.O.Cs

By Wolfgang G. Bronner So, is Kamala Harris Black? This has been one of the many critiques sent towards Harris and any Harris supporter. Born to a Jamaican father and an Asian mother, Kamala Harris does indeed carry the racial identity of Blackness (Jamaicans are Black, y’all); however, why has this been a critique launched… Continue reading The Divine 9 and Kamala Harris

By Nicole Crawford In the last 11 months, the global Black and Brown Indigenous communities have been waking up to how Western hegemony, capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism are ruining all our lives. Furthermore, the indisputable fact that all our lives and struggles are interconnected and interdependent became crystal clear, whether we have been occupying the… Continue reading Comfort Kills, and We Are Dying Slowly 

By Charisse Burden-Stelly, PhD On September 12, 2024, a ruling was handed down in the case of the “Uhuru Three.” Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), Penny Hess, Chairman of the African People’s Solidarity Network, and Jesse Nevel, Uhuru Solidarity Movement chair, were acquitted of failing to register under the Foreign… Continue reading The Uhuru Three, African Stream, and the Black Scare/Red Scare

By Christopher Woolf    On the subject of our ancestors and our scapegoating of their suffering to justify our commitment to American imperialism, our ancestors also have descendants in Africa and other parts of the diaspora that deserve dignity as well. Do they not have a shared right to a life free from violence and exploitation?… Continue reading “Our ancestors DIED so we could vote.” 

by Erica Caines The U.S. political system, particularly during election seasons, is often portrayed as a robust and vibrant democracy where citizens exercise their power through voting. However, beneath this facade lies a deeper narrative of complacency, apathy, and complicity that serves to maintain the status quo. The rhetoric of “practicality,” and the manipulation of identity… Continue reading The Democratic Facade: ‘Practicality’, Identity Reductionism, and the Erosion of Genuine Change

By Sungu Oyoo “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it.” – Frantz Fanon An anti-people 2024 Finance Act currently before the Kenyan Parliament has united Kenyans in opposing the Ruto regime in a manner we haven’t witnessed in a long time. Kenyans, under the capable leadership of GenZ,… Continue reading GenZ: These Demonstrations go Beyond the Finance Bill

By Alieu Bah This essay is dedicated to the defiant memory of Rex Kanyike Masai, a martyr of our times. A historical moment has been unleashed on the streets and highways of Kenya. That nation with a long history of both resistance and van-guarding of imperialism. This history haunts its mind and landscape in many… Continue reading The People Reject the Finance Bill: Young Kenya Rises in a Summer of Revolt

Monday, members of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Pennsylvania chapter rallied in front of Pennsylvania’s State Capitol to oppose Senate Bill 757’s controversial school voucher program called PASS — Pennsylvania Award for Student Success. The bill garnered national attention last Friday when publications like XXL, Complex, and CBS News regurgitated Roc Nation’s deceptively worded… Continue reading Roc Nation’s Lobbying Efforts Cast Suspicion on Jay Z’s Association with GOP’s Top Funder

When most people think of Atlanta, they conjure up images of Black excellence, Tyler Perry, the civil rights movements, hip hop, and numerous images of Black leadership. Atlanta has carefully constructed this image to mask the harsh realities of city life. Here are some of those realities Atlanta has the worst income inequality in the… Continue reading Atlanta: The Confederacy’s “Black Mecca” and Militarized Cop City

Community Movement Builders Statement on Palestine Liberation “ People cannot be free until they realize that peace is not the absence of war or struggle…Peace is the presence of justice”Ella Baker (1964) We speak to you as fellow inheritors and instruments of liberatory struggle. We represent peoples, cultures, and knowledges of Africa, North America, Latin… Continue reading Community Movement Builders Statement on Palestine Liberation

When many people think of Atlanta, they think of   Black power. They see images of black folks doing well, in political power, owning businesses, flossing on music videos, and the like. All of this hides a very dark reality and history of Atlanta.  Originally Georgia was designed to be an all-white colony. That changed… Continue reading The Racist History of Atlanta Explains its Desire to Build Cop City

