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Mae Jackson is a New York City based writer, poet, dreamer and doer whose record of activism on behalf of her people stretches back to SNCC. A founder of Art Without Walls, an art program for the children of imprisoned women, she is well acquainted with the difference between surface change, and fundamental, revolutionary change.
Here are a few minutes of her address to the crowd at May 31, 2009 event memorializing the early 20th century Harlem activist Hubert Harrison, in which she lays out a clear understanding of whose lips move when our First Black President speaks. Referring to some of Barack Obama's widely acclaimed orations at the Democratic convention, atop Lincoln's tomb, and other places, she tells us
“..those wonderful speeches made by the young man from Chicago were actually crafted, that's written, by three young white men 25, 26 and 31 years old. We got the unfortunate opportunity once again to see the world through their eyes. Obama was the spokesperson. Same as when you buy a painting, that doesn't make you the painter...”
She explains how the establishment turned took the politics out of activism, neutralizing and de-politicizing young political activists by turning them into “community organizers."
Gambians from all walks of life – led by the youth-driven GALA movement mobilized across the country on July 23 in an anti-corruption protest as momentum for change grows.
Morocco's colonial project in Western Sahara has persisted not through legitimacy, but through the complicity of other nations and United Nations inaction.
Angola, one of Africa’s top oil producers, is in turmoil after protests erupted over a sharp fuel price hike driven by IMF-backed subsidy cuts.
In this week’s segment, we discuss football, why it isn’t popular in the US, how it can be, sports as consciousness raising, and the nation of Brazil and its Black population. But first, we have the…
Mary Frances Phillips is an associate professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. She joins us from Detroit to discuss her biography of Ericka Huggins, "…
