Juneteenth – Celebrate the Past and Continue the Struggle
Today, June 19, 2025, we celebrate Juneteenth – the most popular annual celebration of the end of slavery in the United States. As we celebrate though, the Trump administration and its many allies in the media and among its right-wing supporters are stoking racism against Black people, Muslims, migrants and non-white people. This open upsurge […]
Kindred by Octavia Butler
“I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery…” Kindred is a 1979 novel by Octavia Butler (1947-2006), an African American science fiction author. The story focuses on Dana, the main character, who is forced to travel through time between her home in the 1970s in Southern California and the early 1800s […]
Cobalt Red Book Review: Bloodshed in the Congo’s Mines
Author and expert on modern slavery, Siddharth Kara, exposes the treacherous living and working conditions of Congolese mining communities in Cobalt Red. He makes it clear that we cannot ignore the cruelty used to produce our everyday devices. Cobalt is essential to make rechargeable batteries for smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles Through heartbreaking testimonies and […]
Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid: One Battle in the Struggle for Freedom
On June 2, 1863, during the U.S. Civil War, two Union Army gunships (the Harriet A. Weed and the John Adams — both converted ferryboats) carrying 150 soldiers proceeded up the Combahee River, about twenty miles south of Charleston, in the heart of South Carolina’s lowland rice region. Guided by a woman with nearly 14 […]
The Louisiana Slave Rebellion of 1811 – America’s First Freedom March
January 8-10 marks the anniversary of the Louisiana Rebellion of 1811, also known as the German Coast Uprising. At the time, it was the largest slave insurgency in the history of the United States, involving between 200-500 slaves fighting for their freedom. It is sometimes referred to as “America’s First Freedom March.” It didn’t matter […]
John Brown’s Raid on Harpers’ Ferry: One Battle in a Long Struggle
John Brown and his followers stand as an example of how working people of different skin colors and backgrounds can join together and take action against the oppressing ruling classes. For that reason, we recognize John Brown’s raid as part of the long struggle to end oppression and create a just and equal world for all people.
Book Review: The Water Dancer
The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, opens with a quote from Fredrick Douglass: “My part has been to tell the story of the slave. The story of the master never wanted for narrators.”
A Nation of Mass Incarceration
The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world. While the U.S. has less than five percent of the world’s population, it has about 25 percent of the world’s prisoners – half a million more than China, which has five times as many people as the U.S. There are about 2.3 million prisoners in […]