Fighting for the Sex Ed Chicago’s Students Deserve
Communities demand inclusive, antiracist, comprehensive sexual education, in and beyond Chicago Public Schools.
Antiracism
What’s Behind the Fuss About Critical Race Theory?
Right-wing media has conjured a growing panic about critical race theory being taught in schools and universities. But what really scares them is a new generation questioning entrenched myths about capitalism and racial hierarchy.
Who Controls Chicago’s Cops?
Chicagoans have fought long and hard for police accountability, but the new ordinance is a step back for the movement and a win for Mayor Lightfoot. A sober assessment serves us better than claiming false victories.
BDS the Police
A central strategy of the Palestinian struggle for liberation is rich with potential for abolitionist movements. It’s time to boycott, divest, and sanction the police.
Insurrection & Abolition: Ida B. Wells and the End of the Convict Lease System
Once slavery was abolished, capitalists rebuilt an industrialized South using a new form of racialized slavery: the convict lease system. It would take multi-racial insurrectionary action to ultimately abolish convict leasing.
Myths of White Supremacy and Black Radicalism
From “race reductionism” to “dupes of Moscow.” many myths about Black radicalism and white supremacy still circulate today. In this roundtable, Charisse Burden-Stelly, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Barbara Smith provide an important counter.
It’s Been Nothing but Fight
Dorothy Holmes describes her fight for a special prosecutor and carrying forward the citywide struggle for an end to police violence.
There Is No Justification for the Murder of Ma’Khia Bryant
Ma’Khia Bryant deserved a long, thriving life, period. While some have pointed to the circumstances of her murder in order to cast doubt on her right to live, none of these equivocations even have a basis in crisis intervention experience.
Notoriously Immoral: Eugenics, Incarceration, and the White City
Bones discovered in 1989 revealed the gruesome history of eugenics, experimentation, and murder at the Dunning facility in Chicago. Far from an aberration, the brutality of white supremacy was integral to Chicago’s past, showcased at the famous World's Fair that put Chicago on the map.
Adam’s Innocence Isn’t Even the Point
A Chicago cop put a bullet in a thirteen-year-old child, and many are spinning narratives laced with typical racist dehumanization in an attempt to obscure this fact. It’s the cops who should be under the spotlight, disbanded, and abolished.
A Broadened Sense of Abolition
Our understanding of innocence, guilt, victims, and criminals shapes the worlds we are able to build. New books by Mariame Kaba and Harsha Walia pry open political possibilities.
Justice for Gerald Reed
This week Chicagoans have a chance to show up for a police torture survivor who is still suffering unjust incarceration.
This Is Genocide
Statement of a resister against deadly injustice inside a St Louis jail
The Arab Spring and Abolition of the Police
The Arab Spring was an anti-police movement brought to revolutionary levels. Its lessons will be crucial to a renewed abolitionist movement in the United States and around the world.
Behind the Far-Right Mob
A researcher of far-right activity discusses the forces behind the pro-Trump mob at the Capitol and the challenges ahead for combating a growing fascist movement.
The End of Whiteness
White supremacy has never been about the supremacy of all whites. Grappling with the sources of white poverty and oppression will be necessary to strengthen the movement against racism.
Deadlier Than a Pandemic
A new study shows that Black people die at a higher rate in a normal year than the rate of white people dying from the pandemic this year. In this interview, the author of the research explains its significance.
We Are Not the City’s Garbage Can
Community organizers stand up to a toxic polluter and city officials who continue to practice environmental racism on Chicago’s Southeast side.
There’s Nothing Left but the Streets
The recent rebellion in Philly against the police murder of Walter Wallace Jr. is rooted in struggles of the past and reflects the uprisings of the future.
Four Theses on American Fascism
Theories of modern fascism need to be updated to show its American origins, the centrality of racism, and how it needs to be defeated in the streets.
Black Lives Matter and the Power of History
African Americans have mobilized against the police to defend Black life since the 1960s and before. For this cycle of massive urban rebellion to succeed in changing the racist structures of society, it will require learning from this history and struggles abroad.
All of Them Are Guilty
Dorothy Holmes reflects on her unending struggle for justice for her son, Ronald Johnson, on the sixth anniversary of his murder by Chicago police.
Public Safety Without Police
In the wake of the summer antiracist uprising, one Chicago ward is forging ahead with practical alternatives to policing. Ald. Rossana Rodriguez discusses the progress and challenges of defunding the police and imagining a different kind of public safety.
Science in Service of Cops
The Crime Lab research center operated by the University of Chicago uses the illusion of scientific objectivity to support the racist violence of the Chicago Police Department.