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Some of Puerto Rico's biggest stars rallied a crowd of many thousands in San Juan on Wednesday, calling on the island's governor, Ricardo Rosselló, to resign. It was the fifth day in a row of protests in the U.S. territory, following a leak of hundreds of pages of misogynistic and homophobic texts between the governor and his main advisers.

During the day, trap artist Bad Bunny and singer Ricky Martin were among the huge crowd that marched to the governor's mansion.

Tensions ratcheted up in the evening as protesters burst through a barricade at the governor's mansionand security forces fired tear gas at the crowd, causing many to flee into surrounding streets. A livestream from Puerto Rican news site El Nuevo Día showed chaotic scenes of demonstrators confronting riot police a few minutes after midnight local time.

By early hours Thursday, the old city of San Juan resembled a war zone, with police chasing protesters through the streets while firing rubber bullets, gas canisters and what appeared to be flash bombs.

Earlier, demonstrators wearing gas masks and hard hats set a pile of garbage on fire in a plaza, and police quickly fired tear gas at them. A street was shown littered with debris and broken glass.

As El Nuevo Día reported, police spokesperson Axel Valencia said five people were arrested and two people were reported injured.

He said several senior police officers were in the area and ordered the protesters to stand down.

"They were given verbal commands to cease and desist what they were doing. They were throwing rocks, quarter sticks of dynamite. They were throwing many things," Valencia said, according to the news site. "You all saw how close they got to the fences of the perimeter, and well, there came a moment when our personnel had to use tear gases."

The protests have been gaining momentum every day with high-profile support, including from Lin-Manuel Miranda, who led a demonstration in New York calling on Rosselló to step down.

Rosselló has apologized for the texts but has insisted that he intends to remain in office.

In the private chat messages published on Saturday by Puerto Rico's Center for Investigative Journalism, the governor and his inner circle use misogynistic language to talk about women. They use homophobic language to talk about journalists and Ricky Martin. They engage in fat-shaming. They talk about manipulating the media and public opinion polls. And they make jokes about shooting the mayor of San Juan.

The governor's chief financial officers made a joke about the dead bodies that piled up in a government facility before and after Hurricane Maria in 2017. That comment has been particularly galling for many Puerto Ricans still recovering from the deadly storm nearly two years later.

The island is suffering from far more problems than the hurricane. It's been mired in an economic recession for more than a decade, including a debt crisis that has resulted in slashing public services and the imposition of a federal oversight board that has taken control of Puerto Rico's finances. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced leave the island, a trend that accelerated after the hurricane. For many residents, the chats have become a representation in black and white of the indifference they feel their leaders have for their daily struggles.

Protesters say they expect demonstrations to get bigger should the governor continue clinging to office.

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Streets A 'War Zone' As Protesters Call For Puerto Rico's Governor To Resign

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Some of Puerto Rico's biggest stars rallied a crowd of many thousands in San Juan on Wednesday, calling on the island's governor, Ricardo Rosselló, to resign. It was the fifth day in a row of protests in the U.S. territory, following a leak of hundreds of pages of misogynistic and homophobic texts between the governor and his main advisers.

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Michaela A. Harrison is a recently-returned Washington, D.C. native whose career is rooted in relaying the healing, transformational power of music through song. She has performed nationally and internationally as a soloist and with various bands and musical collectives. As a resident of New Orleans for over 17 years, Michaela established an enthusiastic following at local venues such as Café Istanbul, Second Vine Wine, Ashé Cultural Arts Center and Three Keys at the Ace Hotel. She is as comfortable with a full band, a choir or an orchestra as she is with in a duo, and works/has worked regularly with New Orleans favorites Joy Clark, Ian Villafana, and Alexey Marti, the late, great jazz guitarist Todd Duke, Dorise Blackmon and Tanya Huang (as Mother Tingue), and, when in Brazil, with guitar virtuoso Márcio Pereira, bassist Alexandre Vieira and drummer Ivan Torres (Os Brothers).

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Michaela A. Harrison is a recently-returned Washington, D.C. native whose career is rooted in relaying the healing, transformational power of music through song. She has performed nationally and internationally as a soloist and with various bands and musical collectives.

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Originally named Miltona Mirkin Cade at birth, Toni Cade Bambara was a civil rights activist, writer, teacher, and filmmaker. She was born in 1939 in Harlem, New York. At the age of six, she changed her name to Toni, and in 1970 she added the surname Bambara after finding it among her great-grandmother's belongings.

Bambara earned her BA in theater arts/ English at Queens College in 1959, the same year she published "Sweet Town," her first short story. She was a social investigator from 1959 to 1961, and then worked in the psychiatry department of New York City's Metropolitan Hospital. During that time she studied in Florence as well as Paris, and earned an MA degree from City College of New York in 1964. In 1965, she was hired to teach English at the City University of New York's fledgling SEEK program for economically-disadvantaged students. While there, she published short stories and became interested in film production. From 1969 to 1974 she was an associate professor of English at Livingston College.

Bambara's influence for her writings came from the streets of New York, where she experienced the teachings of Garveyites, Muslims, Pan-Africanists and Communists against the backdrop and the culture of jazz music. Along with her own work, Bambara edited a collection of short stories, poems and articles titled The Black Women (1970) and Tales and Stories for Black Folks (1971). During that time she also wrote her first screenplay, "Zora," which was produced by WGBH in Boston. A year later she published her own collection of short stories in Gorilla, My Love, edited by Toni Morrison and featuring fifteen stories on black women's relationships and self-love.

In the early 1970s, she risked travel to Communist Cuba and Viet Nam to research women, and then took a series of academic appointments at a number of universities. She published another collection of her short stories in 1977, The Sea Birds are Still Alive. In 1980, Bambara published her first novel, The Salt Eaters, which earned the American Book Award. The following year she won the Langston Hughes Society Award, another prestigious writing honor. As the decade progressed, Bambara concentrated more on script writing and television production, often with political and social messages.

Toni Cade Bambara died from colon cancer in 1995. The following year Toni Morrison posthumously published Bambara's Deep Sightings and Rescue Mission (1996).

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Originally named Miltona Mirkin Cade at birth, Toni Cade Bambara was a civil rights activist, writer, teacher, and filmmaker. She was born in 1939 in Harlem, New York. At the age of six, she changed her name to Toni, and in 1970 she added the ...

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Credit: Patrick Pomeroy

Atlantic grey seals, the largest of the two seal species found around British, northern European and North American and Canadian shores, make a huge maternal sacrifice for their pups, new research has revealed.

