Tag: Black Lives Matter

A Pioneer in the Fight for Pregnancy Justice: The Ms. Q&A With Lynn Paltrow

In 1987, Attorney Lynn Paltrow defended Pamela Rae Stewart, a California woman criminally charged for failing to follow medical advice while pregnant. This case was one of the first attempts to criminalize a pregnant person for their actions and argue that fetuses have constitutional rights. In 2000, Paltrow started National Advocates for Pregnant Women, now called Pregnancy Justice, to defend pregnant people against criminalization and other deprivations of their rights.

“With half the population capable of pregnancy, what we have to do is change the conversation so that it is clear we are not just defending abortion, we are defending the personhood of the people who sometimes need abortions, but who always need to be treated as full rights-bearing, constitutional persons.”

Florida’s Rejection of African American Studies Reflects the Historical Fight for Black Education

Florida officials have rejected a new Advanced Placement (AP) course on African American studies, calling it “woke indoctrination” that “significantly lacks educational value.” But the modern figures and movements that the state board objects to are extensions of Black history. That history is the story of Black activism, the ongoing, centuries-old struggle for rights and freedoms in the United States—and African American studies as a field is itself rooted in that effort. 

“We have the potential of raising an entire generation of Black children who will not be able to see themselves represented in their own state or in education.”

In ‘The Third Reconstruction,’ Peniel E. Joseph Outlines the U.S. Struggle for Racial Justice in the 21st Century

In recent months, historians have clashed over whether history should be used as a tool for the politics of the present. But Peniel E. Joseph’s latest work, The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century demonstrates that not only is the personal political, but the past is too.

Joseph argues the dynamics of the present are never truly knowable until we anchor them to the contours of the past. This means to look at the Black women and queer Black people who have guided movements for social justice throughout American history.

Emerald Garner on Trauma, Picking up the Pieces and Finding Her Voice

An excerpt from Finding My Voice: On Grieving My Father, Eric Garner, and Pushing for Justice by Emerald Garner, Monet Dunham and Etan Thomas:

“While you haven’t even fully grieved, you’re now linked to other cases, and you only have the bond that your loved one was also murdered by the police. … We didn’t choose for my father to be murdered, but we were left to pick up the pieces after, and that just wasn’t fair.”

October 2022 Reads for the Rest of Us

Each month, I provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups—to do my part in the disruption of what has been the acceptable “norm” in the book world for far too long (white, cis, heterosexual, male); and to amplify indie publishers and amazing works by writers who are women, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, APIA/AAPI, international, queer, trans, nonbinary, disabled, fat, immigrant, Muslim, neurodivergent, sex-positive or of other historically marginalized identities—you know, the rest of us.

Make some time to read one or two of these 30 new books, or whatever goes well with your pumpkin spice latte or hot apple cider.

Harnessing the Power of Women Voters

In 2017, a year into the presidency of Donald Trump, three notable women—Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, former Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards, and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Ai-jen Poo—looked to harness the sudden rage and confusion felt by women across the U.S. Garza, Poo and Richards announced the start of a women’s equality organization called Supermajority, a multiracial coalition of women organizing around issues like paid leave and affordable healthcare. The group’s name hearkens to the fact that women make up more than half of the U.S. population. 

These days, Amanda Brown Lierman is the executive director of both Supermajority and the Supermajority Education Fund, a sister nonprofit organization for research, education and development programs that prepare women civic leaders. And Lierman and her team have their eye on the prize: the 2022 midterms.

We Heart: P!nk’s New Protest Anthem, ‘Irrelevant’

On July 18, the music video for P!nk’s new song, “Irrelevant,” dropped and has since been deemed a ‘protest anthem.’ She explained, “As a woman with an opinion and the fearlessness to voice that opinion, it gets very tiring when the only retort is to tell me how irrelevant I am. I am relevant because I exist and because I am a human being. No one is irrelevant. And no one can take away my voice.”

The proceeds from the new track will be donated to Michelle Obama’s national, nonpartisan voting initiative When We All Vote.

Right Now, Silence Is Not an Option—Diverse Voices Must Shape the Future

The ties that bind us to one another—that transcend race, class, generational divides, language and more—are the stories we share. Every silenced voice and untold story erases a piece of our collective history and identity. 

Communicators shape the future through their influence on how history is documented, preserved and shared. Their words and messages have the potential to spread like wildfire and impact everything from pop culture to policymaking.