Black Lives Matter

Ella’s Song: We who believe in freedom cannot rest.

“I mean, I read the books, I understood institutional racism, but I didn’t know what it felt like. Until I started listening to people with the assumption that I don’t know, I didn’t hear everything that I hear now. And now I can’t not do anything. And now I realize that this evil is impacting us all.” Reverend Kate Lore

It has been awhile since I posted, and it was my intention for my next post to be my contribution to the State of the Movement from Fabulous, Fierce, & Sacred. That’s still coming, but the Ferguson decision came like a sucker punch immediately following the conference. Instead, here are some of the resources (this is not meant as an exhaustive list) I’m spending time with as I process with my communities the ongoing violence of white supremacy. Be sure to find your local community responses to Ferguson, and connect with your local organizations and communities working for racial justice and an end to white supremacy.

• National Call to Action: The Justice for Michael Brown Leadership Coalition is calling for a No Justice, No Profit boycott from Thanksgiving to the following Sunday. Here’s an app for finding local Black-owned businesses with your phone, if you’d like to shop during that period. Here is a Facebook event page #BoycottBlackFriday with more resources.
• St. Louis history of violence: Here’s the story of Dred Scott. Here’s St. Louis’s Long History of Shameful Racial Violence.
• The violent history of our nation: While we’re at it, here’s some of what we missed if we went through the U.S. public school system in this article by Ta-Nehisi Coates laying down an in-depth history in his case for reparations.
• Want to learn more?: 
  • Here’s a free online 8-week course about how slavery has framed today’s attitudes and behaviors. All the materials are free and available online.
  • Here’s Angela Davis’s talk about Trayvon Martin and Violence in America
  • Here’s Angela Davis’s talk about slavery and the prison industrial complex
  • Here’s a panel and Michelle Alexander speaking on the New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
• Ferguson in the context of all the above history: For example, there’s “‘No Justice, No Peace” in Ferguson and Across America“.
• How white rage and white criminalized bodies experience white supremacy: Here’s a piece about white rage. What does white rage look like and how is it treated? Here’s a piece about the ways white criminalized bodies are treated.
• The stories the media doesn’t tell: For example, what reactions to Ferguson did you see covered in the press? Which reactions didn’t you see?
• Keeping in mind the historical context, the wisdom of leaders and experts from above, the experiences of white people in white supremacy, and the untold stories of Ferguson, here are some experiences of people of color living in white supremacy: Here’s a perspective on what it sounds like when white people and especially white Christians call for peace. Here’s a perspective on how difficult it is to talk with white friends about race. Here’s a perspective on parenting as an African American father in a multi-ethnic family.