A collaboration of Scottish scientists, led by the University of Glasgow along with St Andrews and Strathclyde universities, has discovered new aspects of the fast that seal mothers go through for around 20 days while nursing their pups.

"The mothers transfer huge amounts of their own body reserves, including about one-third of their own bodyweight, without feeding themselves, to nourish their rapidly growing pups that double their weights. The mothers then leave the pups onshore and go to sea, while the pups remain on land for another month or so before they too go to sea," explained Malcolm Kennedy, professor of natural history at the University of Glasgow.

Professor Kennedy, who led the collaborative inquiry with the Sea Mammal Research Unit in St Andrews and the University of Strathclyde, added, "The pups have to be very well nourished in order to survive their own long fast after their mother leaves them to survive on their own. We found new evidence demonstrating the extent to which mothers sacrifice themselves to provide their pups with essential nutrients before they leave. This is significant because it shows that during the remarkably short lactations of grey seals, pups acquire substantial quantities of certain crucial nutrients to the extent that the mothers may deplete and endanger themselves. What makes mother seals stop feeding their pups and leave is not known, so what we have found could contribute to an answer."

Credit: Patrick Pomeroy

Mothers in most species of true seal enter a period of anorexia but must preserve sufficient reserves, especially blubber, to fuel hunting and keep themselves warm in cold northern seas. Meanwhile, pups, still on land, undergo a period of development after weaning, sometimes for up to forty days, during which they have no maternal care or nutrition.

The researchers examined the serum metabolomes (the host of small organic molecules involved in physiology and biochemistry) of five mother and pup pairs of grey seals from birth to weaning on the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth, Scotland. Changes with time were particularly evident in pups, with indications of strain in the fat and energy metabolisms of both. Crucially, pups accumulate certain compounds to levels that are dramatically greater than in their mothers. These include compounds that neither pups nor mothers can synthesise themselves, so must come from the mothers' diets before they come to land to give birth.

Fasting mothers therefore appear to mediate stockpiling of critical metabolites such as amino acids and vitamins in their pups through milk so that the pups can survive and mature enough for when they go to sea. This may mean that the mothers deplete themselves, which may eventually prompt them to cease lactation and return to sea to feed and replenish so that they can survive to breed again.

The findings have been published in a paper entitled "Stockpiling by pups and self-sacrifice by their fasting mothers observed in birth to weaning serum metabolomes of Atlantic grey seals" in Scientific Reports.

More information: David G. Watson et al. Stockpiling by pups and self-sacrifice by their fasting mothers observed in birth to weaning serum metabolomes of Atlantic grey seals, Scientific Reports (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-64488-1

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Research reveals the extent of grey seals' maternal sacrifice

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Atlantic grey seals, the largest of the two seal species found around British, northern European and North American and Canadian shores, make a huge maternal sacrifice for their pups, new research has revealed.

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"I love you as you change. I love you slowly moving through. I love the tusks I cannot see. I love the way you love your love for your own reasons. Sometimes the way you love perfectly on time and very slow is fast enough. So keep on breathing"(Gumbs, Chapter 17).

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When you feel the need to speed up, slow down | Kimi Werner | TEDxMaui

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On his second voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus and his crew encountered many marine inhabitants of the Caribbean including " sea wolves"-known today as Caribbean monk seals (Monachus tropicalis). To European sailors and adventurers, these exotic animals were both a source of wonder...and of pelts and food.

You won't see monk seals in warm Caribbean waters today, though. Over-hunting decimated local populations, now classified as extinct. The species hasn't been seen since 1952, but two of its relatives-the Hawaiian monk seal (Monachus schauinslandi) and the Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus)-are still around. Scientists have long held questions about exactly how closely related the three species are.

A study published today in Zookeys fills in some of the blanks in the Caribbean monk seal's evolutionary history. Until now, they've been lumped together in the same Monachus genus as the other two. However, based on new morphological and genetic evidence, the scientists suggest thatHawaiian and Caribbean monk seals are so different from their Mediterranean brethren that they belong in a new genus, which theydubbed Neomonachus.

Scientists are constantly searching for undiscovered organisms, but it's pretty rare to name a new genus. "In seals, sea lions and walruses that are just so well studied, this is just something that doesn't really happen," says Kris Helgen, a zoologist at the National Museum of Natural History and a co-author on the study. In fact this is the first time anyone has found a new seal, walrus, or sea lion genus in 140 years.

Evidence has suggested that Hawaiian monk seals were very distantly related to the Mediterranean species. They live on opposite sides of the globe, so that makes sense. "What's really been a missing piece of the puzzle is where the Caribbean monk seal fits in with them," says Helgen.

To solve this puzzle, Helgen and his colleagues delved into the museum's historical collections of monk seal specimens. Once Caribbean monk seals numbered 233,000 to 338,000 across the Caribbean Sea, but today even museum specimens are rare.

However, the Smithsonian has long been home to unprecedented collections of plant, animal and fossil specimens, including a large selection of monk seals that were collected during biological expeditions at the turn of the century and even animals that lived out their lives at the National Zoo.

Armed with thisrich, well-documented collection, the team examined the features of monk seal skeletons from each species. The Hawaiian and Caribbean monk seals had some key differences: narrower skulls, less pronounced brow lines, and a longer snout, among other features, which set them apart from their Mediterranean kin.

They extracted DNA from skin samples-some collected from Caribbean seals deceased in the field and others from former residents of the National Zoo. Comparing the genetic sequences, they zeroed in on a gene found in mitochondria, the energy factories found in every cell. Mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to child and provides a way for researchers to trace changes in a lineage. This particular gene has been extensively studied, and given what they know about how the genetic sequence evolved over millennia, scientists can estimate when species diverged.

According to their results, the Hawaiian and Caribbean species are more closely related to each other than they are to the Mediterranean species. In other words, the former two are separated sisters, and the latter is their distant cousin. In fact, the Hawaiian and Caribbean species are so similar and as a group so distinct from the Mediterranean monk seals that the scientists determined a new genus was needed.

They found that the two New World species split off from their Old World brethren around 6.3 million years ago. The divergence of these two monk seal groups is older than any other seal genus recognized by taxonomists.

DNA analysis shows that the split between the Caribbean and Hawaiian monk seals happened later, around 3 to 4 million years ago. Geologic evidence synchs with this date: As the Atlantic ocean widened, tectonic plate shifts were slowly pushing North and South America closer and closer together. Monk seals could still swim freely from Atlantic to Pacific across an ancient body of water in between called Central American Seaway. But by 3 to 4 million years ago, the Isthmus of Panama finally closed, splitting Atlantic from Pacific and marooning the two seal species on either side of the Americas. When the continents joined, the species split genetically, as well.

