The Movement for Black Lives Issue “Takeover”

When In These Times reports on social movements, we strive to keep journalistic distance, believing that a progressive political movement needs its own independent media to inform and orient itself. But for one special issue, we’re making an exception. For the July issue, we invited a social movement to “take over” editorial control.

As the guest editorial collective, made up of organizers with the Movement for Black Lives, put it:

“We know our story has been told for us rather than by us, and it’s time to change that.”

In the issue

BLM protesters marched on streets

Introducing the Movement for Black Lives Issue Takeover

Lessons on building collective power.

Barbara Ransby, Chinyere Tutashinda, Karissa Lewis, M Adams and Shanelle Matthews

What Radical Black Women Can Teach Us All About Movement-Building

Three historians lift up Black women journalists, organizers and activists who were critical to Black freedom movements but often erased from history.

Keisha N. Blain, Premilla Nadasen and Robyn C. Spencer

A mural stands in memoriam outside the Cup Foods convenience store in Minneapolis near where George Floyd was murdered by police May 25, 2020. The area is now known as George Floyd Square.

No, Minneapolis Did Not Defund the Police. But We’re Not Done Trying.

We understand that abolition is the long game. We’re in it for as long as it takes.

Kandace Montgomery and Miski Noor

Letter From the Year 2071

A vision of where the Black freedom movement could take us.

Barbara Ransby

Deeply Rooted

Naimah Thomas

Also

Angela Harrelson, George Floyd’s aunt, speaks alongside family members at George Floyd Square on May 25, the anniversary of the day her nephew was murdered by police. Other members of Floyd’s family spent the day in Washington, D.C., meeting with President Joe Biden about the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Demonstrators across the country marked the day with rallies, memorials and continued calls to fight racial injustice.

ViewpointM4BL Issue

The Future of the Movement for Black Lives

ViewpointM4BL Issue

Voter Suppression Is White Supremacy. It Must Be Stopped.

DispatchM4BL Issue

The GOP Has Declared a War on Protests

Amara Enyia and Jamecia Gray

FeatureM4BL Issue

The Utopic, Love-Centered, “Liberation Oasis” on Chicago’s South Side

Bettina Johnson

CultureM4BL Issue

Cultural Organizing Gives Us a Roadmap to Liberation

Mya Hunter and “Mama Nia” Wilson

FeatureM4BL Issue

The Meeting in 1998 That Kept Black Radicalism Alive

In These Times Editors