Earlier this year, I brought my students to the Community Movement Builders (CMB) house in the Pittsburgh neighborhood for a discussion on land and its importance to Black communities. After listening intently in class for about an hour, one student spoke to the class about how, when they were a child, their mother never had… Continue reading From Georgia to Azania

“There is a disconnect between how entertainment culture portrays the Panthers and their fight to win political, social and economic self-determination and power for the Black community.” The quote above is from the Community Movement Builder’s website page, and it perfectly captures how the image of our liberation struggle gets appropriated by popular entertainment culture… Continue reading Fahim Jabar Minkah Fund

The controversial Cop City project continues ahead full steam. Right-wing, fascist Georgia governor Brian Kemp, has decided that the project will be completed by any means necessary including the political assassination of forest defender Manuel (Tortuguita) Teran. On the morning of January 18th, 2023, Tortuguita was shot over 13 times by Georgia State Troopers. The… Continue reading Right Wing Billionaires Koch Brothers Attacked MLK. Now the Kochs are funding Atlanta’s Cop City in Honor of Him

OUR DEMANDS A People-Powered Solution Community Movement Builders agree with the people’s demand not only to de-fund and eventually abolish the police force, but also call for the demilitarization and decentralization of all policing institutions in the United States. As the rebellion raged, state and city governments attempted to pacify protesters by firing so-called “bad apples,”… Continue reading On Ending the Police Occupation and Terrorism Against Black People

A few weeks ago, Jay Z got it in his head that ‘capitalist’ was just a ‘new slur they invented to keep the black man down’ or whatever. Why would he think this? As someone with so much money and resources, it would only take a quick search to see that ‘capitalist’ was a term… Continue reading What Jay Z’s Meltdown Shows Us About Capitalism

In a dramatic escalation of the war on non-violent environmental defenders and racial justice advocates, the GBI, in coordination with DeKalb County Police, Atlanta Police, and the FBI, launched an attack on tree sitters in the Atlanta Forest. Several protestors were attacked with chemical weapons, i.e. tear gas and pepper balls. Several were arrested and… Continue reading GBI and Biden’s FBI Terrorizes Non-Violent Defend Atlanta Forest Movement to Crush Dissent for Unpopular “Cop City” Plan

Laurel A. Berryman As I wake up and turn to grab my phone to engage in my daily “doom scroll”, I come across an Instagram Reel that grabs my attention. In the reel, D.C Young Fly, Karlous Miller, and Atlanta rapper J Money are discussing their disdain for the normalization of BBLs, breast augmentation, and… Continue reading Beauty Standards, Pop culture, and Self- Acceptance

Walter Rodney was keen to the plight of Black people all across the world, both on the continent of Africa and throughout every inch of our diaspora. Whether in the streets of Jamaica, the University of Dar Es Salaam, in Atlanta at the Institute of the Black World, or in his home country of Guyana,… Continue reading In a White man’s prisons: Walter Rodney, decolonization, and abolition

The Combahee River Collective was a group of Black feminists who met and organized in Boston, Massachusetts from 1974 to 1980. Throughout their six years of meetings, the collective took on multiple roles dependent on their particular political, personal, and interconnected needs as group members, community organizers, and nuclei in the development of theories and… Continue reading The Combahee River Collective Statement as a Reflection of Black Feminism(s)

“The only difference is a boat stop.”, something that is said to remind us of the differences within the African diaspora, but there are other ways in which we are similar and different alike. The diaspora is multifaceted — with a compilation of values, traditions, beliefs, behaviors, varying identities, and much more. As much as… Continue reading Diaspora Wars in the Black Community: A Catalyst for Division

Since the arrival of Black people in this country, there has been an agenda and a mandate to repress Black voices. The American government works tirelessly to stop Black voices from being heard and even just existing. The definition of political repression is the act of a state entity controlling citizens by force for political… Continue reading Black Mandate

