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Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. An inspiration for millions, King had lost the support of many mainstream figures, including several within his own ranks, over his condemnation of war, imperialism, and economic inequality. The Poor Peoples' Campaign marked a new chapter in King's story, as many of his longtime followers split ranks. King arrived in Memphis on March 29 to lend support to striking sanitation workers. The Memphis sanitation strike - documented, along with King's murder, in the wonderful film At the River I Stand - lasted 65 days and involved nearly one thousand of the city's hyper-exploited black workers. On April 3, King gave one of his most famous speeches to an audience gathered at Mason Temple. He was visibly exhausted, collapsing into a chair as the final applause bellowed (an autopsy later revealed that at age 39, King's heart was like that of a 60-year-old). Through the written word, James Baldwin, as vo...

Excerpt from The Condition of Black Life is One of Mourning , by Claudia Rankine. From Rebellious Mournings , edited by Cindy Mustein (2018). Dylann Storm Roof's unmediated hatred of black people; Black Lives Matter; citizens' videotapping the killing of blacks; the Ferguson Police Department leaving Brown's body in the street - all these actions support Mamie Till Mobley's belief that we need to see or hear the truth. We need the truth of how the bodies died to interupt the course of normal life. But if keeping the dead at the forefront of our conciousness is cricual for our body politics, what of the families of the dead? How must it feel to a family member of the deceased to be more important as evidence than as an individual to be buried and laid to rest? Michael Brown's mother, Lesley McSpadden, was kept away from her son's body because it was evidence. She was denied the rights of a mother, a sad fact reminiscent of pre-Civil War times, w...

Francisco Goya was born on this day in 1746. The Spanish artist painted some of his most well-known pieces - collectively know as the Black Paintings of 1819–1823 - on the walls of his house, creating an interior that might have looked something like the image below. In total, fourteen paintings would come to adorn the walls of Goya's house, known as the Quinta del Sordo (Villa of the Deaf). Goya began the first painting in 1820, when he was 73 years old and suffering from numerous maladies. The pieces were not meant for public view: "I painted them for myself", said the artist . When all of the pieces were complete, did the artist take a step back to obsorb his creations as a whole? Imagine what it must have been like to live in this house! Imagine taking dinner next to El Gran Cabrón/Aquelarre (Witches Sabath) or sleeping beneath S aturno devorando a su hijo (Satun Devouring His Sons).

This is the place where the exit door is always locked. There are many sleeping rooms, a large day room, several activity rooms, and a deck with a basketball hoop and several potted plants. You'll be assigned a roommate and given one of the two beds. If deemed necessary, you'll be placed in your own room and watched by a security camera in the corner. The restroom is private, but there are a maximum five minutes for using the toilet and ten minutes for taking a shower. You won't alone in this place; there will be others your age. You'll see yourself in some of them, but only in a few. Two of them tried to die - at least, that's the story passed along in whispers. One will have a horizontal scar across his neck. He's always followed by a cop because, as the rumor goes, he's bound for jail when this is all over. The other will have several small vertical scars on his wrists and forearms. One day, he comes to class with long strips of cardboard taped to...

When asked if there world is getting worse, someone responds, "I don't think things are worse; it's that now, with technology, we have the ability to see what has always existed." This is correct to a certain extent - some things aren't new. The police killing people, for example. Sexual assualt and domestic violence. Racism and various other "-isms." Climate change - and the very real, very scary changes taking place right now - is something new. Everything won't be OK. Michael was haunted by this understanding: " The bad times they will begin, and from that point everything moves very quickly. You know, this social structure can't bear the stress of multiple crises. Opportunistic diseases, anarchy, martial law, the tipping point. And this isn't in some like distant future. You will live to see this." Gabrial Winant understands it too. '“That,” my mom said slowly, “is so heavy.”' Richard Seymour asks us, corre...

"Anyone who cannot cope with life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate ... but with his other hand he can jot down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different and more things than others; after all, he is dead in his lifetime and the real survivor."  - Kafka, letter date October 19, 1921. 

"Actually, I hardly feel constrained to try to make head or tails of this condition of the world. On this planet a great number of civilizations have perished in blood and horror. Naturally, one must wish for the planet that one day it will experience a civilization that has abandoned blood and horror; in fact, I am...inclined to assume that our planet is waiting for this. But it is terribly doubtful whether we can bring such a present to its hundred - or four-hundred-millionth birthday party. And if we don't, the planet will finally punish us, its unthoughtful well-wishers, by presenting us with the Last Judgment"  - Walter Benjamin, letter from Paris dated 1935.  

This is a disgusting world. Can these really be humans that surround me? This is humanity? That is happiness? I feel an impulse to grab them, shake them by their shoulders, and tell them that surely they cannot really be happy; “sir, you know that life is deeper than this, don’t you?” There’s no point denying it – disgust is the only word that comes to mind. Disgust? I sound like Travis Bickle prowling the streets of New York. But if Travis distained the dark and dirty, I am repulsed by the colorful and clean. “I get along quite well with someone only when he is at his lowest point and has neither the desire nor the strength to restore his habitual illusions,” said Emil Cioran. That’s what I distain – illusions. A world of spectacular illusion; a whole society built on spectacle. I like to think the people at work see past the spectacle by virtue of standing outside its reach. I imagine they look at me – just another patron – with distain as well. Af...

The beasts are good, so diplomacy is the end of their meeting with me. She takes our offering and begins a new cultivation of city. Having facilitated new patterns of music and beauty the only conquest left is outside the confines of a lake, And only on the docks can we now sit in its reaching wake. Down to the roots, capillaries are wounded and the thread pulled to dislodge all seeds. Lichen crusty, larvae molted to dust as Brown barters with vibrancy: Good riddance to an onerous age she thinks but the ornery beast instead refuses to sleep.