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.

The Future of the Movement for Black Lives

Urban rebellions blossomed into mass mobilization upon George Floyd's death. Now what?

Voter Suppression Is White Supremacy. It Must Be Stopped.

In recent years, down-ballot wins across the country have legalized marijuana, overturned Jim Crow-era election law, and hiked minimum wages. The GOP’s campaign to suppress the Black vote threatens wins like these.

The GOP Has Declared a War on Protests

Republican state legislators across 34 states have introduced more than 80 bills this year that criminalize protesting or protect those who harm protesters.

Amara Enyia and Jamecia Gray

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

Damon Williams, a co-founder of the #LetUsBreathe Collective, talks radical space-building.

Bettina Johnson

Cultural Organizing Gives Us a Roadmap to Liberation

Co-directors of SpiritHouse, a Black women-led tribe in Durham, discuss the "life-saving" rituals and practices of freedom that ground their work towards liberation.

Mya Hunter and “Mama Nia” Wilson

The Meeting in 1998 That Kept Black Radicalism Alive

Two decades ago, the Black Radical Congress convened to reclaim revolution and denounce reformism.

In These Times Editors