The best books of 2023 are finally here! Here are some of the titles we could read again and again in fiction, nonfiction, young adult, and middle grade. 🧵
black women deal with this shit all the time. notice how nina let this lady speak without interrupting, but as soon as nina talks, gets interrupted, and tried to defend herself, Cuomo gives the lecture about tone.
We *live* these macroaggressions.
"middle class" is the phrase we use so working class people feel superior that they got a degree. we are much closer to poverty than we'll ever be to any capitalist.
If you’re wondering why the white kid who shot & killed multiple protestors could walk calmly to police immediately after without getting apprehended, here he is minutes earlier going up to their armored trucks to get water they offered him & his armed militia crew.
Cell phone video shows Kenosha Wisconsin police officers in an military vehicle telling armed White militia members they "appreciate them being there" and giving them bottled water; while in the background cops can be heard ordering protestors to disperse.
The White House press office emailed this out about an hour ago.
Proclamation on National Day of Remembrance for Americans Killed by Illegal Aliens, 2020
Hot take: actually addressing the material needs of Black people would upend the entire capitalist system, so we’re given representation and expected to be appeased by hypervisibility instead
I love the ppl responding to my Amazon thread declaring that they worked in even worse jobs with no breaks as some sort of gotcha. Yes that’s capitalism and it all sucks bebe that is the point.
Good morning, here to remind people that defunding the police is actually popular in the city that has grappled with it the most this year across nearly ALL groups polled:
I’ve been trying not to wade into this much bc I hate being reactive to foolishness, but it’s annoying as hell being a Black woman lawyer taught by a number of preeminent Critical Race Theory pioneers and see it butchered like this, from every end of the ideological spectrum.
Still annoyed Wa Po put out an op-ed about the “white spectacle” of Portland with so many people putting their bodies on the line to resist a fascist state. The “white spectacle” is the flurry of exploitative Fortune 500 companies scrambling to post vapid BLM statements for weeks
What gets me about the Biden Breakfast Club interview is that it’s a microcosm of how black voters are silenced.
His
#YouAintBlack
comment came right after Charlamagne says he has more questions. The mere implication that Biden has to work for black votes made him defensive.
Still tryna understand how y’all say “vote or die” in presidential elections because “our whole democracy is at stake,” and then when folks say people are still dying, the excuse is that the president doesn’t have the power.
The gall of white liberals who feel entitled to dictate Black politics is astounding. The struggle is not either/or and considering MLK himself worked with Stokely and empathized with his approach shows how utterly out of his depth this man is
Speaking at John Lewis' funeral, Bill Clinton disses civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture): "There were two or three years there where the movement went a little bit too far towards Stokely. But in the end, John Lewis prevailed."
Demand accountability from the pro-cop ticket all you want, but brace yourself for the reality that they will be most accountable to those who write their checks
Obama wades into the 2020 race, warning of the dangers of listening to “certain left-leaning twitter feeds” or “the activist wing of our party.”
“Even as we push the envelope and we are bold in our vision we also have to be rooted in reality," he said.
I’ll never forget working on a 2009 campaign to end the racist Rockefeller Drug Laws. A legislator told me straight up he couldn’t repeal bc his (white) voters need prison jobs. That clarified that prisons were about sacrificing Blacks/Latinos for money & power, not public safety
Latin America is a textbook case in how the whole “let’s just all have mixed, ambiguous babies to end racism teehee” is absolutely wrong.
It doesn’t end white supremacy. In some ways, it strengthens it.
It's really wild how right wingers control our media landscape. The Ahmaud Arbery trial is happening at the same time as Kyle Rittenhouse's, but bc the right has turned Rittenhouse into a hero and fodder for a cultural war, it's his story that dominates.
I still can’t get over the casual racism of Peter’s marijuana answer. That was a talking point used by conservatives for decades (and Trump’s own administration) so you can conjure up images of violent POCs. For the Millennial Candidate he sure pushes disgustingly archaic views.
Milwaukee is 40% black. That's more than:
- Brooklyn
- The Bronx
- Dallas
- Houston
- Chicago
Many black Milwaukeeans were in unions & had secure jobs w/ benefits that dissipated under neoliberal policy.
Remember that when you try to dictate what the Midwest "wants"
#DNC2020
The 90s saw an influx of Black shows, movies, etc. Sometimes I wonder if that was the concession after the Rodney King uprisings, much like the focus on Black pop culture after the George Floyd protests. A vicious cycle of visibility over policy, while policing remains the same.
