https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-fest-presents-intercepted-live-tickets-50497901583
See Eve and Cheryl and Jamie and me in Logan Square, 10/9 at 7 pm.
September 28, 2018
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On Patriotism
September 26, 2018Check out my essay “On Patriotism” in this Bank Street Occasional Paper:
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Loud and Clear
September 25, 2018
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Education/Liberation
September 20, 2018
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Fresh Ayers
September 20, 2018
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16 SHOTS!!!
September 19, 2018Cook County Medical Examiner Ponni Arunkumar took the stand and explained Laquan McDonald’s injuries to jurors.
“There were 16 gunshot wounds to the body of Laquan McDonald,” Arunkumar said early in her testimony.
Prosecutors displayed graphic photos of McDonald’s body throughout her testimony — some that actually showed multiple gunshot wounds at once. Another showed the incision where his chest had been cut open. Prosecutors also showed X-rays.
Here is how Arunkumar described the first eight wounds:
1. A graze wound on the left side of his scalp. Arunkumar said McDonald was alive for this gunshot wound.
2. A gunshot wound to the left side of the base of McDonald’s neck. A bullet was recovered from his body.
3. A gunshot wound to the left side of McDonald’s chest and close to the second gunshot wound. It left his body through the back of his left arm.
4. A gunshot wound to the right side of McDonald’s chest. A bullet was recovered from his body.
5. A gunshot wound to McDonald’s left elbow, which exited the body.
6. A gunshot wound to the back of McDonald’s right upper arm, which exited the body.
7 A gunshot wound to the back of McDonald’s left forearm, which exited the body.
8. A gunshot wound to McDonald’s right upper thigh. The bullet traveled to his left upper leg, where it was recovered.
Cook County Medical Examiner Ponni Arunkumar continued to describe Laquan McDonald’s wounds after a brief break. She described gunshot wounds nine through 16 as follows:
9. A gunshot wound to McDonald’s left upper back, which exited his body.
10. A gunshot wound to McDonald’s left elbow, close to the fifth gunshot wound. This one also exited his body.
11. A gunshot wound to the back of McDonald’s right upper arm. It exited his body through the right upper back.
12. A gunshot wound to McDonald’s right upper forearm. A bullet was recovered from his body.
13. A gunshot wound to the back of McDonald’s right forearm. A bullet was recovered from his body.
14. A gunshot wound to McDonald’s right hand. Bullet fragments were recovered from his body.
15. A gunshot wound to McDonald’s lower right back. A bullet was recovered from his body.
16. A gunshot wound to McDonald’s right upper thigh. It exited McDonald’s body through the back of his right upper thigh.
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Robin’s Brilliant Essay on Boots Riley…
September 19, 2018
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Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the 21st Century by Barbara Ransby
September 16, 2018Making All Black Lives Matter is an important new book by the brilliant activist/historian Barbara Ransby. In the spirit of the young Howard Zinn’s The New Abolitionists, a small but influential book about SNCC that was written and published during the last great wave of the Black Freedom Movement, Ransby’s book is an attempt to understand and amplify the current upsurge in the centuries-old fight for Black freedom. As with Zinn’s book, you can feel the serious historian at work with the ground firmly beneath her feet, but also the participant eager to record and urgent to make sense of this moment—this history-in-the-making. This intervention is a love letter to today’s activists as well as a healthy push to resist, reimagine, and rebuild a broad social movement against racial capitalism and for a world at peace and in balance, powered by love and justice.
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Loud and Clear
September 11, 2018
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There There
September 10, 2018Gertrude Stein famously noted the fact that, returning to her childhood home in Oakland, California after many years away, the place no longer existed, writing, “There is no there there.” The famous phrase has been deployed and repurposed continually ever since by invaders and occupiers, land thieves and urban removal managers, gentrifiers and hipsters to justify thievery and appropriation: “There was no there there.”
Now Tommy Orange, a brilliant young writer and registered member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, reimagines the phrase, resists its many aggressive misinterpretations, and rebuilds its meaning in a powerful new novel, “There There.” Orange creates a dozen entirely compelling, complex, and wildly diverse urban Native Americans drawn together for the Big Oakland Powwow. Along the way each character feels the urgent press of a living history, deep memories of the attempted genocide and untold loss, but also the inheritance of resistance and the redemptive power of community. Tommy Orange reminds us that there always was a there there, and the people who are there are living and loving still.
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Bill Ayers 