Movement for Black Lives

Movement for Black Lives is closely affiliated with Black Lives Matter and Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Liberation Road. The Movement for Black Lives is a fiscally sponsored 501c3 at the Alliance for Global Justice.

Policy Table Leadership Team

Karl Kumodzi and Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson sit on the Movement for Black Lives "Policy Table Leadership Team".

M4BL Leadership

Thenjiwe Tameika McHarris February 11, 2019 · M4BL Leadership w/ our Convergence Council Team (Denise, Makani & N’Tanya) #Squad #M4BL

Makani Themba, N'Tanya Lee, Denise Perry, Mary Hooks, Morathi Adams, Serena Sebring, Dara Cooper, Richard Wallace, Nikita Mitchell, Karissa Lewis, Ash-Lee Henderson, Phillip Agnew, Monifa Bandele, Rukia Lumumba, Chinyere Tutashinda, Marbre Stahly-Butts, Mark-Anthony Clayton-Johnson, Gina Clayton-Johnson, Maurice Moe Mitchell.

Movement for Black Lives Reparations Toolkit

Monifa Bandele FB July 27 2019 Praising Reparations Toolkit

The "primary authors" of the Reparations toolkit were Andrea Ritchie, Deirdre Smith, Janetta Johnson, Jumoke Ifetayo, Marbre Stahly-Butts, Mariame Kaba, Montague Simmons, Nkechi Taifa, Rachel Herzing, Richard Wallace, and Taliba Obuya.

Acknowlegements:

We are also grateful for the vision, support, research, design, and feedback provided by Iman Young, Ash-Lee Henderson, Gina Clayton-Johnson, Karl Kumodzi, M. Adams, Mark Anthony Clayton-Johnson, Monifa Bandele, Thenjiwe McHarris, Mariame Kaba, Anneke Dunbar-Gronke, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Ky’eisha Penn, Micah Wiedemann, Justin Hansford, Leigh Goodmark, Joy Dodge, Dominique Zenani Barron, and Emma Toju Anna Uwejoma.

On July 27, 2019, Monifa Bandele posted congratulations to the Movement for Black Lives for launching a Reparations toolkit.

"In the name of #QueenMotherMoore, on her 121st BIRTHDAY, The Movement for Black Lives is launching a toolkit to provide grounding and direction to the modern-day call for #Reparations. First, we honor and take the leadership of those who have been decades long in the work like Nkechi Taifa, Ron Daniels, Kwesi Jumoke Ifetayo, and many others. BIG shout out to Montague Simmons Marbre Stahly-Butts Andrea Ritchie Dara Cooper Richard Wallace Taliba O Njeri Mariame Kaba Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson Gina Clayton-Johnson Justin Hansford Iman Young Karl Kumodzi, all of the authors and editors, and EVERYONE on the M4BL Policy Table Thenjiwe Tameika McHarris Mervyn Marcano. #ReparationsNow #ReparationsHow -

In Defense of Black Lives: National Week of Action Call

"In Defense of Black Lives: National Week of Action Call" was a Zoom call organized by the Movement for Black Lives May 30 2020.

Moderators were Karissa Lewis of Movement for Black Lives and Lumumba Bandele MBL strategist.

Participants included Miski Noor Black Visions Collective. Chanelle Helm Black Lives Matter Louisville, Kayla Reed Action St. Louis, Chinyere Tutashinda The BlackOUT Collective, Phillip Agnew Dream Defenders.

Ransby connection

Barbara Ransby, historian, author, activist adviser to the Movement for Black Lives and one of the planners behind Black Women in Defense of Ilhan Omar.

Black Women in Defense of Ilhan Omar

Black Women in Defense of Ilhan Omar was organized by Movement for Black Lives to defend Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Dozens of women from the Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of African-American advocates, gathered April 30 2019 in support of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar who has been a target of hate-speech and trolling by right-wing politicians and their supporters.

The women gathered in front of Washington’s Capitol building chanting, “We love you” to Omar in the event named “Black Women in Defense of Ilhan Omar.”

"The thing that upsets the occupant of the White House, his goons in the Republican Party (and) many of our colleagues in the Democratic Party," Omar told the crowd, "is that they can't stand that a refugee, a black woman, an immigrant, a Muslim, shows up in Congress thinking she's equal to them."

Miski Noor told Middle East Eye that Omar is facing such criticisms because of her identity. She is a Muslim woman and was a Somalian refugee when she arrived in the U.S.

"There are people, because of their white supremacist and racist views of the world, (who) hate her because of her identities and based on fear," she said.

"At the same time, we know Ilhan is being attacked because of the content of what she's saying,"added Noor.

Ayanna Pressley, Omar’s fellow U.S. Congresswoman, shouted, "Hands off Ilhan,” while criticizing politicians from her own Democratic Party, for failing to stand with the legislator.

