“Even those who are arguing for Harambe are looking in the wrong direction; they are blaming the Black mother because it’s easy to blame the Black mother. They are not blaming the whole institution that has put all of us on display, but worst of all people like Harambe… What do we do with animals that we cannot force to work or keep as pets? We kill them or we put them in zoos.”

Listen to the audio here: https://archive.org/details/part2_20160610/part1.mp3

(Originally posted on the now-defunct DGP website on June 21, 2011.)

Transgender people (or Two Spirits as some Native cultures call them) must not be excluded from radical circles. Misconceptions and prejudices are costing us much needed allies in our struggles. Today’s special guests are Sheldon Raymore of Urban Indian USA and Joelle Ruby Ryan, lecturer in Women’s Studies at the University of New Hampshire. They join me to talk about the history and struggle of trans and Two Spirit people, and to discuss how we can move forward into a future where there’s a place for all of us.

Part 1: Sheldon Raymore (Urban Indian USA)

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Originally posted in By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) Volume 1: Issue 4

When we think of the challenges facing Black people in this country it’s easy to see why climate change and the environment often slip down to the bottom of the list. Police murders, lack of quality education, mass incarceration, homelessness, unemployment and underemployment, gun violence — these issues and many more grab the headlines and people’s attention, and rightfully so. However, we should realize that even though environmental issues often receive less attention, it doesn’t make them less important.

There’s a great Instagram page called Philly Housing Projects…

Hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people are at their highest levels in over a decade, with dozens of trans people murdered in the U.S. in 2019 alone. Not coincidentally, right wing fascists are consolidating power across multiple continents, led by vile homophobic and transphobic figures like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro. Society is however changing whether some people like it or not — less than 50% of U.S. teens now identify as straight.

Considering the very real threats and the shifting social landscape, LGBTQ+ people’s right to exist and thrive should be a year round topic of conversation and not only…

Some years ago I published a series of podcasts entitled ‘Treyvon Martin and Civilized Racism,’ and ‘Civilized Racism Pt. 2' with Layla AbdelRahim, a Canadian anthropologist, theorist and scholar. Our discussion was an exploration of how society’s institutions enable and perpetuate racism and systems of racial privilege. Although there are some major differences, antisemitism exists on the same continuum as racism and can be deconstructed using similar methodologies. This essay is meant to be a counterpart to the discussion about civilized racism, and a challenge to think about antisemitism (and by extension all forms of oppression) in a new way.

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Looking back, it’s hard for me to pinpoint the exact moment when I realized I absolutely needed to get braces. Was it that time during a routine checkup when the dentist said to me, “You should definitely consider braces”? Or was it the moment I was subjected to an unusually jarring passive aggressive comment at a social gathering? In any case, by the time I made the decision to seriously investigate getting my teeth fixed, the situation had become unsustainable on several different levels.

If you’re reading this you might be like me and needing braces for a mixture of…

[Withering: to shrivel; fade; decay. To lose the freshness of youth, as from age…cause to lose freshness, bloom, vigor…to affect harmfully…to abash, as by a scathing glance.]

Devonte Hart is known as the boy who was photographed in 2014 hugging a police officer with tears in his eyes. In the midst of rising racial tensions, this image of Devonte’s “heartwarming” hug was paraded through the media as proof of possible reconciliation between Black people, the police, and white society at large. …

The recent drama between Cornell West and Ta-Nehisi Coates has once again raised some very important and pressing questions: who speaks for Black America, or rather, can any one person (or even a handful of people) speak for such a wide ranging and diverse group? Should we be particularly skeptical of Black intellectuals who are served up to us by white institutions like The Atlantic and The New York Times?

Adolph L. Reed is a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and he is shady as fuck — but in a good way. As far back as…