Author: Henry Taylor

Report: PPP loan program shortchanged Buffalo’s Black neighborhoods

By Jerry Zremski

Read the full article from Buffalo News, here.

“The federal government’s main effort to rescue small businesses during the pandemic tended to benefit wealthier neighborhoods far more than predominantly Black parts of metro Buffalo, according to a new study by a group that researches federal policy and its implications nationwide. The study found that the ZIP code with the largest Black population in Buffalo, on the city’s East Side, received the smallest number of loans. Meanwhile, the most loans locally went to the 14221 ZIP code, which includes Williamsville and parts of Amherst and Clarence.”

Black Labor Leaders Are Needed Now More Than Ever

By Marc Bayard

Read the full article from The Nation, here.

“These actions and acts of radical defiance by workers have made it clear that systemic racism cannot be separated from the growing and perverse economic inequalities that have devastated Black workers and Black America for generations, and made them much more vulnerable to the current global pandemic. To win the corporate accountability required to rectify this inequality, our labor and worker movement must embrace this racial awakening and elevate and adequately resource Black people in roles of leadership and strategy.”

They’ll give your killer water and ignore your gasps for air: An American love song is violent

By Jeneé Osterheldt

Read the full article from Boston Globe, here.

Police will give water to Kyle Rittenhouse, your killer, before he shoots you, Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum. And after you die they will tell the world how he was cleaning walls before he shot you for protesting police brutality. They’ll barely say your names. You were white and fighting for Black lives, so they are burying you like they bury us.

Tito Ruiz’s camera is his ‘weapon of choice’ in exhibit featuring Buffalo police protests

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.

Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Limits of Representation

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Read the full article from The New Yorker, here.

“We are living in the recent shadow of a two-term Black President and two Black Attorneys General. And, despite this unprecedented concentration of Black political power, not much has changed for the vast majority of Black people. This was certainly true before the ravages of COVID-19 measured the exact depths of racial injustice in the country. There may be a multitude of contextual factors and contingencies that explain the impotence of the Black political class to change the conditions experienced by ordinary Black people, but those explanations do not change that basic reality.”

How I Became a Police Abolitionist

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.”

You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument

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.”

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