#abolitionist-organizing

#abolitionist-organizing

"Those attending should be aware that showing support for a proscribed organisation is an offence under the Terrorism Act, and we will not hesitate to act where the law is broken," said commander Claire Smart.

Tonika Lewis Johnson's Folded Map Project connects residents known as 'map twins' who live on the same street name but miles apart, revealing structural inequality and personal commonality.

Developers promise "community investments," downtown revitalization, and a new "AI Center." What they don't say is that this development comes tethered to a massive resource-intensive data center that will cost billions, create pollution, and concentrate profits for the corporations and CEOs at the top-not the surrounding communities. This is not innovation, it's exploitation.

Thank you...for being able to fight for my freedom. But what's more important than that is that you continue to fight for your land and to continue to fight for your people and all people.

The labor of this kind of organizing was invisible and deeply exhausting. In a precarious workplace, where a so-called 'performance review' could amount to job loss, organizing meant building a bridge while standing on it.

That was my freshman bill. The following year, the state passed my bill to expand housing assistance vouchers from three to six months for people released from prison.

In an Instagram post, Equal Rights Oregon announced that "after thoughtful consideration," it was moving forward with the "difficult decision" not to pursue Initiative Petition 33, known as the Equal Rights for All measure. The measure would have let Oregon vote on adding a constitutional amendment stating that equal rights "shall not be denied or abridged" based on "a) pregnancy/pregnancy outcomes and related health decisions; b) gender identity and related decisions; c) sexual orientation, including the right to marry."

In his "Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination," Robin D.G. Kelley explains that "a map to the new world is in the imagination." There are so many emergencies right now-ICE abductions, decriminalization of anti-Black racism, the political hijack of the struggle against antisemitism and anti-Blackness, unauthorized military aggression abroad, a climate crisis accelerated-that it's hard to know where to direct our resistance.

The next "Dying to Stay Here" podcast will feature a panel discussing what we call our criminal justice system. The panel reflected on a recent election in California, where voters were asked, in plain language, whether they wanted to remove slavery from our constitution, where it's still allowed "as punishment for a crime," and voted to keep it. As we celebrate another Black History Month, I reflect on the disproportionate number of Black people behind bars.

If Dr King were alive today, he'd be admonishing us across the nation to stand up and march for Renee Good. If we miss this moment, our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren will be paying the price in a dying planet, in an authoritarian, tyrannical America where women don't have biological autonomy, and Black and Brown people are in chains, and white women are getting gunned down in the streets. That is not Dr. King's America.