24 July 2020 — Race & Class

Movement for Black Lives

An interview with leading Black US organiser Barbara Ransby

‘We have to build new institutions,
we have to build new power,
we have to build a new system,
and we have to become different people
in the process’

As we witness one of the largest uprisings in US history, led by Black working-class activists, Race & Class interviews Barbara Ransby, a US-based historian, feminist and longtime organiser, on the significance of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) uprisings across the US ignited by the murder of George Floyd.

Tracing the origins of the M4BL emerging in 2012 as a response to racial capitalism, Barbara situates the current moment as a convergence of three crises: of liberal democracy, the global coronavirus pandemic, and a spontaneous uprising against police violence and white supremacy.

Now in 2020, numerous young Black activists, many of them feminists, many of them queer, are pushing for radical change that dismantles the carceral state and builds a visionary movement for the entire planet.

Is this a watershed moment? How does M4BL address issues of police violence, incarceration and white supremacy? What does an abolitionist agenda look like in practice? Can the ‘Left’ learn to put Black demands at the forefront?

Read excerpts from the interview here

We will be publishing the full interview in an upcoming issue of Race & Class

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