Changing the classification of Monachus tropicalis and Monachus schauinslandi to Neom onachus tropicalis and Neomonachus schauinslandi may seem semantic and onlyinteresting for evolutionary biology, so what's the upshot for monk seals still around today? The IUCN classifies both the Hawaiian and Mediterranean species as critically endangered. Losing the Hawaiian monk seal in particular means losing an entire genus, so ironing out the family tree makes the case for conservation even more compelling (as if adorable images of Hawaiian monk seals weren't compelling enough).

To that end, the researchers want to know more about how and why the Caribbean monk seal went extinct. Hunting was clearly an issue, but based on skin samples they have a hunch that a disease may have also played a part. Disease "can wipe out seal populations all over the world, and we know that there are disease concerns for the living monk seals," says Helgen.

Understanding the demise of Caribbean monk seals, then, may allow us to better protect the two existing monk seal species from the same fate.

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For the First Time in More Than 100 Years, Scientists Discover New Seal Genus

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On his second voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus and his crew encountered many marine inhabitants of the Caribbean including " sea wolves"-known today as Caribbean monk seals (Monachus tropicalis ). To European sailors and adventurers, these exotic animals were both a source of wonder...and of pelts and food.

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“I wish we could be more like striped dolphins, knowing that the patterns of our own bodies are maps to yours, not to be avoided, but to be surrendered, like flow" (Gumbs, Chapter 14).

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Nearly 250 years ago, the economist and philosopher Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, in which he described the birth of a new form of human activity: industrial capitalism. It would lead to the accumulation of wealth beyond anything that he and his contemporaries could have imagined.

Capitalism has fuelled the industrial, technological and green revolutions, reshaped the natural world and transformed the role of the state in relation to society. It has lifted innumerable people out of poverty over the last two centuries, significantly increased standards of living, and resulted in innovations that have radically improved human well-being, as well as making it possible to go to the Moon and read this article on the internet.

However, the story is not universally positive. In recent years, capitalism's shortcomings have become ever-more apparent. Prioritising short-term profits for individuals has sometimes meant that the long-term well-being of society and the environment has lost out - especially as the world has faced the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change. And as political unrest and polarisation around the world have shown, there are growing signs of discontent with the status quo. In one 2020 survey by the marketing and public relations firm Edelman, 57% of people worldwide said that "capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world".

Indeed, if you judge by measures such as inequality and environmental damage, "the performance of Western capitalism in recent decades has been deeply problematic", the economists Michael Jacobs and Mariana Mazzucato wrote recently in the book Rethinking Capitalism.

However, that does not mean there are no solutions. "Western capitalism is not irretrievably bound to fail; but it does need to be rethought," argue Jacobs and Mazzucato.

So, will capitalism as we know it continue in its current form - or might it have another future ahead?
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Capitalism has spawned thousands of books and millions of words, and so it would be impossible to explore all its facets. That said, we can start to understand where capitalism could be headed in the future by exploring where it began. This tells us that capitalism hasn't always worked the way it does today - particularly in the West.

Between the 9th and 15th Centuries, autocratic monarchies and ecclesiastical hierarchies dominated Western society. These systems began to fall away as people increasingly asserted their right to individual liberty. This push for a greater focus on the individual favoured capitalism as an economic system because of the flexibility it allowed for private property rights, personal choice, entrepreneurship and innovation. It also favoured democracy as a governing system for its focus on individual political freedom.

In 1851, London hosted the "Great Exhibition Of The Works Of Industry Of All Nations" (Credit: Getty Images)

The shift toward greater individual liberty changed the social contract. Previously, many resources were provided by those in power (land, food and protection) in exchange for significant contributions from citizens (for instance, from slave labour to hard labour with little pay, high taxes and unquestioning loyalty). With capitalism, people expected less from governing authorities, in exchange for greater civil liberties, including individual, political and economic freedom.

But capitalism would evolve significantly over the following centuries - and particularly so during the second half of the 20th Century. After World War Two, the Mont Pelerin Society, an economic policy think tank, was founded with the goal of addressing the challenges confronting the West. Its specific focus was on defending the political values of an open society, rule of law, freedom of expression and free market economic policies - central tenents of classical liberalism.

Its ideas eventually gave rise to "supply-side economics". This was the belief that lower taxes and minimal regulation of the free market would lead to the most economic growth - and, therefore, better lives for all. In the 1980s, coupled with the emergence of political neoliberalism, supply-side economics became a priority for the US and many European governments.

This newer strain of capitalism has led to increased economic growth worldwide, while lifting a substantive number of people out of absolute poverty. But at the same time, critics argue that its tenets of lowering taxes and deregulating business has done little to support political investment in public services, such as crumbling public infrastructure, improving education and mitigating health risks.

Perhaps most significantly, in many developed nations late-20th Century capitalism has contributed to a significant gap between the wealth of the richest and poorest people, as measured by the Gini Index. And in some countries, that gap is growing ever-wider. It's particularly stark in the US, where the poorest individuals have seen no real income growth since 1980, while the ultra-rich at the top have seen their income grow by around 6% per year. The richest billionaires in the world are almost all based in the US, and have amassed staggering fortunes, while at the same time the median US household income has risen only modestly since the turn of the century.

If the gap grows between rich and poor, then instability can follow (Credit: Jay Directo/Getty Images)

The inequality gap may matter more than some politicians and corporate leaders would like to believe. Capitalism may have lifted millions of people around the world out of absolute poverty, but inequality can be corrosive within a society, says Denise Stanley, a professor of economics at California State University-Fullerton. "Absolute poverty is basically folks are able to get... $4 per day per person. It's a threshold measure," she explains, but relative poverty can unbalance a society over the long-term. Even if the economy is growing, income inequality and stagnant wages can make people feel less secure as their relative status in the economy diminishes. Behavioural economists have shown that "our status compared to other people, our happiness, is derived more by relative measures and distribution then by absolute measures. If that's true then capitalism has a problem," says Stanley.

As a result of rising inequality, "people have less trust in institutions and experience a sense of injustice", according to the Edelman report. But the impact on people's lives may go deeper. Capitalism in its current form is destroying the lives of many working-class people, argue the economists Anne Case and Sir Angus Deaton in their book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. Over "the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year", they write.

