LIFE: Live Inspire Fight Educate

We're hosting our second Black Arts Night as a fundraiser for the Flint water crisis later in the month on April 28th. Spread the word!

Several classes in the Africana Studies program are in jeopardy of being cut because enrollment numbers are low. Because a majority of L.I.F.E. members are involved with the Africana Studies program as students and supporters, we understand the importance of strengthening the program.

We are asking that those who have not yet registered for class (and those who are in need of one or two) sign up for one or both of the classes and spread the word to other students. Two classes are on “Remembering and Forgetting Slavery” and the other is on “Feminisms Within White Supremacy.” All classes are currently being taught Dr. Sadhana Bery and descriptions can be found below:

AFRI 262: Remembering and Forgetting Slavery
It is in the crucible of Atlantic chattel slavery that white supremacy constructed Blacks as not fully human and Whites as the universal measure of human-ness. Today, in the ongoing afterlife of slavery, this is still the dominant structuring principle as evidenced by the urgent need to constantly declare that “Black Lives Matter”. This course explores how the social practices of forgetting and remembering Atlantic slavery frame the afterlife of slavery. Both forgetting and remembering are conscious social practices; neither is “natural”. Relations of power determine the content and form of what is forgotten and remembered. Some of the questions we explore in this course are: what kinds of struggles ensue over ownership of memories? Who has the right to tell the narrative of slavery? What does it mean to “perform” slavery in the present? How do institutions, such as schools, museums, commemorative organizations, media, and cultural productions, construct our memories and promote amnesias of slavery? How do differently racialized and spatialized groups choose what and how to remember and forget? How is memory making raced, gendered and classed? We will examine memories and amnesias of slavery in two sites implicated in Atlantic slavery, the U.S. and Ghana.

AFRI 350: Feminisms Within White Supremacy
In this course we study the different, and often opposed, feminisms that exist in the context of white supremacy. In particular, we look at the philosophies, visions and demands of, and relationships between, Black, Indigenous and White feminisms. At face value, feminisms have anti-patriarchy in common. However, historically formed differences of race, nationality, citizenship, class and sexuality cause vastly different feminisms, even in terms of relationships between men and women. A special focus of the course will be on the relationships between Black and Indigenous feminisms. Though they both oppose white supremacy, they understand it differently and struggle for different visions of the future. While centered in the U.S. the course also examines feminisms in other nations built on white supremacy, namely, Canada, Australia and U.K.

Please support Africana Studies. There’s no program without the classes.

Register for Open Courses in Africana Studies at Rhode Island College! Hello all, Several classes in the Africana Studies program are in jeopardy of being cut because enrollment numbers are low. Because a majority of L.I.F.E. members are involved with the Africana...

Awesome conference so far - much power to everyone who has made it!

To view the schedule events for the conference and full program including workshop details, you can visit this post.

Resistance is a Way of L.I.F.E. Conference 2015: Community Struggle From Action to Organizing |... Saturday April 25, 2015Student Union BallroomRhode Island College 600 Mt. Pleasant Avenue Providence, RI 02908 Registration begins at 8am We are hosting our fifth annual “Diversity is a Way of...

Ahead of our upcoming conference, we offer another educational archival resource. This video contains a television program in two segments that focus on the Oakland Community Learning Center, a project founded by the Oakland, CA chapter of the Black Panther Party.

The first segment includes an interview with Huey P. Newton conducted by an Oakland Community Learning Center student named Kelita Smith. The interview runs alongside a narrative tour of the Learning Center which highlights the school's student-centered pedagogical programmes which included courses in Black history, self-defense, and multi-lingual learning.

The second segment of this program highlights the intergenerational and cooperative-leadership dimension to the Black Panther Party's educational platform. The focus is placed on Fred Morehead, "a young man who is both teaching and learning." Frank also worked as an es**rt for the Safe Transportation Program offered by the Center to senior citizens throughout the community.

The purpose of uploading this video is to preserve multimedia produced and inspired by social movements and to provide archival material as an educational resource. Feel free to share and to include this in your classrooms, curriculum, and educational projects.

Oakland Community Learning Center [founded by the Black Panther Party] 1977 This video contains a television program in two segments that focus on the Oakland Community Learning Center, a project founded by the Oakland, CA chapter of...

In preparation for our upcoming conference, we have uploaded an archival video of a 2005 speaker tour that includes our featured keynote speaker, Ashanti Alston.

Ashanti was a member of Estación Libre, a people of color organization which focuses on building ties between struggles of communities of color in the United States with the Zapatista struggle, with the goal of learning from the living model of the Zapatistas and trying to figure out how we can apply the lessons learned back here in what Ashanti calls “the brain of the empire.”