With polls emerging about how white people feel about the BLM protests, we cannot ignore the media’s role in this.
News outlets give nonstop coverage of 4 days of broken windows & burnt stores, ignoring the 4 DECADES of distress Black people have had in states like Wisconsin.
Folks really aren’t understanding what’s wrong with Joe Biden. It’s not about the veracity of his specific claims—whether parents should play records or Corn Pop existed.
It’s about framing black people in the most reductive, outdated tropes possible.
Wait til I tell you that communism was so tied to Black civil rights and integration that the rightwing used it as a tactic to argue against universal health care for much of the 20th century, and that’s largely why we don’t have single payer healthcare in the United States
So
@NPR
has a cutsey photo spread of MAGA supporters at the RNC in Milwaukee. I live here. Nothing about their presence and this convention should be normalized.
The last few days have felt dystopian. Cops were shipped from out of state to beef up security. Some of them are
Idiots. All of them. We’ve never had life under a “radical left” in this country. This is life under our existing regime— racialized economic oppression supported by conservatives on both sides of the aisle and liberals too chicken shit to do anything about it.
As Wisconsin grapples with social unrest, some Democrats fear that the looting and rioting and clashes are feeding Trump’s argument that this is what life would be like under the so-called radical left
If Biden wins, its bc Black organizers in Rust Belt cities tipped it over to him in spite of himself, as he centered conservatives & made working-class POC interests an afterthought. In some key states the share of Black turnout DECLINED. It would’ve been even lower without them.
I’ve been studying the U.S. propaganda machine for some time now, especially how it maligns left movements. It’s incredible to see the usual tactics not working. This one feels different.
Big corporations and banks freaking out after a week of folks preserving their health to not die slaving away for them should give you a hint about the power of workers.
It’s wild that whenever I read an article about low black voter turnout, it *never* mentions the census study stating that 40% of black nonvoters either weren’t interested or didn’t like the candidates or their issues in 2016. About 7% of the answers related to voter suppression
The reality of the Obama presidency isn’t that we got a post-racial society.
Rather, we got a hyper-racial one, where conservatives AND centrist Dems use race in the worst ways. Either to fearmonger the WWC or to ignore class & meaningful policy for symbolism
I'm old enough to remember when the DNC was so hungry for Bloomberg cash it changed its rules so he can join debates w/ no public support
They harp on "real Democrats" but welcome a Republican-identified billionaire who ordered police to terrorize black & brown communities
y’all saw a whole Capitol riot with white folks getting police escorts and selfies, and now wanna justify a cop killing a teen girl for a fight. please rethink your life.
Centrists are so used to tepid reforms that their COVID-19 solutions literally make no sense
Hillary’s response to millions of jobless claims is “open the exchanges” like they can afford it
Biden tells a family w/ a $2000 premium corona treatment should be free
They’re useless
Thinking about the 2016 firestorm after Trump just talked about grabbing women by the pussy and Dems now have a nominee that actually might have done that shit and we’re supposed to pretend it’s all ok
girl bye. You didn’t show up in Wisconsin after one of Milwaukee’s biggest urban uprisings and 40% of black nonvoters all over the country said they just weren’t interested or disliked the candidates. Tell the DNC to do better instead of blaming Russia and facebook.
Obama was called a Marxist by high-ranking Democrats and conservatives alike. He won Florida (twice), Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio. You look positively stupid blaming popular policies for your failures.
Spanberger on the Dem caucus call: We lost races we shouldn’t have lost.
Defund police almost cost me my race bc of an attack ad.
Don’t say socialism ever again.
Need to get back to basics.
(Is yelling.)
liberals scold the left for stoking a class war and urge us to be civil with Republicans who ride around in late model luxury vehicles and demand that poor people die
Rittenhouse wasn’t merely protecting property. He’s protecting a social order.
If the Bucks won a championship & a dump truck and used car sales lot caught fire in celebration, would he care? Doubtful. He sees racial justice activism as opposition and his role is to attack it.
Just to be clear—Americans are fucked either way. Neoliberalism is already leading to fascism. Fascism today is leading to more fascism.
No one can say *exactly* what will happen from 2021-2024, so prep for either outcome, build w/ your people, & stop debating on twitter abeg
I talk about Malcolm X a lot, but it’s his bday week & dude was really a prophet. People frame him as the revolutionary foil to King, but they were both revolutionaries.
What’s interesting is HOW they came to differ on the end goal, & geography is rarely discussed (THREAD)
One of the biggest swindles is convincing poor and working class people not to expect anything of their government while rich people stay getting government handouts. This Brett Favre thing is one of many MANY examples.
