Contributor: William C. Anderson

Eusi Kwayana is one of those people we should seek out. You may not hear his name as often as those of other African and Caribbean revolutionaries, but his story is just as important. After learning about Kwayana, I read his 1972 book The Bauxite Strike and the Old Politics, in which he rigorously details […]

“The anarchists were reflex to an evil history which penetrated their own remarkable and macabre achievements.”– Cedric Robinson The history of classical anarchism is filled with radical foresight, mistakes, and persecution. Its past helps explain how the word “socialism” became conflated with state-building. Important awareness of anti-state or stateless socialism(s) and the broader historical socialist […]

To be free, to walk in dignity—for these precious privileges some men will go anywhere, sacrifice anything. — Homer Smith Black America is not guaranteed much, if anything, under the category of citizenship. It has never prevented us descendants of enslaved Africans from falling victim to repression, exclusion and constant infractions. Our supposed rights are […]

“You didn’t see me on television, you didn’t see news stories about me. The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put together pieces out of which I hoped organization might come.”– Ella Baker  One of the most important things that the Black Panther Party left us was […]

“The burden of a long sentence would be lightened by the satisfaction of knowing that the mission set out for me, that of helping my people free themselves from the oppressor, is being accomplished.” — Martin Sostre Malcolm X once said, “We’ve only suffered from America’s hypocrisy … If you go to jail, so what? […]

The state cannot fail those who it was never meant to protect. To call the U.S. a “failed state” implies that it had the intention of serving the people it was designed to oppress. Yet, the proliferation of this form of criticism among liberals, leftists, and otherwise became more prevalent in the wake of compounding […]

In the U.S., when Black people suffer and die, it’s considered progress. How we produce and digest historical narratives has everything to do with it. Selective remembrances are the tools politicians, institutions, and the state use to shape how people feel about themselves. This happens to such an extent that it's been possible to convince far too many people that they’re supposed to die for the U.S. nation. This logic isn’t exclusive to the U.S., because nationalisms employ this strategy around the world. However, the narrative of selective sacrifice deployed against Black Americans is a barrier imposed on the struggles for liberation, and must be directly challenged.

Author and independent writer William C. Anderson interviews veteran organizer and former Black Panther and political prisoner Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin on the current political crisis, fascism, and rising relevance of Black anarchism.