Black Leadership Matters – Guest blog by Juana Bordas  Black History Month is a time to reflect, learn, and celebrate the countless contributions African Americans have made to our country – a time to recommit to the work of Civil Rights and Community Engagement.  We must remember that Black History month is necessary because their journeys and contributions were excluded from the “American story”. Respecting and integrating the history of African Americans, however, should be continuous and not limited to one month! One crucial step is incorporating Black Leadership principles into our organizations and society. We begin by acknowledging the last year of […]

I had the privilege of attending the San Miguel Writer’s Conference in Mexico this week, the final keynote of which was given by Naomi Klein, Canadian author of “This Changes Everything” and “The Shock Doctrine.” She acknowledged that since Trump’s victory, we will need to focus on playing defense for a while, but that we should do so in the context of a powerfully humane vision of the future, exemplified by the Leap Manifesto, reprinted below. Clearly the manifesto was written for Canada, but, with an additional focus on Black and Latino communities, could be adopted for the movement in […]

Let’s not channel “irrational exuberance” over our victory in the 9th Circuit re the Muslim Ban. Yes, it was beautiful. Yes, it was totally predictable. 45 doesn’t care if the courts approve his plan or not. To 45, it’s all about building the movement. His governing style is to throw shit against the wall and see what sticks. His political style is to keep throwing his carnivorous base chunks of red meat. 45 is a symptom of the imminent collapse of capitalism. The concentration of wealth is systemic, another symptom of the collapse. No society can survive the levels of […]

THAT’S ME IN THE MIDDLE I’m not going to mince words here. The people who are fomenting “violence” at various anti-Trump rallies are police agents, witting or unwitting. Some of them may be well-intentioned. I get it that what we’re seeing is not violence. Violence is killing people, which the other side does on an hourly basis. But vandalism is adventurist and provocative, and will get our people killed. We are up against the most powerful military machine the world has ever seen with the capacity to destroy life on the planet as we know it many times over. In […]