If you don't see the video above, click here.
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."
The United Nations has once again acted against the interests of the Haitian people in approving yet another military occupation under the guise of humanitarian action.
Today, we launch Sovereign Media, an anti-imperialist coalition bringing together voices from the Global South and the Global North who refuse to bow to censorship or empire.
Donald Trump has declared war on the “enemy within” and put the military on notice that they will mete out the same treatment domestically that they dispense around the world.
The so-called "peace deal" does not offer peace; it demands surrender. The Trump plan is the manifestation of a colonial logic that believes might makes right.
“There is and always will be, until every Black man, woman, and child is free, a Black Liberation Army.”