As a child, the hair on my head refused to grow. All I craved for was the ability to trade in tight and frilly silk headbands, used by my mom to help others clearly define me as a girl, for thick voluminous hair. Once I entered kindergarten hair was intertwined with the definition of what… Continue reading How Shaving My Head Redefined My Beauty

The idea of nationalism has been used in history as both a destructive force and a liberatory one. Some think of nationalism, and they think of a xenophobic, bigoted worldview that espouses superiority. Nationalism has also been a driving force in anti-colonial and anti-racist movements. Black nationalism, in particular, has a long and complicated history… Continue reading Can Black Nationalism Be Revolutionary?

To be clear, Bill Cosby is an ADMITTED serial rapist. Recent events do not change that fact, for better or for worse. Read about the technicalities of the judgement here. Today, some people, like Phylicia Rashad, are celebrating. As an aside, it is certainly a gut-punch to watch one of our foremost living cultural workers… Continue reading Bill Cosby’s conviction has been overturned. Has anything fundamentally changed?

Consent in Afro-Caribbean Spaces and Beyond Imagining Culturally Competent Consent It’s summer in the city, everyone’s wearing less and going out more, and event flyers are popping up each weekend. Recently, a flyer for a reggaetón event listed rules for the event, such as where to park, entry fee, and the last rule: “dont fucking… Continue reading Black and Brown Consent

In one of their tracks, titled They Schools, M-1 and Stic Man, a.k.a the rap duo, Dead Prez, rapped about the horrors of the U.S. school system. In this song, Stic Man described James S Rickards’ High School, the school he attended and graduated from in his youth, as an institution with a White supremacist… Continue reading They Institutions Vs. Ours

I studied classical music for a few years in college.To no one’s surprise this included a very rigorous and a very white curriculum. While it was standard for all students to familiarize themselves with different European cultures, there was also a quiet urge for us to learn a much bigger and unspoken rule. We learned… Continue reading “A Case for Gatekeeping Black Music”

On June 1st, 2020, in the wake of the country’s outrage about the murder of Breonna Taylor, Ahmed Arbery, and George Floyd, I was arrested during at a Black Lives Matter protest for allegedly violating the Atlanta curfew ordinance. I was working as a Legal Observer with the National Lawyers Guild, and my charges were… Continue reading January 6th

For as long as white society has oppressed Black people, Black women have led struggles for the liberation of Black people throughout the diaspora. Black women have and continue to be on the frontlines in opposing white supremacy, imperialism, patriarchy, capitalism, and all the other oppressive systems that terrorize Black people around the globe. Today, radical… Continue reading Lesser-known Black women communists you must learn about (part one)

A Call for Extending U.S. Based Endowments to Community Knowledge Production Sites As we all conjure up futures beyond our current climate crisis and public health emergency, we have been thinking a great deal about how to do things differently. This includes reconsidering the ethical and moral dilemmas of how funds flow into and within… Continue reading University Endowments and Abolition Feminist Movements:

Every year we hear the same arguments made about why African-Americans should not celebrate American holidays. From an African-centered perspective, American holidays are inherently Eurocentric. Thus, to empower ourselves as Afrikan people, we should celebrate our own holidays. On the other hand, revolutionaries tend to condemn Eurocentric holidays for glorifying historical violence and ill-gotten achievements… Continue reading African-American Holidays: Traditions of Self-Determination

RIP Rayshard Brooks

Atlanta, the home of trap music, Fortune 500 companies, wealthy Black socialites, and entrepreneurs. The city has been termed the “Black Mecca” and the “city too busy to hate”. DeKalb County, located east of downtown Atlanta, is the second richest Black majority county in the country. The image of Atlanta is one of Black excellence,… Continue reading Atlanta is Cap

Miliaku writes about the #Endsars protest and it’s historical context.