The 2007-2008 financial crisis exacerbated these problems. The crisis was brought on by excessive deregulation, and hit the working class in developed nations particularly hard. The subsequent bailouts of big banks led to resentment and "helped fuel the rise of the... polarised politics we've seen over the last decade", according to Richard Cordray, the first director of the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and author of Watchdog: How Protecting Consumers Can Save Our Families, Our Economy, and Our Democracy.

Liberal democracies may now be at an inflection point, where citizens contest today's capitalist norms with greater political intensity worldwide.

J Patrice McSherry, a professor of political science at Long Island University in New York, has observed this change in Chile, for instance. "Social mobilisation began with a rise in subway fares in October 2019, sparking broad-based protests that convoked more than one million people in demonstrations," she says. "The social movement has exposed the deep sources of discontent in Chile: entrenched and growing inequality, the ever-rising cost of living, and extreme privatisation in one of the world's most neoliberal states."

Those grievances can be traced back to the late 20th Century, when Chile's authoritarian government introduced constitutional reforms that "institutionalised the economic and political domination of the dictatorship and enshrined a neoliberal framework that erased the role of the state in social and economic areas. It restricted political participation, gave the [political] right disproportionate power, and installed a tutelary role for the armed forces," writes McSherry in an article for the North American Congress on Latin America, a non-profit organisation which tracks trends in the region.

Women wearing a yellow vest (gilet jaune) stage a protest in France (Credit: Jean-Francois Monier/Getty Images)

Similarly, the Yellow Vest movement that started in France in 2018 was initially about the increased cost of fuel for commuters, but quickly broadened to include grievances similar to those in Chile, the cost of living, growing inequality, and a demand for government to stop ignoring the needs of ordinary citizens.

And in the US, the political movement which spawned Trumpism is arguably fuelled by economic inequality just as much as ideology. Among voters who have lost out due to globalisation, the Trump administration won widespread political support for its more closed approaches to global trade, including withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and retaliatory tariffs on Chinese, Indian, Brazilian and Argentinian goods and services imported into the US. Even the US's allies were targeted by this agenda, including Europe, Canada, and Mexico.

While one response to the downsides of capitalism in its current form is for nations to take a defensive posture, seeking to protect themselves by minimising external ties, protectionism "is short-sighted, particularly when it comes to trade," according to Anahita Thoms, head of Baker McKenzie's International Trade Practice in Germany and Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. "While it may bring some temporary benefits, in the long-term it endangers the global economy as a whole and threatens to undo decades of economic progress. It is crucial to maintain investment-friendly, open markets," says Thoms.

A central challenge for governments in the 21st Century will be to work out how to balance these long-term benefits of global trade with the short-term harms that globalisation can bring to local communities affected by low wages or unemployment. Economies cannot become completely divorced from the demands of democratic majorities who seek jobs, affordable housing, education, healthcare and a clean environment. As the Chilean, Yellow Vest and Trumpist movements show, many people are asking for change to the existing system so that it accounts for these needs, rather than only enriching private interests.

In sum, it may be time to reconsider the social contract for capitalism, so that it becomes more inclusive of a broader set of interests beyond individual rights and liberties. This is not impossible. Capitalism has evolved before, and if it is to continue into the longer-term future, it can evolve again.
The future of capitalism
In recent years, various ideas and proposals have emerged that aim to rewrite capitalism's social contract. What they have in common is the idea that businesses need more varied measures of success than simply profit and growth. In business, there's " conscious capitalism", inspired by the practices of so-called "ethical" brands. In policy, there's " inclusive capitalism", advocated by both the Bank of England and The Vatican, which advocates harnessing "capitalism for good". And in sustainability, there's the idea of " doughnut economics", a theory proposed by economist and author Kate Raworth, which suggests that it's possible to thrive economically as a society while also staying within social and planetary boundaries.

Then there's the " Five Capitals" model articulated by Jonathan Porritt, the author of Capitalism As If The World Matters. Porritt calls for the integration of five pillars of human capital - natural, human, social, manufactured, and financial capital - into existing economic models.

Capitalism's in-built incentives may need to expand to embrace sustainability (Credit: David Young/Getty Images)

One tangible example of where companies are beginning to embrace the Five Capitals is the B-Corporation movement. Certified companies sign up to a legal obligation to consider "the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment". Their ranks now include major corporations such as Danone, Patagonia, and Ben & Jerry's (which is owned by Unilever).

This approach has become increasingly mainstream, reflected in a 2019 statement released by over 180 corporate CEOs redefining " the purpose of a corporation". For the first time, CEOs representing Wal-Mart, Apple, JP Morgan Chase, Pepsi, and others acknowledged that they must redefine the role of business in relation to society and the environment.

Their statement proposes that companies must do more than deliver profits to their shareholders. In addition, they must invest in their employees and contribute to the improvement of the human, natural and social elements of capital that Porritt refers to in his model, rather than the sole focus on financial capital.

In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance on the future of capitalism, the executive chairman of Best Buy, Hubert Joly, said that "what has happened is that for 30 years, from the 1980s to 10 years ago, we've had this singular focus on profits that has been excessive and has caused a lot of these issues. We need to unwind a bit of these 30 years. If we have a refoundation of business, it can be a refoundation of capitalism as well... I think this can be done, this has to be done."
A new direction
More than three decades ago, the United Nations Brundtland Commission wrote in " Our Common Future" that there was ample evidence that social and environmental impacts are relevant and need to be incorporated into development models. It is now obvious that these issues must also be considered within the social contract underpinning capitalism, so that it is more inclusive, holistic and integrated with basic human values.

Ultimately, it is worth remembering that citizens in a capitalist, liberal democracy are not powerless. Collectively, they can support companies aligned with their beliefs, and continuously demand new laws and policies which transform the competitive landscape of corporations so that they might improve their practices.

When Adam Smith was observing nascent industrial capitalism in 1776, he could not foresee just how much it would transform our societies today. So it follows that we might be similarly blind to what capitalism could look like in another two centuries. However, that does not mean we should not ask how it might evolve into something better in the nearer term. The future of capitalism and our planet depend on it.
* Matthew Wilburn King-- Join 900,000+ Future fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter or Instagram. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Capital, and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday. is an international consultant and conservationist based in Boulder, Colorado and the president and chairman of the Common Foundation. Connect with him on Facebook or LinkedIn.

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Why the next stage of capitalism is coming

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It's done so much for human well-being, but it's far from perfect. Will capitalism as we know it evolve into something new?

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Story highlights

Coming of age in the early '90s, Marcia Smith says, her mother made sure she would grow up to be a proud black woman, instilling in her from a young age what it means to love yourself, culture and heritage.

