Xinachtli (pronounced she-nawsht-lee), aka Alvaro Hernandez, was born in Alpine, Texas. Born into a racially-segregated society, he was forced to attend segregated public schools and experienced the violent policing of Chicano barrios. At 23 years old, Xinachtli was put in jail for the first time and convicted for a crime he didn’t commit. He soon began his study in law and prisoners’ rights, which led him to study histories of global revolutions and movements, such as the anarchist-comm...| Scalawag
The Holy Land Foundation was founded in 1989. Rooted in Palestinian self-determination, the charity provided an incredible amount of material support to Palestinian people, combating the brutality of life under occupation. Read more via Scalawag: Palestinian Political Prisoner Shukri Abu Baker's Poetry Book Debuts in Houston.| Scalawag
These links illustrate both the ideological and practical ties between the two bodies, as both serve as means to increase the militarization of policing via the weaponization of surveillance technology. Read more via Scalawag: ICE and the IDF: The Transnational Nexus of State Control.| Scalawag
Yes, we may be incarcerated, but we are still humans, and that should be reason enough for fair medical care. Read more via Scalawag: The reality of mental health care in prison.| Scalawag
As a surfeit of emotions overwhelms me at once as I count one hundred and ninety-seven steps. The officers are waiting for me with wolfish grins. I know that something is not right. Read more via Scalawag: The Gauntlet: Fight Night in a Texas Prison.| Scalawag
Why is the carceral state storing recordings of typical strip-frisks without incident involved? Read more via Scalawag: A new directive permits prison guards to record strip searches using body cameras.| Scalawag
The coercive nature of jobs within the immigrant detention industrial complex—whether at privately-run ICE facilities in economically disinvested areas or with ICE itself—is not so different from the coercion that drives people to join the military. Read more via Scalawag: ICE and the military use the same playbook—exploiting impoverished communities.| Scalawag
The Texas Rangers police force was founded in 1823 to enforce colonial rule in a "for whites only” government. Read more via Scalawag: The Colonial History of Texas Rangers.| Scalawag
A fierce political struggle is brewing in Memphis. On one side is the world's richest man, Elon Musk, whose company xAI quietly set up shop in an abandoned factory this past summer. On the other side is a broad cross-section of Memphis residents, led by the low-income, historically Black neighborhoods located nearby.| Scalawag
As faithful people and healers, it is against the doctor’s faith to watch a patient suffer when they can intervene. Read more via Scalawag: South Carolina providers push back against faith-based assaults on abortion care .| Scalawag
They came with promises of transformation: thousands of jobs, surging salaries and a foothold in the booming electric vehicle market. Read more via Scalawag: A startup promised 45,000 EV jobs to struggling towns. They're still waiting..| Scalawag
"We cannot defend trans youth without confronting the carceral, racialized, and reproductive logics that underpin this moment, nor can we treat gender-affirming care as separate from the broader struggle for bodily autonomy, housing, healthcare, and family dignity." Read more via Scalawag: Freak Generations: The Moral Panic Playbook from Crack Babies to Trans Kids.| Scalawag
A key element of the philosophy that made Radio Free Dixie important was the understanding of the interconnectedness of global struggle. The show made it clear that the same capitalist forces that killed and brutalized people around the world were the same that made life miserable for Black folks in the U.S. Read more via Scalawag: Radio Free Dixie: A revolutionary cultural institution.| Scalawag
A fierce political struggle is brewing in Memphis. On one side is the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, whose company xAI quietly set up shop in an abandoned factory this past summer. On the other side is a broad cross-section of Memphis residents, led by the low-income, historically Black neighborhoods located nearby. Read more via Scalawag: Musk's Memphis xAI data center and the making of a 'Digital Delta'.| Scalawag
This graphic novel depicts the story of the 1891 Coal Creek War—one of the most significant yet overlooked labor and abolitionist uprisings in US History.| Scalawag
The courage of those who came before us was a powerful reminder of the continuing struggle for equality. Read more via Scalawag: The Impact of Black Physicians in Mississippi's Civil Rights Movement.| Scalawag
Murray’s work acts as a site of possibility, utilizing historical memory to think through the imaginative and mystical potential of the Black body. The artist’s works shed light on the narratives and folklore that have become colloquial to Black history, especially Black Southern histories, such as the myth of the Flying Africans. Read more via Scalawag: Ambrose Rhapsody Murray and Recalling Myth.| Scalawag
