Group C (02/23/2021) by Yailenne Escobar https://padlet.com/escoy155/690z168ohyy0yfe Made with good vibes en-us 2021-02-20 18:48:48 UTC 2021-03-04 18:05:44 UTC hello@padlet.com samwd268 https://padlet.com/escoy155/690z168ohyy0yfe/wish/1228494555 This week’s readings gave so much to think about – the commune, raising consciousness, working within and outside of oppressive institutions in order to abolish them while also building up collective/community power in the process, militancy, liminal spaces, Black radicalism, building creative alternatives that centralize Black liberation, collective memory and collective forgetting, among many others. As I was reading the Black Autonomy Federation’s article on the Commune, I thought about Cooperation Jackson (https://cooperationjackson.org) and their work in building a solidarity economy based in Jackson, Mississippi. Geographically, I also thought about the specificity of their work as centering and emerging out of Black and Latinx communities in the South, and how this relates to our past conversations on the Blue’s Epistemology and the Black south as a site of knowing and radical action.  

Additionally, the article brings up the idea of “dual power,” which reminded me of a quote from the book Jackson Rising where dual power is defined as “Building autonomous power outside of the realm of the state (i.e., the government) in the form of People’s Assemblies and engaging electoral politics on a limited scale with the expressed intent of building radical voting blocs and electing candidates drawn from the ranks of the Assemblies themselves” (Kali Akuno, Ajamu Nangwaya, Cooperation Jackson 2017). ]]> 2021-02-22 19:56:39 UTC https://padlet.com/escoy155/690z168ohyy0yfe/wish/1228494555 escoy155 https://padlet.com/escoy155/690z168ohyy0yfe/wish/1228953128 This week’s readings emphasized that the unity and rise of the Black community are so powerful, though the White supremacists storming the Capitol in January 2021 show that our capitalistic society & people in power don't fear the White man. The attention that the MOVE Bombing is receiving is because of stories that were archived of the movement and spaces created. The power of storytelling and archives allowed for this tragic event to live on in history in awareness of the racial and class inequality that the MOVE compound suffered through. There were barely enough possibilities for the Black community to share and bring the deserved amount of justice to this event until now. This brings up for me the role of photojournalists and well the power that photography partakes in storytelling. WIthout photography being invasive or disrespecting the people and events present, it is a tool that allows any audience to become informed. The photos are up for interpretation, but it at least is present to justify the event. In reference to the television coverage and press from nearby universities, it can be especially important when there wasn’t much access to or support of technology and law enforcement denying the bombing+actions of that day. The other side of photojournalism that I disagree with is capturing and profiting from trauma. The consent of the individuals captured isn’t always considered nor is the privilege of the photojournalist to experience this traumatic event as a bystander to then profit from it. 

]]> 2021-02-22 22:02:43 UTC https://padlet.com/escoy155/690z168ohyy0yfe/wish/1228953128 parsj861 https://padlet.com/escoy155/690z168ohyy0yfe/wish/1232081721 In "The Commune: Community Control of the Black Community," the Black Autonomy Federation explores the idea of a "mass commune" in which a dual power structure is maintained in the endeavor to social revolution. A sustained effort over time, inner-city communes, centers for black power and social revolutionary thought, would be established, in all the major cities in the United States. These centers would allow for the establishment of community councils, organizations, and the staging ground for the Black revolutionary struggle. What I found to be the most compelling in the BAF's exploration of a new society, was the acknowledgment of the fighting power within us all: "There is tremendous fighting power in the Black community, but it is not organized in a structured revolutionary way to effectively struggle and take what is due." This is something that I have felt for quite some time, but I have never been able to actualize ways in which Black power can be structured to achieve what we have so desperately been yearning for all along. Reading this article was very beneficial, because I was finally able to be brought into that world, that conversation in which actual methods were being outlined and made into a reality. This also brought up Lorde's "The Master's Tools" because the disempowered often mistakes the utilization of those same exploitive methods for achieving the social justice they are working to achieve.]]> 2021-02-23 15:50:37 UTC https://padlet.com/escoy155/690z168ohyy0yfe/wish/1232081721 samwd268 https://padlet.com/escoy155/690z168ohyy0yfe/wish/1259307471 Reflections on Freedom as Marronage and two things I'd like to discuss further:
 
1. The vertical and horizontal axes of resistance (pg 161). 

2. Neil Roberts' assertion that “freedom is not a place; it is a state of being” (pg 11). In this sense, he shows the ways that freedom is not stagnant or fixed in an idealized past, present, or future, but rather in constant motion and as emerging out of the conditions (physical, tangible, imaginative, and meta-physical) in which it arises. In the section that spoke about the negative and positive understandings of freedom (freedom from vs freedom to), it made me think about the idea of abolition as not just destroying oppressive institutions/ideologies (though this is of course a part of it), but also as building up and creating other worlds (which is also a constant practice that engages a diversity of tactics as opposed to being universal). When I read Roberts' assertion of freedom as a state of being, not a place, I thought about what it meant in relation to Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s discussion of abolition as a practice of making “freedom as a place.” I don’t think that they are inherently oppositional in meaning, but I’d like to hear what others think. Overall, I found Roberts book to be incredibly powerful and expansive.

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