None of these candidates are committed to abolishing private prisons because each of them have investments in the very things that allow for prisons of any kind to exist. Bernie Sanders recently tweeted that he wants to end “private prisons and detention centers” in the united states. This has been a sentiment expressed by many...
Category: To The Left
Post
Desirability: Do You Really Love Fat People When You Can’t Even See Us Beyond The Political?
The reality is that our bodies take up more space than the world ever makes for us, yet somehow desirability finds a way to keep us out. I am fat. I have been fat my entire life. And for most of my life, I have also been a fairly popular person. Befriending and being surrounded...
Post
When Marginalized Folk Take Our Lives, It’s Because the State Already Has
TW: This essay discusses suicide I had just finished my first and most brutal semester at Morehouse College days before. I went over to my brothers’ house to stay there before heading back home to North Carolina. Sitting in the back room scrolling through Twitter, I heard my eldest brother start crying in the living...
Post
From Colonialism To The Diaspora Wars: We Are All Finding Our Way Back
Our enemy is not each other; our enemy is always white supremacy, capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. One of the most common quarrels among Black people online is one in which we engage in spewing what almost always seems like mistruths and projections about others from across the African Diaspora, masked as analyses. These arguments are...
Post
When They See Us Yesterday: The Black Imagination Beyond State Violence
I believe we can build a world where the Black Imagination no longer has to be a response to state-sanctioned violence. This article contains light spoilers for “See You Yesterday” and “When They See Us”. I sat down with my Queer Parent and one of our close friends to watch the new Netflix Original Movie,...
Post
Gentrification: Rich Black People Pushing Out Poor Black Folks Won’t Solve Anything
Gentrification is, in fact, a structural and cultural phenomenon that specifically and disproportionately targets low-income Black communities. April 26 was the reopening of New York’s Webster Hall. It was also the night that rapper and businessman Jay-Z would freestyle lyrics that would later set social media ablaze. The concert was titled “B-Sides 2.” That night,...
Post
Fat People Must Become a Priority to the Left
Fat folks carry the weight of the work in these spaces while our bodies and material realities are continually othered and written off. I am a communist. More specifically, I am an ecosocialist. And while I do not currently identify as a Pan-Africanist, I have organized, now, for five years with an African-centered politic. I...
Post
It’s More Than A Check: Understanding Reparations
The reparations movement is not a new one, and conversation around reparations aren’t either. In recent news, there has been a lot of talk about reparations from U.S. politicians. From Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, best known as AOC, to Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. Much like they did with the Black Lives Matter movement...