As a little girl, she remembers, it would take her mom an eternity to get out the door in the morning. "Oh, Mommy, it's taking you so long to get ready," Smith lamented. Her mother would quip back, "It's not easy being a beautiful black woman. When you are a black woman the world needs to recognize your presence so you step out with your best foot forward because the spotlight is always on you."

Growing up, Smith proudly donned apparel that displayed slogans like "educated queen," "back to the motherland" or "black power" mixed in with Pan-African colors.

But by the time Smith, 29, graduated from Howard University in 2008, she saw there was a need to breathe life back into this fashion movement.

Smith began to wonder, "Where is the love of self? Now, I don't want to wear a dashiki all the time but I do want to have a shirt that encompasses self-empowerment."

"I saw there was a lack of self-identity and a lack of self-confidence amongst the black community, and what I wanted to do when I started to come out with my brand is not necessarily bridge the gap but mend the wound."

HauteGreeksCouture is Smith's Instagram clothing boutique. She ships thousands of orders per week, she said, to clients ranging from recent high school graduates to broadcaster Gayle King. Her apparel boasts messages such as: "Black Women Are Magic," "Black by Popular Demand," and even lyrics from Beyoncé's new song "Formation."

" Formation," a tribute to Beyoncé's black heritage and the beauty of the black woman, made waves when it was released two weeks ago, with some calling the song and video's message racist or anti-police.

By now, anyone plugged into social media has seen the terms #blackgirlmagic, #beingablackgirlislist or #melaninonfleek. These hashtags are accompanied by a range of photos, from black women rocking natural tresses to Beyoncé's backup dancers at Super Bowl 50 or simply a photo of a small child basking in the sun's rays.

But #blackgirlmagic and similar phrases have become more than just a hashtag on social media or a caption for tweets during Black History Month.

"The concept is important because it names and identifies the ways that black women make space for themselves, celebrate themselves, and connect to each other," said Asia Leeds, an assistant professor at Spelman College in Atlanta. "I think that the various hashtags allow us to curate our magic and facilitate new connections and discoveries."

There has even been backlash about the weight that #blackgirlmagic carries. A writer at Elle.com explained why she's not on board with the movement. "Black girls aren't magical. We're human," she wrote.

Tianna Sankey, 15, explained what the hashtags mean to her and why they're necessary.

The high-schooler created blkgirls, a page on Instagram dedicated to showing beauty and excellence among black women across the world. She curates this content by using #blackgirlmagic, #melaninonfleek and #blackgirlsmatter. Sankey created the page last year and has already gained over 60,000 followers.

"My entire motive was simply to highlight the beauty of the black woman and promote self-love," said Sankey, who lived in Jamaica until she was 11 and moved to the United States four years ago with her family.

"This type of space was needed because black girls and women need to know it's not OK for those 'black jokes' being made and it's not OK to feel like you're any less than anyone else because of the color of your skin."

Sankey said she gets daily messages from women and young girls telling her that her page has changed how they feel about themselves.

Phrases like #beingablackgirlislit #blackgirlmagic #melaninpopping are being used by black women among each other to affirm their beauty and intellectual prowess, unapologetically celebrating every inch of themselves and each other. Spelman professor Michelle Hite said it's a natural outgrowth of the way black women support each other offline.

Hite, who teaches English studies, said the phrases have become a way for black women to say, "I see you [black woman] and I see you excelling and being successful in a context that is hostile to your very presence there, which makes it all the more glorious." Hite admitted it has been her affirming relationships with black women that have made her "recovery" possible.

Many black women have to recover from the traumas they may experience simply being a black woman in today's society, according to Hite.

Hite recalled that during a group discussion, a student told her about attending a sleepover with white friends. The student came out of the bathroom wearing a headscarf, which was used to protect her hair at night. She said the girls at the sleepover told the student she looked like Aunt Jemima. Hite said the student couldn't muster a response. On an overnight college visit, the student wore the same headscarf and a black student told her she looked like an African princess.

"It was the same scene but the outcome enabled her to recuperate her sense of dignity and a sense of humanity that was no longer humiliated by something that she was doing everyday but all of a sudden in this context with these white girls it became shameful," Hite said.

"It's black women who have acknowledged that 'I've done enough.' Black women, who have always been the ones who have given me permission to love myself and like myself."

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'Black girl magic' is more than a hashtag; it's a movement | CNN

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Coming of age in the early '90s, Marcia Smith says, her mother made sure she would grow up to be a proud black woman, instilling in her from a young age what it means to love yourself, culture and heritage.

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Good boundaries free you | Sarri Gilman | TEDxSnoIsleLibraries

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There have been efforts in place to protect the New Zealand Sea Lion since 1890. Even so the numbers of them remaining is still very low. A count in the mid 1990’s showed that there were about 15,000 of them. Another count in 2000 though showed that there were only about 13,000 of them

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New Zealand Sea Lion - Phocarctos hookeri

Description

Also known as the Hooker's Sea Lion, the New Zealand Sea Lion is one of the largest animals found in New Zealand. Males are from 990 pounds with females smaller at about 370 pounds. Males are about 11.5 feet long and the females are about 7 feet long.

Distribution

You will only find the New Zealand Sea Lion around this area. They are mainly found around South Island and the Auckland Islands. There are smaller groups of them spread out in other areas but not very many. They tend to move into these larger groups.

Behavior

On land you will find the New Zealand Sea Lions gathering on the sandy beaches. Many sub groups form, especially of mothers with their young pups. This way they have a better chance of protecting them.

Diet /Feeding

The New Zealand Sea Lion doesn't mess around when it comes to eating. They are opportunistic so they will take what they can find without thinking twice about consuming it. What they commonly find in their natural habitat includes squid, octopus, crab, crayfish, and any other type of fish that happen to be in season there.

Reproduction

Breeding takes place from November until January. The bulls arrive at their given locations in November. They may have to fight with several other bulls to stake their claim to that location. When the females arrive later on those disputes have already been settled. The males use vocalizing to get as many females to become a part of their harem as possible. Some of the males are very aggressive and they actually force the females going by to stay there.

With a few days of arriving at the breeding grounds the females with give birth to their offspring from the previous season. Then within 10 days then will again breed. The mothers keep the pups on land until they are about three weeks of age. While they will continue to consume milk from her, they will also be introduced to the basics of hunting. She will nurse them for about 8 months and then they are on their own for survival.

The males will injure or kill the young pups that they feel can be a threat to them. This is a big concern because it increases the mortality rate for this species of Sea Lions. Both males and females have an average life span of approximately 23 years.

