I found out from venue staff after my concert last night with Wadada Leo Smith in LA that some z!onists had waged an email campaign to try to cancel it. Wonder how often that’s happening… Anyway ✌🏾 ecm.lnk.to/defiantlife

Also fuck Mike Johnson for saying politicians can't survive off $175k salaries but they expect citizens to live off $40k or $7.25 an hour. Fuck all the way off

Every week or so I think about the fact that the cops/government shot a white man, Alex Pretti, in cold blood and nothing has happened to his murderers. The murderers still have their jobs and the unarmed white man is a cautionary tale for white people to not challenge the white supremacist state.

So key to MLK & Coretta Scott King's relationship was a shared commitment to fight and to a Christianity that demanded justice on earth. “I am not a ceremonial symbol. I am an activist,” Scott King stressed. “I didn’t just emerge after Martin died—I was always there and involved.”

Coretta Scott King hadn’t liked how ministers would encourage people to “go pray instead of going to do something.” No, God required us to act against injustice. "If we are to develop the creative Christianity so desperately needed in today's world, we will have to rediscover Jesus the radical.”

MLK is taken with her from their first date (he's never met a woman like her!), Coretta Scott takes many months to decide he is the one. She liked how “relaxed and free” heseemed, so “secure with himself” & funny. Perhaps most importantly, he was a listener and had such a vision "for change".

Back to MLK & Coretta Scott's first date, where they talk about racism & capitalism (!). She's more of an activist than him when they meet. He's smitten, saying she has “all the qualities he wanted in a wife—beauty, personality, character & intelligence.” She's incredulous but agrees to a 2nd date.

That's right folks. The triple evils of "war, poverty & militarism" are part of Coretta's politics BEFORE she meets Martin. She meets Paul Robeson and Bayard Rustin through this work long before she meets MLK. Progressive Party activists are massively red-baited--the FBI take notice of her then.

Here's a crucial part: As a student, Coretta becomes active in the Progressive Party. Henry Wallace is making a 3rd party challenge for president in 1948 from the left on issues of segregation, economic justice & militarism. She is one of 150 Black people at their convention of 3000 in Philadelphia.

As she later told James Baldwin, Coretta Scott was still a bit of a 'tomboy' when she met Martin King & as Baldwin put it "ferociously informal"--wearing pants, independent & already an activist. But we're getting ahead of our story. CS would graduate Alabama's Lincoln Normal School valedictorian.

A week ago, I started this thread on Coretta Scott King. Please amplify. We're back in Alabama where Coretta Scott is growing up a “tomboy”: “I was tough ...I would fight; real fight, real hard... [A]s I got to become a teenager, I began to be much more ladylike & I stopped fighting.” But...

Coretta Scott King explained, “I keep seeing these books and I say, ‘It didn’t happen that way.’ … And that becomes history if you don’t correct it.” Martin Luther King married a feminist intellectual freedom fighter with unflinching determination—“beyond steel” her friends said. A 🧵:

“I am an activist,” Coretta Scott King stressed. “I didn’t just emerge after Martin died—I was always there & involved.” A political partnership from the beginning, Dr. King married a feminist freedom fighter with unflinching determination. He wouldn't have been the leader he was without her.

I started this thread yesterday on Coretta Scott King for her 99th birthday. Every day I'll continue it. “Not enough attention has been focused on the roles that women have played in the struggle." she told a reporter in 1966, "Women have been the backbone of the whole civil rights movement.”

“I am made to sound like an attachment to a vacuum cleaner,” CSK explained, “the wife of Martin, then the widow…all of which I was proud to be. But I was never just a wife, nor a widow. I was always more than a label.” So every day for the next year, I’m going to post a quote or fact about her.

Starting with my favorite from a 1968 welfare rights march, Coretta Scott King stressed, “I must remind you that starving a child is violence….Punishing a mother & her family is violence….Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical need is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence.”

A difference between educators and university administrators is that educators admire when students think, express and act on what they’ve learned, while university administrators want pliant, obedient customers

There's a major civil rights protest taking place in Selma, Alabama, right now in response to the SCOTUS decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act and the ongoing attack on Black Americans’ political power (video: defiancedispatch/IG)

"rural voters" = white people and Reuters should just say white conservatives.

Trump’s billionaire-studded China trip. Congress’ failure to rein in his illegal war on Iran. And his latest plunder of taxpayer dollars — which might be his most corrupt yet. Heather and I break it all down on this week’s Coffee Klatch:

The Trump administration is hacking to pieces the agency tasked with handling legal disputes around mine worker safety. “Every day of delay is another death sentence for our communities,” said Rebecca Shelton, Director of Policy for @appcitizenslaw.bsky.social. @kimkelly.bsky.social reports.

