5 Things Friday
How to exist in a constant state of emergency. Here are your antiracism action steps for May 27.
An illustration depicting plantations burning in 1791, during the Haitian Revolution from NYT’s “The Ransom.”
Let me give you a little behind the scenes of how this newsletter is put together...throughout the week I drop stories and actions I think I would like to include into a draft email to myself. Over the past two weeks that draft email has filled up with items like this: watch Jia Li's short film, “Invisible Seams,” highlighting the personal stories of eight Asian seamstresses, cutters and patternmakers from New York’s garment district; tune in to People Over Plastic’s latest podcast episode ‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind’ about the astonishing amount of waste being illegally dumped in low-income communities of color in Oakland; and, what was supposed to get top billing today: remember and reflect on the two-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd.
But, for three weeks in a row, unspeakable tragedies have left us heartbroken and grasping for words and actions to support victims, their families and communities. It's like triage in an emergency room — making split-second assessments of patients or casualties in order to determine the urgency of their need for treatment and the action required. We’ve determined that while we definitely need act immediately in response to emergency, we also must continue to support and amplify the rest of it — the Black businesses, the groundbreaking artists, the buried history.
Which is why today you get urgent gun control actions alongside a celebratory new wine brand, and emergency support for Buffalo alongside a long read on Haiti's slave rebellion and the ransom they ultimately paid fro their freedom. And of course some good, old-fashion DEFUND THE POLICE because the evidence keeps pouring in.
Here are your 5 things.
GO TO THIS. Take to the Golden Gate Bridge on Saturday, June 4, 2022 for a Gun Violence Awareness Walk. Wear orange and meet at the Golden Gate Bridge SF Visitor Plaza at 11:30 am and join AAACC Board member, Mattie Scott,California president of Brady United Against Gun Violence to show up and show out against gun violence. "A problem with so many root causes, requires us to address it from all angles," says Scott, whose group emphasizes education, litigation and legislation to ensure that every community is safe, not only from mass shootings, but also from the daily toll of gun homicide, domestic violence, suicide, unintentional shootings, and police violence that plagues so many communities. Then follow these action steps from Brady!
ATTEND THIS. Last week SFPD murdered. Again. This time they killed two people: Michael MacFhionghain and Rafael Mendoza — both the alleged assailant and victim of a knife assault. The news initially buried this story, and the cops claimed that they did not shoot both individuals. But reporting has since uncovered that the SFPD did in fact kill both the assailant and the victim, neither of whom had a gun. Abolition is the only answer to racist, violent policing. Call in to make public comments TODAY during the town hall at 3pm on Friday, 5/27. The town hall will be streamed here. They’ll announce a call in number for public comments during the town hall.
DONATE HERE. Support Uvalde families with a financial contribution here. And understand the role the police played in the way this tragedy played out. Continue to support Buffalo with a financial contribution to grassroots and community-based groups: Black Love Resists in the Rust, VOICE Buffalo, African Heritage Food Cooperative, Open Buffalo.
BUY THIS. I think we could all use a drink, huh? Tomorrow Mela, a brand new Black, female-owned wine brand, officially launches! Their pre-sale sold out in about 90 seconds, so set your alarms for 10 am, Saturday May 28 and score yourself a bottle or two.
READ THIS. Over the weekend, The New York Times published a project a year in the making that tried to answer a simple question: How much better off might Haiti be today if foreign powers had not kept draining its wealth for generations after Haitians threw off the yoke of slavery? The project, “The Ransom,” tells the story of the first people in the modern world to free themselves from slavery and create their own nation. They paid for that freedom first in blood. And then they were forced to pay for it again — in cash. Haiti became the world’s only country where the descendants of enslaved people paid reparations to the descendants of their masters, and for generations. Read it here.