Conservation

There have been efforts in place to protect the New Zealand Sea Lion since 1890. Even so the numbers of them remaining is still very low. A count in the mid 1990's showed that there were about 15,000 of them. Another count in 2000 though showed that there were only about 13,000 of them. This is believed to be due to an outbreak of disease though that occurred in 1998.
Human interaction

In fact they allowed up to 124 of the Sea Lions to be captured and killed annually beginning in 2004. Most of the time it is done by fishermen that don't want the hassle of these animals in their nets. They also know they can yield a more profitable catch if the Sea Lions aren't feeding on the fish in the waters. In 2009 this amount was reduced to 113 but conservation groups continue to pursue the cause of getting that number further reduced.

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Also known as the Hooker's Sea Lion, the New Zealand Sea Lion is one of the largest animals found in New Zealand. Males are from 990 pounds with females smaller at about 370 pounds. Males are about 11.5 feet long and the females are about 7 feet long.

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And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

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A self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Audre Lorde dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Lorde was born in New York City to West Indian immigrant parents. She attended Catholic schools before graduating from Hunter High School and published her first poem in Seventeen magazine while still a student there. Of her poetic beginnings Lorde commented in Black Women Writers: "I used to speak in poetry. I would read poems, and I would memorize them. People would say, well what do you think, Audre. What happened to you yesterday? And I would recite a poem and somewhere in that poem would be a line or a feeling I would be sharing. In other words, I literally communicated through poetry. And when I couldn't find the poems to express the things I was feeling, that's what started me writing poetry, and that was when I was twelve or thirteen."

Lorde earned her BA from Hunter College and MLS from Columbia University. She was a librarian in the New York public schools throughout the 1960s. She had two children with her husband, Edwin Rollins, a white, gay man, before they divorced in 1970. In 1972, Lorde met her long-time partner, Frances Clayton. She also began teaching as poet-in-residence at Tougaloo College. Her experiences with teaching and pedagogy-as well as her place as a Black, queer woman in white academia-went on to inform her life and work. Indeed, Lorde's contributions to feminist theory, critical race studies, and queer theory intertwine her personal experiences with broader political aims. Lorde articulated early on the intersections of race, class, and gender in canonical essays such as "The Master's Tools Will Not Dismantle the Master's House."

Lorde's early collections of poetry include The First Cities (1968), Cables to Rage (1970), and From a Land Where Other People Live (1972), which was nominated for a National Book Award. Later works, including New York Head Shop and Museum (1974), Coal (1976), and The Black Unicorn (1978), included powerful poems of protest. "I have a duty," Lorde once stated, "to speak the truth as I see it and to share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigating pain." Lorde's later poems were often assembled from personal journals. Explaining the genesis of "Power," a poem about the police shooting of a ten-year-old black child, Lorde discussed her feelings when she learned that the officer involved had been acquitted: "A kind of fury rose up in me; the sky turned red. I felt so sick. I felt as if I would drive this car into a wall, into the next person I saw. So I pulled over. I took out my journal just to air some of my fury, to get it out of my fingertips. Those expressed feelings are that poem."

Her poetry, and "indeed all of her writing," according to contributor Joan Martin in Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation, "rings with passion, sincerity, perception, and depth of feeling." Concerned with modern society's tendency to categorize groups of people, Lorde fought the marginalization of such categories as "lesbian" and "black woman." She was central to many liberation movements and activist circles, including second-wave feminism, civil rights and Black cultural movements, and struggles for LGBTQ equality. In particular, Lorde's poetry is known for the power of its call for social and racial justice, as well as its depictions of queer experience and sexuality. As she told interviewer Charles H. Rowell in Callaloo: "My sexuality is part and parcel of who I am, and my poetry comes from the intersection of me and my worlds... [White, arch-conservative senator] Jesse Helms's objection to my work is not about obscenity ... or even about sex. It is about revolution and change."

Lorde was a noted prose writer as well as poet. Her account of her struggle to overcome breast cancer and mastectomy, The Cancer Journals (1980), is regarded as a major work of illness narrative. In The Cancer Journals, Lorde confronts the possibility of death. Recounting this personal transformation led Lorde to address the silence surrounding cancer, illness, and the lived experience of women. For example, Lorde explained her decision not to wear a prosthesis after undergoing a mastectomy in the Journals: "Prosthesis offers the empty comfort of 'Nobody will know the difference.' But it is that very difference which I wish to affirm, because I have lived it, and survived it, and wish to share that strength with other women. If we are to translate the silence surrounding breast cancer into language and action against this scourge, then the first step is that women with mastectomies must become visible to each other."

Lorde's 1982 novel, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, was described by its publishers as a "biomythography, combining elements of history, biography and myth." Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984) collected Lorde's nonfiction prose and has become a canonical text in Black studies, women's studies, and queer theory. Another collection of essays, A Burst of Light (1988), won the National Book Award. The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde was published in 1997.

In 1981 Lorde and fellow writers Cherríe Moraga and Barbara Smith founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, which was dedicated to furthering the writings of black feminists. Lorde would also become increasingly concerned over the plight of black women in South Africa under apartheid, creating Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa and remaining an active voice on behalf of these women throughout the remainder of her life. Lorde addressed her concerns to not only the United States but the world, encouraging a celebration of the differences that society instead used as tools of isolation. As Allison Kimmich noted in Feminist Writers, "Throughout all of Audre Lorde's writing, both nonfiction and fiction, a single theme surfaces repeatedly. The black lesbian feminist poet activist reminds her readers that they ignore differences among people at their peril ... Instead, Lorde suggests, differences in race or class must serve as a 'reason for celebration and growth.'"

Lorde's honors and awards included a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A professor of English at John Jay College and Hunter College, Lorde was poet laureate of New York from 1991-1992. Warrior Poet (2006), by Alexis De Veaux, is the first full-length biography of Audre Lorde.

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A self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Audre Lorde dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Lorde was born in New York City to West Indian immigrant parents. She attended Catholic schools...

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"Pain can be washed out with a song.
Pain can become jazz digested and transformed.
Music stays in the air.
It travels at the speed of breath
at the sound of light.
It is never not heard.
It can wait centuries if it has to.
Politics is a word spelled N-O-W."

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“Sometimes if I feel all my emotions in public I can't make myself speak {...} I can breathe through salt water. I can live through this mess” (Gumbs, Chapter 6).

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“I'd rather go down in history as one lone Negro who dared to tell the government that it had done a dastardly thing than to save my skin by taking back what I have said.”

