A white supremacist-inspired arson committed last month at the Highlander Research Education and Center in Tennessee, which has trained social justice organizers for 87 years, reminds us of the enormous importance of social movement infrastructure.
New Mexico voted this week to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day. It is the fifth state to do so.
Denying racism often involves tantrums and tears on the part of the party inviting us into his or her minstrel show; acknowledging racism’s existence and functioning in every forum requires a village of vocal and vigilant supporters of a new narrative.
At the University of North Carolina, Chancellor Carol Folt resigns her position, two weeks after approving the removal of what remained of the “Silent Sam” statue.
What do the worlds of fashion and speculative fiction have to do with nonprofits? Well, our sector has its own version of black tchotchkes—black people as clients and victims, not partners for a more human future for all. The exploitation of powerless identity narratives drives us still.
In Florence, Alabama, a local social justice nonprofit seeks to lift up the memory of Dred Scott, proposing a statue that honors him and his wife be placed in front of the county courthouse building.
Good leadership is situational. Sometimes consensus is called for, but what if the institution’s consensus is governed by a non-representative group of overseers? Sometimes, you may just have to step out in front and risk something.
On the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill, a statue that was gifted to the university by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1913 came down.
Opened last month, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama spotlights the nation’s history of violent racism. Telling the stories of men, women, and children killed because they were black, the Memorial asks us to reflect on how we have allowed this brutality to go on and have looked the other way.
This week, Tennessee lawmakers withdrew funding for the Memphis’ bicentennial celebration as punishment for the city’s removal of two Confederate statues from a public park without the legislature’s approval. But residents of the city, who supported the removal in the first place, have largely replaced the money through crowdfunding, exerting ownership over their own history.
