Stories

(republished) Mar 13th, 2024 - This poem, originally published earlier this year in Brooklyn Poets, where it was awarded poem of the week January 15th-21st, 2024. As LOM spends the next several months examining the way forward for Black struggle from the perspectives of activists, organizers, educators and more, Nyrie Benton illustrates the way it is and has been.

Mar 13th, 2024 - Educator Dejay Bilal recounts the opening day of the Malcolm X Academy for Afrikan Education and the role it has played in the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento, CA.

Mar 13th, 2024 - “Liberation movements ultimately have to be powered by the people, not something that comes from liberal democratic organizations. The most revolutionary liberation forces have their roots in socialism…”

May 9, 2022 - LEFT OUT Magazine caught up with and interviewed the artists in the months following the unveiling of the art installation on the National Mall in Washington D.C. as the Care Is Essential Campaign continues its fight for federal investment in Home and Community Based Services, and the Biden Administration struggles to pick up the pieces after the breakdown of the Build Back Better bill.

Apr 27, 2021 - The struggle for reparations is a movement that can be traced back to the days of reconstruction when Black Union soldiers sought compensation after their service during the Civil War. The movement has developed and evolved throughout the last century and a half, but the central demand remains: Black people are entitled to substantial compensation for centuries of oppression. However, a new formation within the reparations movement has adopted a problematic strategy to reach their political goals.

May 9, 2022 - Black Lives Matter Inland Empire announced its departure from the Black Lives Matter Global Network, highlighting several grievances, and perhaps, calling attention to the need for movement leaders and members of movement organizations to have broader conversations of transparency, Collective organizing and accountability. The following is a statement from Black Lives Matter Inland Empire.

Jan 28, 2021 - Welcome to The Next Decade of Abolition, a new LEFT OUT column where we will attempt to answer some of these questions as we use this space to learn from our wins and challenges of the past, and prepare for and highlight the wins and challenges of the future. We are closer now to the abolition of police, prisons, and capitalism than we have ever been. We should celebrate, and we should buckle down to build the systems we want to live with.

Nov 5, 2020 - For years - and especially after 9/11 - activists, whistle-blowers, journalists and authors highlighted the emergence and proliferation of the U.S. surveillance state. Alfred McCoy, author of In The Shadows Of The American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power, traced this surveillance state back to the United State’s military endeavors throughout the world. It is and has always been rooted in the racism of an imperialist state. The folding of surveillance and intelligence gathering into municipal and state law enforcement agencies, using military funded programs and private investment, have been the primary ways of facilitating the emergence of the U.S. surveillance state. 

Oct 30, 2020 - Dukakis lost the election and planted the seeds for a narrative that suggested the Democratic Party was weak on crime. Pushing against this, 1992 presidential candidate Bill Clinton proposed a tough-on-crime agenda to rival the GOP. The repercussions of Clinton’s $30 billion Crime Bill are still being felt decades later. The new legislation introduced the Three-Strike law which carried life sentences for people with three or more felonies. Clinton further stripped the welfare system, added a five-year lifetime limit to government assistance, and a lifetime ban for anyone convicted of a drug related felony. 

Oct 27, 2020 - The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense calls upon the American people in general and the Black people in particular to take careful note of the racist California legislature, which is now considering legislation aimed at keeping the Black people disarmed and powerless at the very same time that racist police agencies throughout the country are intensifying the terror, brutality, murder and repression of Black people.

Oct 22, 2020 - The Social Dilemma has received a ton of critique since it’s Netflix debut in early September 2020. And rightfully so - the irony of a Big Tech streaming platform in the digital age platforming a documentary about the dangers of Big Tech (specifically Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) is a good place to start. If it often feels like we are living through a simulation, this documentary confirms what we know about capitalism: Corporations influence our wants, needs, and ideas as a means of making a profit for themselves and their shareholders. However, The Social Dilemma misses something else very critical to the functioning of capitalism, but often conveniently skipped over within mainstream ideology: racism and the particular impact of Bg Tech amassing profit and personal data from Black people and what that means for our lives.

