The Brown Girls Do It Newsletter #6: Angela Davis is Excited
...and so are we! Here are some more resources for anti-racism, because Black Lives Matter isn't a one-time thing. Get on board.
Hey everyone,
So, we probably need to say a big ‘Welcome!’ to the legions of new subscribers who’ve signed up to this newsletter. We can’t believe that in the past week, we’ve more than tripled the number of people subscribed. This initially started as a way for us to make some recommendations for diversifying your reading list and the stuff you watch and listen to, but in the light of recent events, that’s changed.
We want to use our platform for good. We want to keep highlighting the causes you ought to be keeping an eye out for, the petitions you should be signing and places you can donate. Because although it’s amazing that people are waking up to the reality of racism, and particularly the realities that Black people live with, we need to all make sure that what follows is a sustained level of learning and action. We cannot go back to the way things were. So, we won’t. And we hope you won’t either.
A lot of change has happened in the last week, and it’s something to be excited about. From statues of slave traders being thrown into the river in Bristol to the Minneapolis City Council’s historic commitment to disband the Minneapolis Police Department, we’re seeing the drastic change that is possible after direct action.
Who can sum up the excitement better than Angela Y. Davis, who has worked her whole life towards police and prison abolition? This is her talking about just that:
In the wake of a certain famous author (She Who Must Not Be Named) tweeting and then doubling down on some real transphobic bullshit, we’d like to reiterate that Brown Girls Do It stands with our Trans siblings, especially Black Trans women, who are often most at risk of violence. Trans Rights are Human Rights, Trans Women are Women, Black Trans Lives Matter and if you don’t like it, you’re in the wrong place, pal.
Sign:
We’ve been asked to share a couple of petitions this week local to the North West of England, to Liverpool and Manchester, so please show these some love:
A petition to change the names of roads in Liverpool named after famous slavers: http://chng.it/8gYrGzhGWY
A petition to honour Black Mancunian Len Johnson, who worked tirelessly for the civil rights movement and trades union movement in the UK over the course of his life: https://www.change.org/p/manchester-city-council-a-monument-for-len-johnson-in-manchester
Share:
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Breonna Taylor’s murder at the hands of the police, you can read about the heartbreaking story here:
https://zora.medium.com/where-is-the-outrage-for-breonna-taylor-f2f7ed762e79.
With the murders of Black women at the hands of police officers often not given the same spotlight as the killings of Black men, we wanted to make sure we were drawing attention to her. She would have been 27 this week past and she deserves justice.
You can sign the petition and find out how best to support her family here: https://www.standwithbre.com/
Donate:
It’s Pride Month in the UK! The lovely folks over at Colours Youth Network are fundraising for their core events programme, so that they can continue doing the work they do to support young Black people and PoC who are LGBT+ (QTIBPOC).
You can donate to them and read more about their amazing work here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/colours-youth-network?fbclid=IwAR07SKNcE4QMEAL9lnGhsSWPgL-Qbqbaz8pxuYPZmn1s6SqZ7msPbMAxxTI
Brown Girls Do It Spotlights…
One of the things we do every week is to spotlight an artist or community organisation doing some amazing work and this week we wanted to highlight artist Kiara Mohamed.
Kiara Mohamed is a Queer, multidisciplinary artist based in Toxteth, Liverpool. Her work focuses on identity, social issues and the role art plays in our lives in addressing these issues. She uses photography, poetry, film and drone photography to comment on post-colonial ideas and reflect on her background and the community that she lives in. In 2018 she made Black Flowers, a film about Liverpool’s colonial history, which was shown at Tate Liverpool and the British Museum.
Kiara is donating the proceeds of the first 24 prints sold to Black Lives Matter. Please support her by buying her amazing work here: https://aquariusrising3.bigcartel.com/products
Brown Girls Do It Recommends…
We want to keep pointing people towards resources that help them in their journey towards practising anti-racism. If you missed our first list, head over to Substack and have a look at Newsletter #5 - plenty to get your teeth into.
Here are some more recommendations, though.
Brown Girls Do Books & Articles
Angela Y. Davis has worked all of her life towards police and prison abolition. This week, we encourage our readers to get ahold of a copy of an anthology she edited, If They Come In The Morning: Voices of Resistance, a powerful collection of Black voices on the theme of resistance.
Elsewhere, Black authors have been highlighting the dire differences in the ways Black authors are paid for their work using #PublishingPaidMe on Twitter. It makes for some grim reading, and Magdalene Abraha has written a great article about it here: https://amp.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/jun/09/publishing-has-ignored-and-pigeonholed-black-authors-for-too-long
We also love this article from Professor of History and Memory of Slavery at the University of Bristol, Olivette Otele, reflecting not only on this past week but on Britan’s relationship with its brutal Imperial history: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/09/protests-british-history?CMP=share_btn_tw
Brown Girls Do TV & Film
If there’s anything you watch this week, let it be Kimberley Jones impassioned speech on the looting and rioting during protests in the United States:
Please also support the film Just Mercy, starring Michael B. Jordan. The film is available to stream and rent online, and was the first to champion an inclusion rider, requiring that Black people be a part of the production team and the work behind the scenes. The film is a heartbreaking look into the US carceral system, based on the work of Bryan Stevenson. We can’t recommend it enough.
Brown Girls Do Music and Podcasts
If there’s one podcast you should listen to, it’s Beyond Prisons. Why? Because one way to understand the realities of Black folks in the US especially, is to start learning about the oppressive systems which disproportionately hurt them. And thanks to the War on Drugs, prisons run for profit in the US are another tool of systemic racism you need to start learning about.
Brown Girls Do It Episode Update!
Have you listened to the latest episode? We talked about Black Lives Matter, and what Black people need from the rest of us right now. Please do give it a listen, and share if you can:
Thanks again for subscribing to the newsletter, and we hope these resources help you!
Solidarity in the struggle,
Alicia & Iqra