This #BlackAugust, in partnership with @MXGMNational we're calling for the freedom of 5 #PoliticalPrisoners:
❤️ Dr. Mutulu Shakur
🖤Mumia Abu-Jamal
💚 Kamau Sadiki
💛Imam Jamil Al Amin
🤎Ed Poindexter

Join us today to send them love, support, & hope: m4bl.link/PoliticalPriso… Dr. #MutuluShakur is a father, grandfather, healer, & human-rights activist who has been in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons for more than 35 years. He was targeted and victimized by the Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) as early as 1968.

campaigns.organizefor.org/petitions/supp…

As we fight for Black liberation & safety for our communities, we urge the House of Representatives not to advance Invest to Protect, COPS on the Beat Grant Program Reauthorization & Parity Act, or any funding replicating mistakes of the 1994 Crime Bill.

m4bl.link/NoMoreCops Time and time again, the policing system has failed to protect all of our communities, and we know the increase in federal spending for police will only make these matters worse.

Say NO to more cops and YES to community investments: m4bl.link/NoMoreCops

Happy Black Futures Month!

First launched by #M4BL and our partners in 2015, Black Futures Month is a visionary, forward-looking spin on celebrations of Blackness in February. During #BlackFuturesMonth, and always, we center Black, queer, & transfeminist perspectives. Black queer & trans people have long been at the forefront of dreaming and expanding what is possible for our movements.

Today, we reflect and honor the lives taken on October 20th last year as Nigerian forces opened fire on #EndSars protesters, killing multiple people in addition to the dozens who had already been shot and killed throughout the demonstrations. Nigeria's #EndSARS campaign brought global visibility to the corrupt Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) who have tortured and killed Black children with impunity for decades.

This Labor Day let us remember that when labor unions first held strikes, Black people were not allowed to participate, as they were barred from unions. However, Hattie Canty, a culinary worker, led the longest labor strike in American history in 1991. As the president of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, she and others walked off the job at Frontier Hotel over unfair labor practices.

The uprising in defense of Black lives represents the largest social movement in U.S. history. As more people say #BlackLivesMatter, local and federal law enforcement are harassing, arresting, and charging activists and organizers with made-up charges.

1/6 We demand that charges are dropped against all protesters, including Black disabled, Black queer, trans, & gender-nonconforming folks who are more likely to be targeted for arrest -- & an immediate end to the practice of persecuting protesters in the U.S.

2/6

Discrimination, harassment, and violence against Black trans, intersex, queer, & gender nonconforming (LGBTQ+) people pervade schools, workplaces, systems of policing, prisons, parole and probation, immigration, health care, and family and juvenile courts and more.
1/8 There is a war on Black trans people, and it will take all of us to collectively, consistently, & authentically work to end transphobia.
2/8

Today, we’re rolling out our Freedom Summer 2020 organizing campaign, an echo of the 1964 Freedom Summer voting rights drive that precipitated the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

1/6 This summer, the Movement for Black Lives is training and developing nearly 200 organizers in cities like Dallas, Detroit, and Miami. We are mobilizing local organizers and community leaders to fight for electoral justice and build Black political power.

2/6

Welcome to Black August — a month dedicated to learning about Black revolutionaries and honoring their struggle against white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism. Today, we follow in the footsteps of Black radicals in the fight for liberation.

1/7 Black August was started in California prisons in the 1970s to honor the lives of Black political prisoners killed by the state.

2/7

THREAD

When we say defund the police, our demand is to divest from a body that has never created safety for Black people.

Instead, we want to invest in things that create the conditions of safety. Our offering: The #BREATHEAct. What does that mean?

1/9 The current rationale for funding police at high levels is that it's what we need to stay safe. But here police fail: profiling, sexual harassment and assault, targeted discriminatory enforcement, and extrajudicial murder are endemic to US policing. Safety for whom? Not us.

2/9

THREAD:

In case there is any confusion about Harriet Tubman...

1/8 Known as the “Moses of her people,” Harriet Tubman was an abolitionist, a revolutionary, and one of our bravest ancestors. She was born into slavery, escaped, and spent her life guiding other people to freedom that were forcibly and violently enslaved.

2/8

(THREAD) The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) proudly stands in solidarity with the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Great Sioux Nation) & demands that the United States government uphold its legal obligation under the 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty and return the sacred Ȟe Sápa (Black Hills) to them. M4BL also recognizes and fully supports tribal sovereignty and the right of all Indigenous Peoples to assert and exercise their sovereignty as recognized under international law.

In a sharp and necessary article for The Nation, @BarbaraRansby breaks down the meaning of our current political moment in this country and why the white left needs to embrace Black leadership. thenation.com/article/activi… @BarbaraRansby As Ransby points out, while protestors chant “Black Lives Matter,” organizers in the Movement for Black Lives are clear that the larger goal of this fight is to end racial capitalism.

What are some abolitionist steps we can take to decrease the power of policing? How is thinking through an abolitionist lens more effective than reformist “solutions”? Police reforms almost never decrease police budgets. Our goal is to defund. Reforms increase the scale of policing in our neighborhoods, increase the tactics police have at their disposal, & do nothing to challenge the notion that policing increases safety (spoiler: it doesn't).

Many Democrats & activists have suggested reforms as solutions to police murders against Black people. We know that reforms aren’t an effective solution to eradicating police violence. Let’s take a look at the effects of some of the reforms that people propose as solutions. Body cams: do they work? Will they keep people more safe? Answer: no! Equipping officers with body cams increases the police budget and it adds to the false notion that policing makes people safe (if done “right”).

On November 22, 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann. Loehmann shot Tamir almost immediately after arriving on the scene and seeing him playing with a toy gun. Today is Tamir's birthday. He would’ve been 18. In America, 18 is the mark of adulthood. It's a turning point when one begins to grow out of childhood & into maturity. It's a birthday that one looks forward to. Tamir didn’t get to have this birthday, b/c a police officer saw his 12-year-old Black body & chose to kill him.