Oct 20, 2020 - Though widely regarded as one of the more progressive states in the country, California actually has a long history that says otherwise. From the days of labor leader Denis Kearny’s severe anti-Chinese sentiment and the popular slogan “The Chinese Must Go!” to the Mexican Repatriation movement of the early 20th century. California has a long history of racism and violence towards people of color and immigrants.

Sep 29, 2020 - It is in this context of status quo party politics-from Democrats and Trump’s Republican party touting their achievements for Black Americans in the form of federal prison reform (truly serving to help a fraction of the Balck prison population in the US) and a superficial drop in Black unemployment (eroded by the current economic and health crisis with little hope of return) that distorts and confuse perceptions of democracy, and particularly for Black people, the possibilities of actual equality, repair, racial justice and recognition of our humanity. Further the democrats, the so-called party of the people, have been the ones to impose some of the most repressive policies of our generation (e.g. The Clinton administration’s omnibus crime bill and Obama administration’s continuation of the Wall st. bailouts, deportation and drone programs).  And when Black people demand an end to mass incarceration and police Brutality, and a shifting of federal and local funding from police departments and prison expansion to services like healthcare, housing, education, childcare etc. to be universally available. 

Sep 29, 2020 - We could start this letter off with something deep and affirming about how trash 2020 has been, but we know that for Black people 2020 is just an example of a familiar set of conditions that we, and our communities, and our lineages have experienced for generations. These conditions go further beyond this moment of us writing this and you reading it to before us, but hopefully not much longer after us. Both the generations-long experiences and the current moment we are in have set the stage for the LEFT OUT platform to exist. Our mission:

Aug 24, 2020 - Contrary to popular belief, Black history is not confined to the 28 days of February. From the Haitian Revolution to the Nat Turner Rebellion, the Watts Uprising, the March on Washington and the inception of the Underground Railroad and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the fight for Black Liberation has been a struggle that has continued all year long, for 400 years. Over the last three months the world has seen the largest uprisings throughout the African diaspora in history, and those uprisings were not solitary or isolated to events from this year alone. The uprisings in 2020 built on the uprisings of 2014-2016, the uprisings of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and further. It is within our tradition - the Black Radical Tradition - to struggle towards liberation. 

Jul 31, 2020 - Every 10 years the U.S. population is asked to answer twelve questions in the Census. This year, Census 2020 has everyone from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to local community organizations gearing up to ensure a high turn out, particularly for so-called “Hard-to-Count '' populations, a term often referring to poor and working class Black communities.  The information that is captured in the census is the data that helps determine everything from the number of congressional seats each state is awarded, to the amount of federal dollars allocated to cities and states. LEFT OUT Magazine took a look at what is at stake for the 2020 US Census for Chicagoans. 

Jul 10, 2020 - As ideas about socialism become more accepted, it feels like socialists are everywhere you look. We have democratic socialists in Congress, running for president, on city councils in cities like Chicago and Seattle, and now, in the criminal justice system. Across the country, we’ve seen more and more progressive and explicitly Leftist prosecutors and district attorneys.

Jul 9, 2020 - I’ve lived in Dallas, Texas for all of my life. I’ve known very little apart from fiercely hot summers filled with burning concrete, concealed racism, and a people dedicated to appearances so much so that the city of Dallas  has a reputation for it.

Jul 9,2020 - By Memorial Day, May 25, 2020, many of us had been under quarantine for about three months. Some working from home and juggling childcare, others facing three months of unemployment, and still others facing the threat of the virus and going into their essential jobs day in and day out.

In this time, we witnessed wild cat strikes, social distanced pickets, car caravan protests and so on for increased health and safety measures on the job or against furloughs and layoffs. These worker-led actions exposed deplorable working conditions, the doubled hardship for workers of color who were dying in from the virus in record numbers, and the lack of any shred of democracy, even to have a say over your own life, at work in the US.

Jul 9, 2020 - In order to understand what class struggle means, first, we need to understand what class is. Generally speaking, economic classes are split into three groups, upper-class, middle-class and the poor but in reality there are only two classes. The bourgeoisie and the working-class, or the haves and have-nots. Income does not determine someone’s class status, although it may influence their political orientation. Class is determined by an individual’s relationship with the means of production “you either own it or you work for it.”