‘Bring More Black Farmer Voices Together’: How the Black Farmers Collective Is Growing a Black-Led Food System Rooted in Black Liberation

June 29, 2021

Black farmers make up less than 2 percent of the overall farming population in the US and have been stripped of millions of acres of land in the last century. Even the USDA itself played a major role in financially bankrupting Black farm families. The US Dept. of Agriculture was to offer a multibillion dollar loan forgiveness program for farmers of color as part of COVID relief, but is on hold now due to white farmers’ claim of “reverse discrimination.”

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Revealed: neo-Confederate group includes military officers and politicians

June 28, 2021

Leaked membership data from the neo-Confederate Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) organization has revealed that the organization’s members include serving military officers, elected officials, public employees, and a national security expert whose CV boasts of “Department of Defense Secret Security Clearance” violent neo-Confederate groups such as the League of the South (LoS).

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I’m happy Juneteenth is a Federal holiday–but don’t let it be whitewashed

June 24, 2021

An Op-Ed: We should be happy to popularize and celebrate Juneteenth. But we should celebrate it with the same fervor in which it was celebrated the summer of 2020, with protests, political education, and an understanding that the house of the slavemaster still stands, despite a fresh coat of paint. We must celebrate Juneteenth knowing the kind of force it took for enslaved Black people to attain emancipation – and the equivalent political force it may take to finally and absolutely uproot the American capitalist. Wisconsin celebrated it 50th Juneteenth in 2021 with a long parade up Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Drive, complete with Civil War re-enactors, beauty queens and kings, and Black public servants, among them County Executive David Crowley and Congresswoman Gwen Moore. This city was one of the first in the nation to celebrate the holiday.

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Why History Museums Are Convening a ‘Civic Season’

June 16, 2021

The Smithsonian Institute’s American History Museum decided to re-create the training experience of the nonviolent direct action workshops like those Reverend James Lawson had begun in 1959 in Nashville where he taught Ghandian tactics to eventual movement leaders like John Lewis and Diane Nash. Read about how complicated histories can be exhibited in museums in new, highly engaging ways and watch a 20 min. video of that play and audience participation.

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