By Altheria Gaston

On August 17, 2015, protesters began a hunger strike in response to the closing of the last open-enrollment public high school in Chicago Public Schools. The school board decided on June 2015 to close Dyett High School, a mostly Black high school located on Chicago’s South Side. The board then decided, in early September, to reopen the high school as an arts high school, against protesters’ desires for the high school to have a global leadership and green technology theme, a focus that would equip students with more marketable skills. The protesters determined to not eat, even if it costs them their lives, until their requests are met. The strike ended on September 19.

by Vida Biggins

On Saturday, July18th, at the center of a stage at Netroots Nation meant to provide a platform for the voices of presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, stood a woman with dark brown skin, a kinky afro, wooden earrings, and the words “Black Love” boldly printed across her chest. She held the microphone—which I imagine could only have been pried from her hands—as protesters chanted slogans like “Black lives matter,” and “Say her name.”

by Candace Simpson

“In the process of consciousness-raising, actually life-sharing, we began to recognize the commonality of our experiences and, from that sharing and growing consciousness, to build a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression.”

by Porscha Coleman


For much of the last 72 hours, the news cycle has been dominated by stories about the protests and uprisings in Baltimore. As a result of the surge in news coverage and opinion on social media, there has been a flood of white and non-black people of color entering the conversation. Some of those entering the conversation may be genuinely interested in engaging in dialogue, but have no idea how to address the issues of police brutality, race, or what they are seeing happening in Baltimore.

by Kesiena Boom


The events unfolding in Baltimore at the moment are depressingly familiar: Police officer uses excessive force and kills an unarmed Black person. Black people take peacefully to the streets to express their despair and desire for change. The police escalate the situation. Violence erupts. The media and individuals online express their disgust at the Black protesters. Black people take to social media to report the actual facts as they happen and their personal responses and pain. Rinse and repeat. Another dead body. Another wave of misinformed and racially biased coverage. Another swell of grief. It never ends.

by Candace Simpson


On Black Friday, some friends and I helped to organize a Blackout Friday action in Brooklyn. We stood in front of Atlantic Terminal with our “Black Lives Matters” signs as we chanted and sang. Since then, I’ve participated in other actions. I’ve been paying attention to news coverage of protests, and I must admit, we’re doing a bad job of recognizing the power of protest in its many forms.

by Kinsey Clarke


My mother was born in 1951. She was sixteen-years-old when the Detroit Riots of 1967 occurred. She recalls how the military tanks rolled down our street, the fear that hung in the air, but remedies it with the notion that black people back then knew that progress could only be made with respectability and by following the cookie-cutter, whitewashed image of Martin Luther King Jr. and that those who rioted were outliers of the movement. After the Civil Right Era, in which we were “given” our rights, many from that time believed the playing field to be even, and that black people in this country no longer lived a second-class citizenship.

by Stacey Patton


From looters to those disrupting traffic, from those dying-in at shopping malls to those wearing tee-shirts that say “I Can’t Breathe,” from those chanting “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” over Christmas carols to those venting and grieving on social media, the punditocracy has once again characterized protestors as a criminal element.

by Hannah Giorgis for The Guardian

Erica Garner – the brave daughter of Eric Garner, who died this July when police officer Daniel Pantaleo restrained him in an illegal chokehold –staged a “die-in” last week outside the storefront where her father said his last words: “I can’t breathe.” The phrase, which Eric Garner repeated 11 times as Pantaleo refused to release his grip, has become an international rallying cry for protesters, celebrities and students alike.

by Morgan Parker

Zeta Phi Beta, a historic African American sorority, has broken ranks with other national women's groupsand is actively encouraging its members to engage in protest of the Michael Brown verdict through social action. The organization, Zeta Phi Beta, has cited its role as a "action-oriented, conscious-minded" entity throughout U.S. civil rights history. Thousands of members nationwide have flanked protests wearing their "letters" and have become actively involved in social media campaigns using the #RealZetas and #BlackLivesMatter hashtags. Member participation was encouraged through a national announcement to its members from the sorority's president.

by Diana Veiga

“We who believe in freedom cannot rest.”

Two weeks ago, I was at my parents’ house as County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch spent more than enough time than was necessary to announce that the grand jury had decided not to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson. I was in one room, my mother in another, my grandmother in another and we were all watching. We were all mad. We were all sad beyond words. It was a pain that had nowhere to go, one that seemed to just settle in our bones, in our spirit, in our very beings. The pain has not left, and yet it seems that our pain is invisible, because we seem to be invisible. But still not invisible to be protected from being viewed as immediate threats. Still not invisible enough to prevent us from being killed.

by Piper Anderson


I’m sitting in the back of a police car on my way to Brooklyn Central Booking after spending a night in the 77th precinct in Crown Heights. Cop sitting on the front passenger side, barely turns to me as he sweetly chides, “You know what your problem is, Piper? You think too much.”

by Ashley Sakuma for MSNBC

For a time, little more than a few inches of space separated a delicate line between peace and chaos.

Protesters tested the limits of the invisible boundary Friday night, toeing dangerously close to the row of officers lined up to protect the police headquarters here. Warnings from law enforcement officials that they may soon begin arresting people were easily drowned out by music and chants from the thickening crowd. Photographers readied their cameras, waiting for something to pop as demonstrators on the front lines stared down their opponents, leaving little room to breathe.