Lockdown Combo
The Black Power Mixtape, Martin Luther King Jr. and demonstrations in London
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WEEKEND COMBO: What to do this weekend
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FRIDAY 5th June – SUNDAY 7th June 2020
In tune with current demonstrations across the US and beyond following the murder of George Floyd, here are ways you can join the cause and educate yourself on racial inequality and injustice this weekend.
Film
Providing a stage to rage
Between 1967 and 1975, a group of Swedish journalists and filmmakers set out to America to capture the country’s burgeoning Black Power movement. In 2011, director Goran Olsson gathered this footage and cut it into an electric montage documentary titled The Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975.
Remixing this found 16-mm film into a rich mixtape of trailblazers – Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis – contemporary voices – including Erykah Badu and the Last Poets’ Abiodun Oyewole – and street-level activism, the film brilliantly contextualises the movement from an outsider’s POV while introducing the values and struggles to a new generation.
The Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975 is streaming on Amazon Prime.
Text
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”
In August 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. was in a cell in Birmingham jail, imprisoned as a participant in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation. From there, he wrote a letter as a response to eight white Alabama clergymen who wrote a piece criticising King and his methods, claiming that racial segregation should be fought solely in the courts.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” wrote King, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider.” Within the text, King goes on to outline why campaigning is necessary and how the process of nonviolent campaigning is a neccessary method of creating “constructive” tension.
Letter from Birmingham Jail continues to be one of the defining texts on the need for nonviolent campaigning, and still, sadly, rings true.
Read the full text here.
Podcast
The Diversity Gap
Episode: “Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria”
Founded by Bethaney Wilkinson as an initiative to empower, include and inform, The Diversity Gap features interviews with “the people most impacted by diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.”
While all episodes are well worth a listen, one posted in November 2019 – titled Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria – is especially poignant today. In conversation with Dr. Beverly Tatum, author of the book with the same title as the podcast episode, the pair discuss how the question we should be asking is not “Is someone racist” but rather “Are they actively anti-racist.” They also explore concrete ideas on how to build a diverse community.
Demonstration
Take to the streets
This weekend, demonstrations fighting for racial justice following the murder of George Floyd continue in the UK.
London will be the host of two further peaceful protests on Saturday 6th June and Sunday 7th June. On Saturday people will meet in Parliament Square at 1pm in “peaceful protests against police brutality in the UK and US”, while on Sunday the protest will begin near the US Embassy in London to call for “justice to the multiple black people who have been killed and harmed by the police.”
Demonstrations are also set to take place across other UK cities.
Podcast
Breaking down the structure
A critically acclaimed podcast from Brooklyn, endorsed by the New York Times and Atlantic, School Colours explores the impact of racial inequality on American cities and schools. Episode eight, for example, highlights the problems in New York City, generally considered one of the country’s most progressive cities, but with one of the worst school segregation problems anywhere in the country.
In Episode five, the podcast takes a look at the rapidly dropping school attendance numbers in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood. For the last twenty years, schools in the area have been critically underfunded and severely impacted by Michael Bloomberg’s decision to abolish school boards upon taking office as mayor in 2002. Along with other structural factors, this decline is considered alongside collective efforts by parents to reclaim local schools and their children’s future.
Listen to all episodes of School Colours here.
Read
Literary liberation
This Is Book Love began in 2014 as a collective of educators, artists, musicians and creatives striving to improve the lack of cultural diversity and representation in the UK with a specially selected reading list. Crossing the country as ‘Book Love, The Travelling Multicultural Book Carnival’, the organisation has visited offices, schools and libraries to help broaden literary horizons and spread awareness of issues concerning people of colour.
They also have an online shop, stocking hundreds of titles celebrating the richness of our multicultural society that is so poorly represented. Featuring writers from Jamaica, Uganda, Malaysia, China, India, Nigeria and Portugal to name but a few, it’s an excellent place to browse literature that departs from dominant white narratives.
Browse the online store here.
Top image: The Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975 by Goran Olsson, 2011