Symbolic wins for a select few won’t save us when the systems that brutalize the global majority of women, especially poor women and racialized women remain intact. Read more via Scalawag: Liberal feminism will never liberate us.| Scalawag
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a long legacy of circulating pro-police and corporate talking points, which, in the past, have directly led to violent police or mob killings in the city. Read more via Scalawag: From the Atlanta Race Massacre to Cop City: The AJC Incites Harm.| Scalawag
“We are in the belly of the beast, the head of the empire—and the world is waiting on us. Our silence is complicity, our failure to act is complicity.” Read more via Scalawag: A Look into Houston's "Safeguard the Flame" for Political Prisoners.| Scalawag
Black music has long been an important tool for soft power, manufacturing consent for the coups, occupations, and drone strikes that reproduce the image of American peace and prosperity. I’m not suggesting that the beef was meant to distract from political issues, or that both artists haven’t made institutional critiques on and off their records. But there’s a reason that this particular beef would attract this level of attention at this particular moment, and it goes beyond their respe...| Scalawag
There is a shifting that should happen within each of us in the belly of an apocalypse—and genocides are apocalyptic. There is nothing a billionaire can serenade to me to assuage me in metabolizing an apocalypse every structural element of this society is accountable for. Read more via Scalawag: Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter, and the Rodeo at the End of the World.| Scalawag
Steve Muhammad is a decorated martial artist who developed his own form—Ken Wing Tai Ba—by watching the creative movements of his predominantly Black students over his 60-year career. While his talents and military career took him all over, his legacy begins in the Mississippi Delta, with his paw-paw and a peckerwood. Four-year-old Steve Sander's cinnamon-colored […] Read more via Scalawag: Molded in the Delta: The Mississippi Origins of Steve Muhammad.| Scalawag
While some have dismissed the EO’s definitions as biologically incoherent—given that early fetal development renders all genitalia phenotypically similar (and female)—this EO, and the strategic assault it is a core component of, are not clumsily or carelessly written. Read more via Scalawag: Refining Fascism: Fetal Personhood, Transphobia, & AntiBlackness.| Scalawag
The workshop intentionally centered both the work of Louisville’s local African American artists and the city’s historically Black West End neighborhoods. Read more via Scalawag: The Louisville Art Workshop was never just about art. It stood for community..| Scalawag
UNTIL TODAY1 All my poetry has been di- Agnostic: a [swamp of self-Deception] best described As [beautiful and ugly], withal IHave never written the word "Dys-Phoria," have not trekked its pinkPink [wound] about this [land-Scape of myself]. My [mind], a black Gash when called "[man]." A tradition, It is: my grandmother, committedTo [suicide], took her […] Read more via Scalawag: Until Today.| Scalawag
May 2024 We hot-wire our bodies, & tell the genocide it hasn't won. By god, it is wont to do, but by god, it won't! We twist ourselves into crazyeyed shapes of refusal. In these times, dance is a decision to move beyond survival. Dance arms the body to suffer the art of witness. Once, […] Read more via Scalawag: UPON LEARNING THAT PAPI JUICE JOINED THE PALESTINE ACADEMIC & CULTURAL BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL.| Scalawag
the scariest part, is always, in the beginningwhen we meet. & I'm six,which means, I'm four, and a boyslides down, our screen door, maskeda chin so sharp, it's familialwhy wouldn't I take it, as a threat, when he's hidingas Scream– a movie from whichin the beginning, the Black girl dies, publicly& it becomes, the sole […] Read more via Scalawag: All the ghosts got loose again.| Scalawag
after Ajanae Dawkins I expect that it won't be much different from now: Three options laid out on the bed before the concert the reading the date I want to get extra cute for; I call from the store to ask mini skirt or high waist jeans? I almost always want to look like Spring. […] Read more via Scalawag: Burial Clothes.| Scalawag
I don't remember squeezing the trigger, though I never forgot the smell of smoke. The wild dog's eyes ruined between rage and confusion. How I waited too long to shoot, and the beast an eyelash short of my throat when the bullet pierced its chest. I don't remember Adam handing me the misericord but the […] Read more via Scalawag: PATIENCE IN THE BRAMBLE.| Scalawag