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Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a prominent journalist, activist, and researcher, in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. In her lifetime, she battled sexism, racism, and violence. As a skilled writer, Wells-Barnett also used her skills as a journalist to shed light on the conditions of African Americans throughout the South.

Ida Bell Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16 th, 1862. She was born into slavery during the Civil War. Once the war ended Wells-Barnett's parents became politically active in Reconstruction Era politics. Her parents instilled into her the importance of education. Wells-Barnett enrolled at Rust College but was expelled when she started a dispute with the university president. In 1878, Wells-Barnett went to visit her grandmother. While she was there Wells-Barnett was informed that a yellow fever epidemic had hit her hometown. The disease took both of Wells-Barnett's parents and her infant brother. Left to raise her brothers and sister, she took a job as a teacher so that she could keep the family together. Eventually, Wells-Barnett moved her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee. There she continued to work as an educator.

In 1884, Wells-Barnett filed a lawsuit against a train car company in Memphis for unfair treatment. She had been thrown off a first-class train, despite having a ticket. Although she won the case on the local level, the ruling was eventually overturned in federal court. After the lynching of one of her friends, Wells-Barnett turned her attention to white mob violence. She became skeptical about the reasons black men were lynched and set out to investigate several cases. She published her findings in a pamphlet and wrote several columns in local newspapers. Her expose about an 1892 lynching enraged locals, who burned her press and drove her from Memphis. After a few months, the threats became so bad she was forced to move to Chicago, Illinois.

In 1893, Wells-Barnett, joined other African American leaders in calling for the boycott of the World's Columbian Exposition. The boycotters accused the exposition committee of locking out African Americans and negatively portraying the black community. In 1895, Wells-Barnett married famed African American lawyer Ferdinand Barnett. Together, the couple had four children. Throughout her career Wells-Barnett, balanced motherhood with her activism.

Wells-Barnett traveled internationally, shedding light on lynching to foreign audiences. Abroad, she openly confronted white women in the suffrage movement who ignored lynching. Because of her stance, she was often ridiculed and ostracized by women's suffrage organizations in the United States. Nevertheless, Wells-Barnett remained active the women's rights movement. She was a founder of the National Association of Colored Women's Club which was created to address issues dealing with civil rights and women's suffrage. Although she was in Niagara Falls for the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), her name is not mentioned as an official founder. Late in her career Wells-Barnett focused on urban reform in the growing city of Chicago. She died on March 25 th, 1931.

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Pioneering journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett battled sexism, racism, and violence, particularly working to shed light on the conditions of African Americans throughout the South. Read her story on womenshistory.org.

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Debbie Africa was eight months pregnant during the 1978 siege. During the shoot-out she was holed out in the basement of the Move house, where she was bombarded by water cannons and tear gas and had to fumble her way out in the dark carrying her first child, her two-year-old daughter Michelle.

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The placenta was the trickiest part. How to dispose of it without it making a mess that would alert the guards that a child had just been born in a prison cell?

There was no medical equipment, no painkillers, no sterilized wipes or hygienic materials of any sort. When it came to cutting the umbilical cord in the absence of scissors, well, that was the easy part: just use your teeth.

But Debbie Sims Africa was more stressed about the placenta. It was 1978, she was 22 years old and five weeks into what would turn out to be a 40-year prison sentence.

She was determined to give birth on her own without any involvement of the jail officers so she could spend some precious time with the baby. In the end, a co-defendant helped her out, scooping up the placenta in her hands and secreting it to the shower room where she flushed it down the prison toilet.

The plan worked. Debbie Africa got to spend three wonderful days with her baby son. She hid him under a sheet and when he cried, other jailed women would stand outside the cell and sing or cough to obscure the noise.

She knew it couldn't last, as jail rules prohibited mothers being with their children. At the end of the three days she informed the jailers of the baby's existence and, once they had got over their astonishment, they arranged for the mother and son to be separated and for the child to be taken to the outside world.

So begins the extraordinary life of Mike Africa Jr, a man born in a prison cell, and his incarcerated parents. As he approaches his 40th birthday in September, he reflects on what a crazy ride it's been.

Mike Davis Africa Jr. Photograph: Ed Pilkington/The Guardian

He was born to a mother accused and later convicted of third-degree murder in one of the most dramatic confrontations with law enforcement of the 1970s black liberation struggle. Not only was Debbie Africa sentenced to 30 years to life for the death of a police officer, so too was her husband, Mike Africa Sr, father to Mike Jr, who was caught up in the same confrontation and given the same punishment.

Which makes Mike Jr a penal orphan of the black power movement. For almost 40 years, he visited both his parents in separate penitentiaries but never saw either of them outside prison walls. Last month Debbie was finally released from prison on parole, but his father remains in captivity and to this day he has never seen the two of them together.

Debbie and Mike Sr, both now 62, are two of the Move Nine, the group of black radicals who were collectively held responsible for the death of Officer James Ramp during a massive police shoot-out at their communal home in Powelton Village, Philadelphia on 8 August 1978. The group, whose members take "Africa" as their last name as a political badge, were resisting eviction.

They were like the Black Panthers crossed with nature-loving hippies. Black ​power meets flower power

Move was one of the more extraordinary elements of the 1970s black liberation struggle. Deeply committed to fighting police brutality in African American communities, they were also devoted to caring for animals and the environment.

They were like the Black Panthers crossed with nature-loving hippies. Black power meets flower power.

They lived in a communal house along with dozens of stray dogs and cats where they would preach their political beliefs day and night at high volume through bullhorns, driving their neighbors to despair. Over time they came to be seen as dangerous non-conformists by the Philadelphia police and city government, leading to a drawn-out confrontation that culminated in the 1978 siege and gunfight involving hundreds of police that saw the death of Officer Ramp and sent nine of the black radicals to prison, potentially for life.

The Move Nine were accused of firing the first shot and of killing Ramp. Yet they have always claimed innocence. They deny that they shot at anybody and blame the officer's death on accidental "friendly fire" from other armed police. Ramp, 52, was a former marine who had served with the Philadelphia police department for 23 years. He was killed by a single bullet. Yet all nine Move members were convicted of his murder.

Move members in front of their house in the Powelton Village section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Leif Skoogfors/Corbis via Getty Images

I met Debbie Africa and her son as part of research into incarcerated black radicals that began more than two years ago. The starting point was the Angola Three, former Black Panthers who had endured unprecedented stretches in solitary confinement in Louisiana's notorious Angola prison.