She added, "silencing of Black women" won’t be acceptable anymore.

"This is a reckoning. This is us assuming our rightful place, as the table-shakers, as the truth-tellers, as the justice-seekers, as the preservers of democracy," said Pressley.

"We are demanding that you trust black women, that you see black women, that you believe black women and honor us for the role that we have played as healers and preservers of this democracy and this nation," emphasized Pressley.

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib also criticized the attempt of silencing Black women.

"They continue to police our words; they continue to police our positions," she said. "But I say 'hands off; hands off the women of color who serve in the United States Congress,” Tlaib said.

Omar in her speech said that Islamophobia and anti-Jewish hatred are "two sides of the same coin of bigotry.”

"The occupant of the White House and [his] allies are doing everything that they can to distance themselves … from the monster that they've created that is terrorizing the Jewish community and the Muslim community," the Congresswoman said.

"We collectively must make sure that we are dismantling all systems of oppression," added Omar.

1st Anniversary of the #Ferguson Uprising

Maurice Moe Mitchell August 5, 2015,

1. UnitedWeFight: 1st Anniversary of the #Ferguson Uprising - National Conference Call. Thurs. — with Justin Hansford, Scott A. Roberts, Mary Hooks, Kayla M. Reed, Diamond Latchison, Kareem Jackson, Bukky Gbadegesin, Katrina Gamble, Tanya Lucia Bernard, Tory Russell, Cedric Lawson, Alicia Garza, Leslie Mac, Charlene Carruthers, Patrisse Cullors, Cherrell Brown, Dante Barry, Waltrina Middleton, Damon Turner, Marbre Stahly-Butts, Ash-Lee Henderson, Damon Davis, Thenjiwe Tameika McHarris, Mari Morales-Williams, Mervyn Marcano, Nicole Lee, Elandria Williams, Opal Ayo, Jonathan Pulphus, Dara Cooper, Michael McBride, Umi Selah, Osagyefo Sekou, Tara Tee, Rose Berry, Sistufara W. Muhammad, Purvi Shah, Cid Nichols, Ingrid Benedict, Jade Ogunnaike, James Hayes, Anita Nichole, Joe Worthy and The Movement for Black Lives.

Anti-Israel

Amid the nearly 40,000 words that make up the recent manifesto issued by a large coalition affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, two have raised an outcry among mainstream Jewish organizations and leaders.

Those two words, in a brief section about Israel, are “apartheid” and “genocide.”

The August 1 2016 manifesto, penned by a coalition of some 60 grassroots organizations known as the Movement for Black Lives, is largely focused on the group’s ideas for achieving racial justice for African Americans in the United States, not on Israel.

There are sections calling for, among other things, free college educations and economic reparations for black people, and a long section, too, decrying U.S. policies toward a lengthy list of countries and peoples, from Libya, to Somalia, to Haiti and the Garifuna people of Central America, among others.

But in the Jewish world, responses to descriptions of Israel in the foreign policy section held sway. And reaction was intense, following a period in which several mainstream organizations have supported the movement to varying degrees and many young activists have rallied to Black Lives Matter protests sparked by shocking videos of black men shot or abused by police.

The Reform movement’s Religious Action Center and the Anti-Defamation League were among the groups that criticized the reference to Israel as “an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people.” Even more vehemently, these Jewish groups condemned the coalition’s charge of U.S. complicity, via America’s large sums of aid to Israel, “in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.”

Some smaller Jewish groups on the left end of the political spectrum accepted or defended this language.

But few knew that it was a woman with a Jewish background who co-wrote the very section that provoked them.

Rachel Gilmer, a 28-year-old African American who was raised Jewish, has long been involved in black-Palestinian solidarity work. Gilmer is associated with the activist group Dream Defenders, which has been on the forefront of recent black-Palestinian solidarity efforts, such as bringing high-profile delegations of African-American activists to Israel and the West Bank.

Born to an African-American father and a white Jewish mother, Gilmer was raised as a Jew and participated as a teen in Young Judaea, the Zionist youth group. There, she rose to become a leading member of her local group. But Gilmer later distanced herself from organized religion.

Gilmer, was one author of the lengthy platform issued by the Movement for Black Lives.

In May, Gilmer traveled to Israel and the West Bank and was moved by what she saw. “While our struggles are not identical, it became so clear that we are up against the same system of state violence and repression,” she said. “We must call for the divestment of the military industrial complex, just like we are calling for a divestment from the policing of our neighborhoods.”

Gilmer is far from the only person responsible for the Movement for Black Lives platform. The manifesto was the result of a year of meetings, debates and conference calls among black-led organizations. Hundreds of individuals were involved. And she shared writing duties on the Israel section with another activist, Benjamin Ndugga-Kabuye, from the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.

She stressed the platform was written “for and by black people … to build connections between the Movement for Black Lives in the U.S. to movements for liberation around the world.”

References

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