Paper remains the best technology invented. Argue with your grandma not me, lol.

I'm so sorry for Minnesota.

It’s time. Meet in Selma. Saturday, May 16th. blackpowerwarroom.com/dayofaction/

Two weeks ago, @TheNation published my piece arguing Democrats were about to blow a once-in-a-generation political moment on ICE. I was head down and couldn't share it. They blew it — exactly the way I said they would. A thread. 🧵 www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Science publishing giant Elsevier has joined the dozens of firms and individuals suing artificial intelligence companies over their alleged use of copyrighted works in training AI models go.nature.com/4eFGLZK

Almost 50% of Arizonans who had SNAP benefits have been kicked off of the program since last summer thanks to Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”. This is an excellent article on the cruelty, which of course is the point.

Historian of abolition here, history tells us how we got here, to put it succinctly “John Brown was hanged for treason and Robert E. Lee was not.”

Amazon is routinely violating the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, putting pregnant warehouse employees’ health at risk www.thenation.com/article/soci...

The Shell oil company reported $6.9 billion in profits during the first quarter, exceeding shareholder expectations.

Every meaningful change in American civic life has come from grassroots, organized movements. People who are doing the slow work of building power together. What book changed how you show up in your community?

Today would be Coretta Scott King’s 99th birthday. CSK was a lifelong freedom fighter & more of an activist than MLK when they met. As a student she’d supported the Progressive Party’s 3rd party challenge for president opposing US militarism, racism & economic inequality. We need to know her.

🌎HAPPY HONOR THE EARTH DAY🌍 We are grateful to have our work amplified by @democracynow❤️‍🔥 Today we honor Mother Earth’s last line of defense… INDIGENOUS PEOPLES! Help us continue this fight ✊🏽🌱❤️‍🔥 Support our work at: bit.ly/HonorTheEarthDay2026 #WaterIsLife #YouCantDrinkData #LandBack #EarthDay

The artificial intelligence industry’s data center boom is the latest chapter in a long history of environmental racism and resource exploitation in vulnerable Native communities, says Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne activist Krystal Two Bulls, the executive director of Honor the Earth.

New York City Councilmember @chiosse.bsky.social was arrested this week during an eviction protest in Brooklyn, where many residents are targeted for "deed theft." "In my soul, I could not let that take place. I could not see a family, a Black family within Bed-Stuy, removed from a home," he says.

Amal Khalil is the ninth journalist killed by Israel in Lebanon this year. She told local media in 2024 that she had received a death threat from Israel’s Mossad spy agency warning her to leave southern Lebanon or risk decapitation.

“In my soul, I could not let that take place. I could not see a family, a Black family within Bed-Stuy, removed from a home."

The French Jewish Union for Peace has filed a legal complaint against FedEx in France for allegedly facilitating the transport of components for U.S. military jets to Israel.

Scammers are stealing homes from New Yorkers. We’re launching the Mayor’s Office of Deed Theft Prevention to defend vulnerable homeowners, and we are pausing the tax lien sale for the next six months as we review and fix a broken system.

Brazil bans Kalshi and Polymarket from operating in the country. obviously things aren't perfect there but I think we need to think seriously about how to get institutions like theirs

'Texas A&M philosophy professor Martin Peterson is leaving the university after administrators told him in January that he couldn’t teach Plato’s Symposium in his philosophy class; they said the ancient Greek philosopher’s work violated the system’s restrictions on gender and sexuality content.' 1/3

This is a war based on lies

Meanwhile, the Chronicle has decided to interview Dr Kustov, who repeats his claim that AI agents do "qualitative social science research better than most professors globally" Imagine having tenure and stability, and choosing to shit on his colleagues in a time of great instability for academia.

They are also paying for his permeant tax breaks so he can literally work people to death and get away with it. open.substack.com/pub/westerne...

Exactly 💯

The success of the U.S. vaccination system depends on two fundamental pillars: parents trusting in vaccines and children having access to them. Under RFK Jr., both are in peril.

Contrary to public perception a huge % of pregnant teenagers in the 1990s were impregnated by adult men. The younger they were, the larger the average age gap between mother and father was. Fixing teen pregnancy was in part a clampdown on statutory rape. That's what conservatives want to reverse.

Major media outlets are helping JD Vance play both sides — posing as the principled adviser opposed to the war but also as the loyal helpmate supporting his president's war. Get a grip. Vance is helping a criminal president conduct an illegal war. It’s a scandal that working the press works so well.