Black Lives Matter: A Reading, Watching, Listening List Part 2
We have a responsibility to educate ourselves to the realities, obstacles and resistance of Black communities and other marginalized communities. To help create a new “normal” in which we no longer participate in, and benefit from, the oppression of Black people, it requires us to engage in a process of self-examination, education, and unlearning. This reading, watching and listening list provides many resources to help educate people about the history of racism, how it still persists today, and gives insights to the experiences of many people who experience racism and discrimination.
While educating ourselves is important, it is not enough. Reading is just the beginning of the work to eradicate anti-Black racism. Now is the time to acknowledge the fact that Black justice, freedom and happiness will not simply be found in books, movies, protest signs, or organizational statements.
Justice and freedom for the Black community will only be found in one's willingness to dismantle the systems that work against the Black community, may that be in the workplace, social networks, neighborhood associations, or in the family. We must continue to take real action by investing in different policies, practices and creating new systems that don’t work to the advantage of some and disadvantage of others based on race.
“It’s not just about amplifying our voices, it’s about investing in them and in our businesses, education, political representation, power, housing and art.”
~ Tre Johnson, The Washington Post
Johnson, T. (2020, June 7). When black people are in pain, white people just join book clubs. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/white-antiracist-allyship-book-clubs/2020/06/11/9edcc766-abf5-11ea-94d2-d7bc43b26bf9_story.html
Reading
1. Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate 
for Radical Movements by Charlene Carruthers
Unapologetic challenges all of us engaged in the social justice struggle to make the movement for Black liberation more radical, more queer, and more feminist. This book provides a vision for how social justice movements can become sharper and more effective through principled struggle, healing justice, and leadership development. It also offers a flexible model of what deeply effective organizing can be, anchored in the Chicago model of activism, which features long-term commitment, cultural sensitivity, creative strategizing, and multiple cross-group alliances. And Unapologetic provides a clear framework for activists committed to building transformative power, encouraging young people to see themselves as visionaries and leaders.
2. When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Cullors and Asha Bandele
From one of the cofounders of the Black Lives Matter movement comes a poetic audiobook memoir and reflection on humanity. Necessary and timely, Patrisse Cullors' story asks us to remember that protest in the interest of the most vulnerable comes from love. Leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement have been called terrorists, a threat to America. But in truth, they are loving women whose life experiences have led them to seek justice for those victimized by the powerful. In this meaningful, empowering account of survival, strength, and resilience, Patrisse Cullors and Asha Bandele seek to change the culture that declares innocent Black life expendable.
3. Policing Black Lives by
Robyn Maynard
Delving behind Canada’s veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance, Policing Black Lives traces the violent realities of anti-blackness from the slave ships to prisons, classrooms and beyond. Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of nearly four hundred years of state-sanctioned surveillance, criminalization and punishment of Black lives in Canada. Emerging from a critical race feminist framework that insists that all Black lives matter, Maynard’s intersectional approach to anti-Black racism addresses the unique and understudied impacts of state violence as it is experienced by Black women, Black people with disabilities, as well as queer, trans, and undocumented Black communities.
4. Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y. Davis
In these newly collected essays, interviews, and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world. Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism for today's struggles, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyzes today's struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine.
5. Heavy by Kiese 
Laymon
In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to his trek to New York as a young college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, Laymon asks himself, his mother, his nation, and us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.
6. Your Silence Will Not Protect You by Audre Lorde
Your Silence Will Not Protect You is a 2017 collection of essays, speeches, and poems by African American author and poet Audre Lorde. The collection focuses on key themes such as: shifting language into action, silence as a form of violence, and the importance of history. Lorde describes herself as a "Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet", and addresses the difficulties in communication between Black and white women.
Watching
1. Malcolm X: 
A tribute to the controversial black activist and leader of the struggle for black liberation. He hit bottom during his imprisonment in the '50s, he became a Black Muslim and then a leader in the Nation of Islam. His assassination in 1965 left a legacy of self-determination and racial pride.
2. I am Not Your Negro:
In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, "Remember This House." The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and assassinations of three of his close friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time of Baldwin's death in 1987, he left behind only 30 completed pages of this manuscript. Filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished.
3. 12 Years A 
Slave:
Solomon Northup, a free African-American, is promised a fortnightly job by Brown and Hamilton. However, after arriving in Washington DC, he realizes that he has been sold into slavery.
4. Selma:
Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 legally desegregated the South, discrimination was still rampant in certain areas, making it very difficult for blacks to register to vote. In 1965, an Alabama city became the battleground in the fight for suffrage. Despite violent opposition, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo) and his followers pressed forward on an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, and their efforts culminated in President Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
5. LA 92 
(Netflix):
Footage traces decades of police brutality and public uprising leading up to the 1992 acquittal of four LAPD officers filmed beating Rodney King.
6. The urgency of intersectionality by Kimberlé Crenshaw (TedTalk)
Now more than ever, it's important to look boldly at the reality of race and gender bias -- and understand how the two can combine to create even more harm. Kimberlé Crenshaw uses the term "intersectionality" to describe this phenomenon; as she says, if you're standing in the path of multiple forms of exclusion, you're likely to get hit by both. In this moving talk, she calls on us to bear witness to this reality and speak up for victims of prejudice.
Listening
1. We Aren’t Who We Think We Are by Leah Donnella (Podcast):
Every family has a myth about who they are and where they came from. And there are a lot of reasons people tell these stories. Sometimes it's to make your family seem like they were part of an important historical event. Other times, it's to hide something that is too painful to talk about. That last point can be especially true for African American families.
2. Political Blackness by Reni Eddo-Lodge (Podcast):
Reni deep dives into what political blackness means to the different generations. Featuring the Shadow Home Secretary [Diane Abbott MP], former TV commissioner and activist [Farrukh Dhondy], rapper, poet, author and activist [Akala], activists [Sisters Uncut] and Operation Black Vote's [Simon Woolley]
Kiese Laymon, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Arundhati Roy join Kimberlé Crenshaw for the 9th installment of "Under the Blacklight." Together, they mine the complexities of narrative construction amid disaster, and shine the blacklight on the stories and counter-stories that shape the future and make meaning of the past.
On this installment of "Under the Blacklight," the mothers and sisters of the #SayHerName Movement -- Fran Garrett, Rhanda Dormeus, Maria Moore, Sharon Cooper, Gina Best, and Sharon Wilkerson -- join Kimberlé Crenshaw for a very special episode. Through telling the stories of their loved ones, the women weave together the experiences that bring them together in a sisterhood of both sorrow and strength.
5. How to Survive the End of the World by Autumn Brown and Adrienne Maree Brown (Podcast):
Join Autumn Brown and Adrienne Maree Brown, two sisters who share many identities, as writers, activists, facilitators, and inheritors of multiracial diasporic lineages, as well as a particular interest in the question of survival, as we embark on a podcast that delves into the practices we need as a community, to move through endings and to come out whole on the other side, whatever that might be.
6. Common feat. John Legend, “Glory” (Song):
"Glory" was written for Selma, a film chronicling the Civil Rights era, but the gospel-infused song proved just as relevant in the face of modern-day issues. During Common's verses on the Oscar-winning track, the rapper and actor connects moments like Rosa Parks refusing to sit on the back of the bus to the protests in Ferguson.