In this video, members of Estación Libre highlight the significance of the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico as it relates to struggles that Black, Brown and other people of color face in the United States.

The purpose of uploading this video is to preserve multimedia produced by social movements and to provide archival material as an educational resource.

People of Color & the Zapatista Movement w/ a Black Panther Focus | Estación Libre Speaker Tour 2005 Note: The purpose of uploading this video is to preserve multimedia produced by social movements and to provide archival material as an educational resource....

We are hosting our fifth annual “Diversity is a Way of L.I.F.E.” conference! To reflect the shifting political consciousness of our active and alumni members, we will mark our anniversary by renaming our annual conference to "Resistance is a Way of L.I.F.E."

The theme of this year's conference is going to be focused on “Community Struggles from Action to Organizing."

Over the past several years, we have been able to witness the emergence of dynamic social movements throughout the US and across the world. These movements have introduced to us diverse forms of community struggle that are beginning to transcend conventional boundaries of resistance. A new generation of everyday people, whose identities are formed by intersecting oppressions and common experiences, have demonstrated to the world what it means to “fight for our freedom.”

Whether the fight is against the police-state violence, gender violence, climate change, low-wages, privatization, displacement, or standardized testing - people have begun taking action. But after taking action, the question always lingers - how can we shift into organizing sustainable movements with the goal of affecting social and structural change?

There will be an emphasis on sharing lessons and passing on skills learned from past & present struggles with the goal of cultivating a space where attendees can learn about how to shift from issue-based activism to broad-based popular organizing.

Keynote:
This year's speaker will be Ashanti Alston Omawali. Alston Omawali is a former political prisoner and also was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army. Today, he is a father, writer, speaker, and organizer with the National Jericho Movement, an organization that works to free political prisoners across the US. Ashanti Alston will be delivering a key-note address that will indubitably encourage soon to be and current organizers to deepen their commitment to critical politics and emerging social movements.

Admission:
General admission includes a continental breakfast, access to all workshops, keynote, lunch, and childcare as necessary. Please indicate any allergies and dietary preferences in the notes of your registration.

Attendance will be free for high school and college students. All other attendees are suggested to contribute donations from $5-$20 - although no one will be turned away.

Registration:
Although admission is free, we are requesting that attendees register ahead of time in order to be mindful of room capacity + budgeting limits. We will be able to accommodate up to 120ppl for food. Please register before April 17th if you are planning to attend.

Childcare:
We will be able to provide childcare during the conference. Children’s activities will take place in Student Union room 307. If you need childcare, please select the General Admission w/ Childcare option when registering for the conference.

Registration: http://bit.ly/lifeconf2015
Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/677717332354746/
For more information and to volunteer for the conference visit: lifeorgric.tumblr.com/lifeconf2015

"We treat smart Black kids and dedicated Black teachers like magical Negro unicorns that can individually save the world when the truth is that we need massive dedicated resources and structures to support us. We put students and teachers in impossible positions, berate them daily, and then wonder why our school systems are struggling. If we really believe that black lives matter, they need to matter in the classroom and in the schoolhouse too."

Teachers are Not Magical Negroes When I was in the 7th grade, I moved from Connecticut to South Florida. I was a nerdy kid that loved reading, science, and social studies and had been tracked into gifted and talented track during ...

There are more prisoners in Rhode Island [per 100k population] than there are in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire, Maine, and 6 other states outside of the North East. On the international scale - there are more prisoners in RI [per 100k pop] than in Isreal, Bahrain, Iran, Costa Rica, Chile, Guyana, Singapore, Armenia, and Gabon.

This map shows you just how many prisoners are in each US state Four of the states in the US have a higher prison population per 100,000 than any nation abroad.

"If we are talking about a movement to end police brutality, we have to acknowledge the fact that... the police are violent by necessity. That is the function of their job. So I believe if we are talking about ending police brutality, we are talking about ending the police."

In Order to End Police Brutality, We Need to End the Police Activists and organizers gathered at the Schomburg Center to interrogate the current conditions of American policing.

Our first film of the semester will be Concerning Violence: Nine Scenes from the Anti-Imperialistic Self-Defense based on Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth.

Narrated by Ms Lauryn Hill, Concerning Violence is a bold and fresh visual narrative on Africa, based on newly discovered archive material covering the struggle for liberation from colonial rule in the late ‘60s and ‘70s.

https://www.facebook.com/events/856449647727422/

"On this day in 2012, students in Québec launched an unlimited general strike across the province against the increase of tuition fees. Combined with huge demonstrations and widespread disruption, the strike lasted until August and in September the government reversed the increase." - via Working Class History

Organize to strike, fight to win! Quebec's 2012 student strike A pamphlet analysing the 2012 student strikes against tuition fee rises in Quebec.