Terrorists are attacking black churches. Cities across the country are languishing under police brutality. College kids are organizing protests. The KKK is planning a march down the streets of a southern capital city. It seems like someone slipped and hit the playback button on United States history. This back-to-the future loop makes an unflinching examination of the life behind the seminal Civil Rights song, “Mississippi Goddam” all the more timely.
Nina Simone, like several of the mightiest giants of American music, began her career in the belly of Jim Crow.
The dynamics of Civil Rights movement forced Simone and many of her African American contemporaries to decide whether to serve as voices for progress or pander to decision makers of…
We Can Stand With All Victims of Terrorism
We knew it was coming. A surge of counter-activism, pedaling the lack of global sympathy for some tragedies as a right to denigrate people experiencing another.
Social media is peppered now with vitriolic posts and memes ranting about how horrible and undeserving France is of the sympathy it is receiving. Everyone has the right to their opinion and, conversely, should not feel obligated to express solidarity for anything. But proclaiming that some people don’t deserve an outpouring of condolence is never an honorable or effective way to drum up attention for another issue.
It is sadly, true that France has a long ugly history of brutal oppression in some areas of the world. This fact really does need…
Tasha
#writer by day, #Gotham #activist by night, #cofounder of #harlemdemoday, #Harlem #NYC #Amsterdam #Paris #Binder
