By Henry-Louis Taylor, Jr.
“The shooting of an unarmed Black man seven times in the back, while his children watched, triggered the desire to fight back. Life is not a game, and this callous shooting demonstrated the need to defund the police and reimagine and create a new public safety system.”
By Nick Lippa
Read the full article from WBFO, here.
It wasn’t just George Floyd’s name heard at protests across Buffalo this summer. The names of Quentin Suttles, Wardel ‘Meech’ Davis, and Cariol Horne were all chanted as a national fight against systematic racism continues. Photographer Tito Ruiz was on the front line with protestors to capture the emotion felt locally in Western New York’s fight for racial justice. Now, more than 30 of his large prints are on display as part of a solo exhibit at CEPA Gallery.
By Henry-Louis Taylor, Jr.
“The irony is their obsession with Harris’s race, blinds them to a far more intriguing question. Why would a White person or a non-Black person of color pretend to be Black?”
By Henry-Louis Taylor, Jr.
“In retrospect, I believe the University started retreating from its commitment to Black faculty and other people of color as early as 1996. I believe two interrelated factors triggered that retreat.”
By Derecka Purnell
Read the full article from The Atlantic, here.
“The first shooting I witnessed was by a cop. I was 12. He was angry that his cousin skipped a sign-in sheet at my neighborhood recreation center. I was teaching my sister how to shoot free throws when the officer stormed in alongside the court, drew his weapon, and shot the boy in the arm. My sister and I hid in the locker room for hours afterward. The officer was back at work the following week.”
By Caroline Randall Williams
Read the full article from The New York Times, here.
“I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South.
If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.”
By Henry-Louis Taylor, Jr.
“Major General Gordon Granger did not reach Galveston, Texas until June 19, 1865, where he issued General Order, Number 5, which advised blacks that they were no longer slaves: the slave system had been abolished and 246 years of bondage was over.”
By Amina Yasin
Read the full article from *The Tyee, here.
“Today, Black people across North America are reclaiming their cities with calls of ‘Whose Streets,’ ‘George Floyd’ and, in Toronto, ‘Justice for Regis’ and ‘No justice, no peace.’ Urban planners need to interrogate whether the profession has value if it fails to protect the public interest by not analyzing the historic and current manifestations of racism, specifically anti-Black racism, that pervades it.”
We want investments in Black communities, determined by Black communities, and divestment from exploitative forces including prisons, fossil fuels, police, surveillance and exploitative corporations.
By Movement 4 Black Lives
The murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor prove what we already knew—police “reform” has failed.
by Alex Vitale