by Phillip B. Williams This past Monday, Ashley Fantz and Bill Kirkos wrote for CNN that leaders in Chicago are asking for calm as they await the release of video footage from a police dashcam showing an officer shooting Laquan…
By Quentin Lucas A few years ago, I struggled through a date at an art museum, admiring, but mostly just trying to understand, the pieces comprising a feminist exhibit. The woman I was with, much more educated about the subject…
By Darnell L. Moore Art is a tool necessary for new world creating and self-remaking. When conjured in the imaginative expanse of the black creative mind, art has the capacity to transgress: Art can move us toward black queer futures.…
By Hari Ziyad “When you walk through the door, what does one see?” I have always found this a fascinating question for multiple reasons: first, it assumes people are present in every room to “see” and that those people all…
by Amber Rambharose Almost any given object can be split in half with each half making up 50% of whole. I can only think of one exception. When someone asks if I am half black or half white, I don't…
Nate Marshall is from the South Side of Chicago. He is an editor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. His first book, Wild Hundreds (University of Pittsburgh Press), won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize.…
by Kleaver Cruz Do you remember who you were when you were 16? The places where you spent most of your time? Whom you were there with? At 16 years old, Kalief Browder was alone. He was labeled with a…
by Darnell L. Moore I could not sleep on August 10th. The previous day, 18-year old Mike Brown, Jr. was shot dead by officer Darren Wilson. I was haunted by the images of Brown’s bloodied black body left face down…
Born in Baltimore and raised in Southern California, Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist and performer. She is an alumna of Spelman College and the University of Maryland and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women's…
by janaya khan Black people everywhere are fighting against the realities of anti-Black racism and genocide. As of 2015, every 28 hours a Black person is killed in the US by a police officer, security guard or gun-wielding vigilante. On…
