This week’s Extra! Extra! looks at police instigating even more violence at protests about police violence, can we defund the police altogether, Iyanna Dior, and the meaning of voting when America is inherently built on anti-Blackness.
What is the flavor of your grief? What has given you a boost, made your day, rubbed you all the wrong ways or is making you ask new questions? Black, Indigenous, and other people of color: what’s caught in your head?
Legacies intersect in this Pride month to remind us that defunding the police system is both a historically Black and historically queer demand, and that disruption and direct action can get that demand met.
The state and police as agents of it often surveil communities of color and immigrant communities as a tactic of control, reminding people they’re being watched so they stay in line; white people have the power to surveil police to the same effect.
The thread of videos of police violence against peaceful protestors is miles long now, over 10k protesters have been arrested, Trump sheds more allies, Kristen Stewart marches with BLM, Public Health officials know anti-Black police violence is a national health crisis and more.
Readings and reading lists on Black radicalism, dismantling white supremacy, antiracism, police brutality and more.
![Support Black Community [illustration of a bag of money] Boost Mutual Aid Funds](https://www.autostraddle.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/feature-mutualaidfunds.png?fit=640%2C320)
This post is a living document. If you are looking to donate to vetted groups or individuals currently providing community care, we encourage you to use this list as a resource. And if you are looking for any variety of care – food, shelter, COVID-19 testing, or other organizing efforts – we hope these options will be a good starting place for you to find what you need.
In a time where Black people are experiencing new and old collective trauma whenever they scroll through Instagram, please stop asking us if we’re okay. We are not.
“Nobody may come to help us in time; we are all we’ve got. We need to organize, quickly, online, and geographically.”
The work of civil rights history is queer and feminist. It’s also a hard, rough, incomplete project.
There’s a long and proud Black radical history of fighting back against the prison industrial complex and criminal (in)justice systems. So why is it that most of the voices that are upheld come from cis men?
If we want to move towards a police-free, abolitionist future, we have to do everything we can create an abolitionist reality right now – which starts with not calling the police into our own communities.
Fifty years of words I liked reading and you will too! Authors include James Baldwin, bell hooks, Kiese Laymon, Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Toni Morrison, Bayard Rustin and Dr. Brittany Cooper.
In today’s Also.Also.Also link roundup: many accounts of police violence against protesters, and resources for educating yourself, supporting black businesses, providing jail support, donating to mutual aid funds and more.
All people deserve the right to continue their education regardless of their ability to sit in a physical classroom. Accessibility should never determine a child’s ability to learn.
The work around decarceration has been some of the most successfully documented, accessible, and digitally interactive of any movement. This is a guide to guides, organized loosely by some of the main questions and thought processes that often come up around entry into abolitionist thinking, offering resources addressing some important ideas.
Donate to a bail fund. We don’t have to wait for others to commit to upholding the value of Black life and materially improve the lives of Black people. We can take care of each other instead.
Sex work in a pandemic, flirting by text and voicemail (not to mention, phone sex!), whether disaster brings us closer and more.
“I am going to write fire until it comes out my ears, my eyes, my noseholes — everywhere. Until it’s every breath I breathe. I’m going to go out like a fucking meteor!”
Times are rough, all around. Instead of my regular Grease Bats, I’m sharing some coloring pages that were rejected last month after an editor was “slightly offended” by the images. Enjoy homos!