*for the black people in my timeline* some of us act like every older black person alive today was a civil rights hero who sacrificed for us. many were transactional, stayed home during protests, & thought King was too radical. a few decades passing doesn’t change that
Critical Race Theory is not “diversity & inclusion” programs. It’s not even primarily about mandating an accurate reframing of history (though it can include that).
Its founders are legal scholars who felt it necessary to apply a racial lens to understanding US laws.
Bernie Sanders’ appeal among POCs in the Midwest isn’t a surprise if you actually talk to them.
I did.
Maybe mainstream reporters should do the same.
Full vid here:
a reward would have been someone who didn’t railroad Anita Hill, help appoint Clarence Thomas, and doom us to generations of a justice who compares abortion and birth control to Nazi science but maybe that’s just me
The Democratic establishment trying to kneecap a Sanders nomination is not just about Bernie. It’s about having more Ilhans, AOCs, & Rashidas who won’t just follow their marching orders
They’re literally spiting progressive POCS & the masses of Americans just to maintain control
Critical Race Theory is a form of legal scholarship that responded to a pervasive ideology that the law/legal decisions were colorblind. This should not be controversial in 2021.
Other fields then applied certain CRT tenants to their studies.
Rep. Ilhan Omar asked one thing: where do victims of U.S. & Israel abuses seek justice given the U.S opposes an ICC investigation into violations against Palestinians.
But instead of addressing U.S. foreign policy, we get mass distraction. We still haven't gotten a real answer.
Imagine a school shooting. Some dude shows up to a school armed with an AR-15 & roams the halls. Someone tries to throw a bag at him to stop him, the dude kills him. Students run out to stop the killer. He kills another
The right wants us to believe this killer is now the victim
I asked Pete Buttigieg about criticism from AOC & Sanders of his college affordability plan. Buttigieg told me he was "concerned about a narrative emerging, that ignores the fact that not everybody goes to college." He argues, it's not the same as K-12 ed or Social Security.
Who decided seeing and hearing Black and marginalized people was the wave. This ain’t the 6th Sense cancel this damn student loan debt and gives folks free healthcare and go
If you wonder how you would have responded to the narratives, politicians, and environment that led to the 1994 Crime Bill, here’s your chance.
We’re living in it.
Check out the racial coding here too. Amazon says they targeted the young black man who led the warehouse walkout bc he is “not smart or articulate.”
Yet he expressed the issues very well on national news.
Many warehouse workers are POCs. This is a class AND race fight.
If you‘re uncomfortable with abolition bc you’re afraid of killers not going to prison, just realize it already exists—look at all the cops who get away with it.
We have a fascistic, racist, liar occupying the White House. But don’t bother arguing with me or anyone else on this app about why they have to vote for Biden’s antiblackness. Your racist apologia doesn’t make you the adult in the room +
I think the generational divide in this primary is more so an information divide. I don’t think it’s mostly malice or apathy towards younger generations. Let me explain.
Weird reading these comments and seeing people frame this is a failure of one senator and not the 77 who prioritize optics over giving people necessary aid in an unprecedented pandemic. And by weird I mean totally expected
.
@BernieSanders
amendment to cut Pentagon budget (current proposal $705.4 billion) by 10% and reallocate funds to social programs such as education and health care fails 23-77.
So no it’s not taught in grade school & it shouldn’t be!
No one is teaching 2nd graders organic chemistry or calculus.
Think of this similarly & respect Black scholarship.
And if you’re a mainstream media outlet trying to explain CRT without consulting or interviewing any of the current living, breathing scholars— from Kendall Thomas to Patricia Williams to Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, what are you really doing?
We "cannot be free in America or anywhere else where there is capitalism and imperialism."
Civil rights legend Ella Baker speaks at a Puerto Rico solidarity rally in 1974.
an unintended benefit of many Sanders supporters being very online: the right will have a massive social media disinformation campaign if he’s the nominee
but the bots really don’t stand a chance against actual people willing to fight for their candidate online & elsewhere
.
@BernieSanders
amendment to cut Pentagon budget (current proposal $705.4 billion) by 10% and reallocate funds to social programs such as education and health care fails 23-77.
Black leftists have called out Biden’s mess for months & instead he’s been enabled by black misleadership
The result is that Charlamagne interview—full of yelling, misleading, if not false, statements & a general sense of entitlement. Re-upping this piece I wrote a year ago