For this issue, I wrote about the broad coalition of city and state-based groups who have organized around the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Organizers have been busy since October 7. They have called for a cease-fire, highlighted the suppression of individuals and organizations that have voiced support for Palestinians, and organized protests and rallies in Baltimore and beyond. They have also pressured lawmakers U.S. Representative Kweisi Mfume and U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen to take hard stances against the war, even showing up outside Van Hollen’s home early in the morning on January 10 with signs and red paint.
Erica Caines, of the group The Black Alliance For Peace, told me that Black people and Palestinian people have long had solidarity with each other. She said her organization’s anti-war stance means they are committed to speaking out on Palestinian citizens’ behalf.
“The Black Alliance for Peace is an alliance of organizations and individual members, but first and foremost it is an anti-war, anti-imperialist alliance. It models itself under the Black radical tradition of the peace movement,” she told me.
Also in this issue, Dominic Griffin writes about Ava DuVernay’s new film, “Origin.” It’s an adaptation of the book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent,” written by Isabel Wilkerson. Griffin says the transition from the pages of a book to a movie screen flattens out the details of a complex issue of race.
“An overwrought dinner table discussion between Wilkerson and her German friend Sabine (Connie Nielsen) turns into a debate about which was worse, slavery or the Holocaust. The back-and-forth closely resembles the worst nesting-doll quote-tweet argument on the subject,” he writes.
Bry Reed wrote about the novel “How to Say Babylon: A Jamaican Memoir,” written by Safiya Sinclair.
“We are ushered into an intimate story of Black girlhood framed by colonial domination and religious persecution,” Reed writes.
Iya Osundara Ogunsina has your February tarotscope reading.
As always, young people are represented in this issue. We have images created by Wide Angle Youth Media, and a poem from Writers in Baltimore Schools participant Joseph Flores.
Thank you so much for reading.