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."
If the Democratic Party prevails in the midterm elections, Hakeem Jeffries will become the Speaker of the House of Representatives. But his decision to meet with Jared Kushner was a textbook case of…
A People(s)-Centered Human Rights framework rejects the liberal abstraction that makes a false symmetry between Iranian authoritarianism and U.S. imperialism, which obscures the fact that one is a…
“In the period since 1969, one can detect the same old close ties between right-wing U.S. academics, think tanks, foundations, and the U.S. Government…”
White supremacy works through institutions, and FEMA's formula for allocating disaster relief shows us how the state decides which neighborhoods are prioritized and which are left to suffer. Those in…
The IMF and World Bank are not subjects the corporate media cover in any real sense. Instead, their role is treated as unquestionably immutable and beneficial.
