Portside

The powerful image of Bree Newsome climbing the 30-foot flagpole in front of the South Carolina State House in the aftermath of the the Charleston Massacre to remove the Confederate flag is now ingrained in my memory and the collective memory of America. To see city and state governments following suit has brought about a bitter feeling of approval for me. It shouldn’t have taken a massacre to get to this point.

Doubling down on the drug war is likely to result in increased violence, not increased public safety. The damage these policies have done to black communities has been well documented. But less attention has been paid to the ways that women of color specifically are targeted in drug cases and are subject to abuse or assault by police officers.

Mumia Abu-Jamal speaks about some of the issues he engages with in his new book Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?, including police violence and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

Although advances for the South African people have been made under ANC leadership, continuing poverty and unemployment made worse by the recession and decline in the value of the Rand. The solution to our frustrations with the ANC will not be solved if the reasons that have led to the failure to assert working class hegemony within the tripartite alliance of ANC, COSATU and SACP is not accurately diagnosed. This was the question before the SACP Convention.