That began a journey that would bring me to interview several members of the Move Nine as well as former Black Panthers and members of the Black Liberation Army who remain incarcerated in some cases half a century after their arrests. It would culminate with a day spent with Debbie and Mike Jr, mother and son, as they celebrated their first time together beyond prison walls.

Debbie Africa was eight months pregnant during the 1978 siege. During the shoot-out she was holed out in the basement of the Move house, where she was bombarded by water cannons and tear gas and had to fumble her way out in the dark carrying her first child, her two-year-old daughter Michelle.

No evidence was presented at trial that she pulled the trigger or ever touched a gun. But she was convicted nonetheless as a murderer and conspirator.

Mike Sr remains behind bars in Graterford correctional institution in Pennsylvania. But last June, Debbie Africa became one of very few black liberationists convicted of violent acts from the 1970s to be released on parole having convinced the board she was no threat to society.

Debbie and Mike Jr talked to me at his home in a small town outside Philadelphia just two weeks after she had been released on parole from Cambridge Springs prison. They were both still clearly awestruck to be in each other's company after so long - Mike's sporadic prison visits to both his parents were nothing like this.

It's the little things that have dumbfounded Mike Jr most. The first morning after they got back to his house, they were sitting at breakfast wearing no shoes.

"It was the first time I've ever seen her feet, and it was the first time she'd ever seen my feet since I was three days old in her cell," he said.

Debbie Africa and her son, Mike Africa, in Clifton Heights, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Mark Makela/The Guardian

Debbie Africa described waves of overpowering emotion. "I can't believe this is happening," she said. "I'll just start hugging him in the supermarket and people will be giving us strange looks."

She talked about the wrench of letting her son go when he was three days old. "It was a hard, hard decision. I wanted what was best for him and I knew that was not to get close to me at any level. So I had to break the bond."

Mike Jr was raised during his childhood by his grandmother and by a succession of different female members of the Move organization as part of its communal ethic. "I was a community kid, I had many mothers," Mike Jr said in a deadpan voice, as though describing the weather.

Every Mother's Day he makes the rounds of his "mothers". He drives around bearing cards and flowers which he drops off at the homes of at least six women. He rattled off their names: Bert, Sue, Romana, Pam, Mary, Teresa.

Now he'll be able to put flowers in the hands of his true birth mother. He had no idea who she was, nor who his father was, until he was about six or seven when their relationship to him was made clear to him.

"I didn't know she was in prison, I didn't know any of it. I thought that the person caring for me was my mother."

He looks back on his childhood and recognizes that some aspects of his upbringing were less than ideal. "Who teaches a kid how to brush his teeth or take a bath but his parents. I didn't know how to wash my hair 'til I was 15."

Through his childhood he was taken to visit both parents in separate prisons, maybe once or twice a year. But for years he had no idea why they were locked up. When friends at school asked about him about them, he would demur or make up stories because he was embarrassed to reveal his ignorance.

I feel relief. Big relief. I never knew she would come out alive

Mike Africa Jr

It was only when he was 14 and sitting with his father in Graterford that the penny dropped. He asked Mike Sr whether there was anybody held in the prison who had done something really bad, like killing somebody.

"Yeah," Mike Sr replied, "me".

"He didn't go on to explain," Mike Jr recalled. "I was frightened. Was he going to be in here forever? I was crying my eyes out trying to figure it out, but I couldn't explain to him why I was crying. I couldn't put it into words."

Mikr Jr said it took him years to put the pieces together. "I was left to figure it out for myself, to fend for myself."

But neither son nor mother are ones to dwell on the wounds of the past. I asked Debbie Africa whether she regretted that by her actions as a black liberationist and Move member she had put her son through so much pain.

"There are always going to be things in my life that I wish didn't happen," she said. "I do truly wish that what happened to my son hadn't happened, I do truly. But I look at the man he is now, and I love it."

Father and son, Mike Davis Africa Sr and Jr, in Huntingdon state correctional institution in 1993. Mike was 14. Photograph: Courtesy of Mike Davis Africa Jr

Having spent two days in the company of Mike Africa Jr outside Philadelphia, I can see what she means. He has turned out remarkably poised for someone with his chaotic childhood résumé.

He runs his own small business as a landscape gardener, is married and has four children of his own. He is a proud member of Move, has never owned or even held a gun, and his house is comfortable and full of light, though it was notable how much neater it was the second time I visited following Debbie's release. At last she has begun fulfilling that ritual of parents everywhere: tidying up after their child's mess.

On Mike Jr's part he's similarly delighted his mother has turned out as well-balanced, sociable and positive as she is, given 40 years in correctional institutions. "I feel relief. Big relief. I never knew she would come out alive. When people come out of prison they can be sick in the head, but this transition of her coming to my house has been the smoothest major transformation of my life."

Now the challenge is to help Mike Africa Sr secure parole, and so complete the family. His next appearance before the parole board is in September, and they are all already on tenterhooks.

A paradox of Debbie Africa's release is that under her parole terms she is not able to communicate in any form with her husband because he is classified as a co-defendant and thus is out of bounds. The last time they saw each other in the flesh was in 1986. Since then they had been allowed to write to each other from their cells, and in that way managed to keep their bond alive.

I can't believe this is happening. I'll start hugging him in the supermarket and people will be giving us strange looks

Debbie Sims Africa

Now that the letter-writing has been stopped all they have in terms of connection is Mike Jr acting as a go-between. He lets each parent know how the other is doing. He also acted as my go-between, putting questions to his father which Mike Sr answered in a phone call to him.

How confident is Mike Sr, I asked, as he heads into the parole hearing?

"I'm confident that I'm going to tell the truth. I'm confident that I deserve parole. I'm confident I would never be considered a danger to the community ever again. We never intended for anyone to get hurt, and regret that anyone did get hurt."

Then he added: "What I'm not confident about is what they're going to do, I have no control over that."

He said the knowledge that his wife was now at home with his son and daughter was a great comfort to him. But it also heightened his desire to be with them all.

"Forty years of wanting, anticipating. It's like Double Dutch. You're always on the edge of that jump rope, hopping up and down, waiting to get in, waiting for your turn."

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Born in a cell: the extraordinary tale of the black liberation orphan

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The placenta was the trickiest part. How to dispose of it without it making a mess that would alert the guards that a child had just been born in a prison cell? There was no medical equipment, no painkillers, no sterilized wipes or hygienic materials of any sort.

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“When we illuminate the road back to our ancestors, they have a way of reaching out, of manifesting themselves...sometimes even physically.”
― Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina

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“I will remember you, Not by the name of the one they say “discovered” you after generations of Indigenous relationship”(Gumbs, Chapter 1)