Many students, after we learn about social death and natal alienation, note that they used to think that slavery was only stolen labor.

🚨BREAKING🚨 More than 600 workers at Hachette Book Group just voted overwhelmingly to unionize, creating the largest union in trade publishing history! newsguild.org/hachette-boo...

BREAKING: A federal court permanently blocked Governor DeSantis’ classroom censorship law, the "Stop WOKE Act," from taking effect. The law would've restricted students and educators in Florida from discussing things like race and gender in higher ed classrooms.

‼️BREAKING: The 11th Circuit blocked Florida from enforcing the Stop WOKE Act in higher education. The 2022 law prohibited educators from teaching about race & gender. @alexmar.bsky.social reported on the broad resistance to the conservative legislation's “idiotic” & “disastrous” effect on schools.

While all these deaths have hit me, Nolan Wells has truly made me weep. He goes out with all of his white friends, and they return without him. This is the America that has always existed, but people feel very emboldened under this trash-administration.

The epitome of the Gall of Whiteness is that were calling him Maine’s Mamdani while Actual Mamdani was & still is being presented as a danger to people & couldn’t even get endorsed by his own senators.

And, lastly, on the 4th of July weekend, 18-year-old Nolan Wells went on a boat off the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, with some of his friends, all of them white. All of his friends come back, but Wells does not. He's declared missing on July 4 and the authorities find his body on Horn Island on July 6

On July 5, two Tennessee National Guardmen shot and killed 20-year-old Tyrin Johnson while pursuing him in Memphis. Of course, they say that Johnson pulled a gun on them. www.cbsnews.com/news/nationa...

The truly killer part is how the first incident garnered so much attention and empathy because it fit neatly into anti-Trump politics while the latter two has been met with a thud outside the Black community because it implicates larger more systemic issues.

Some of these people are trying to be slick. They’re defending awful people from rightful criticism and accountability and simultaneously trying to discredit abolition by appropriating its language but not dealing with its politics.

The union reminding us that we can refuse to communicate with department chairs or administrators over non-college email cuz that could subject personal emails to public records requests. So many things to remember at work.

Toni Morrison said, “Art does not cleanse you and make you morally superior... even when it has a very strong political content. The artist himself is not made any better. I still have to try to be the best person I can be.” Art, scholarship, or activism––there’s the work and then there’s the work.

Toni Morrison noted that writing in a way that has a point and politics but doesn't come off like a lecture involves a lot of craftwork.

I co-organized in 2023 this @haymarketbooks.org conversation between @lukemessac.bsky.social and @kenyonfarrow.bsky.social about Dr. Messac's book on medical debt. Such an informative and powerful dialogue! You can listen to "Medical Debt and Racial Justice" here. open.spotify.com/episode/4wlz...

Philando Castile often paid for the lunches of students who couldn’t afford them or had debt. After his murder, his mother, Valerie Castile, donated money to wipe out lunch debt and was part of getting Governor Tim Walz to implement free school lunch. www.theguardian.com/us-news/arti...

#tdih 2016 Philando Castile was shot to death 💔 by a police officer in a suburb of Saint Paul, Minn., at a traffic stop. Castile was known as “Mr. Phil” to students at the elementary school where he was a nutrition supervisor. #BlackLivesMatter #TeachTruth www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/ph...

I feel bad for Folarin Balogun and the Black woman on the DC Metro in that photograph. I’m worried for their wellbeing and safety. And disgusted by how they‘re treated as fungible.

I had a terrific day.

Free access (for now) to an article about W.E.B. Du Bois’s critiques of environmental racism and the privatization of natural resources. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Updated story with full details of what will go down in the annals of sporting infamy, including how White House officials including commerce secretary Lutnick and Andrew Giuliani (son of), who leads the World Cup task force, engaged lawyers to ais US Soccer's appeal www.nytimes.com/2026/07/05/u...

Trump called Infantino on Wednesday to get Balogun's red card lifted. Nice to ride alon with Tyler Pager on what will be seen (and is) in many parts as one of the biggest scandals in World Cup history. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/05/u...

Rode a bike from Harvard Square to South Station in 21.5 minutes.

My dear friend, a major World Cup fan, told me that Folarin Balogun’s red card being rescinded is “Hegelian,” lol.

Two years ago, Vozinha told FIFA, “We all share the goal of reaching the World Cup and we’re going to fight really hard to get there... That’s our objective and we know it won’t be easy, but I think that now is the time.”

Disorganized abandonment at the National Mall.

“…thinking that food is raised not to eat but to sell at good profit; that houses are built not to shelter the masses but to make real estate agents rich; and solemnly declaring that without private profit there can be no food nor homes. All this is ridiculous.” — W.E.B. Du Bois, 1953

“We have made Science the prisoner of Big Business.” W.E.B. Du Bois wrote this in 1950.

For W.E.B. Du Bois, race pride and Pan-Africanism were ways combat the racism of labor unions and economic exclusion. Leftist critics of identity politics don’t seem to talk about this much.

Stuart Hall and Alan O’Shea said that the left “must take the struggle over common sense seriously.” “Each crisis provides an opportunity to shift the direction of popular thinking, instead of simply mirroring the right’s populist touch or pursuing short-term opportunism.”

Saw a post that said if you’re gonna lose, lose like Cabo Verde.

In her adjuncting days, pre-phd, RWG used to teach Johnson's Education of Mingo pretty regularly. Mingo thinks about "slaves are tools with life in them & tools are lifeless slaves," and takes appropriate action no longer to be the master's tool.

One year after Trump signed his “big, beautiful bill,” it has begun reshaping the country. At least 4 million people have lost food stamps. Millions more will lose healthcare. Refugees and other legal immigrants are getting kicked off the safety net. And the wealthiest Americans have gotten richer.

I knew Cabo Verde scored by the cheers from the fan zone down the street.

The reframed how I understood the "master's tools" quote by Lorde. Ruthie reminds us to pay attention to the apostrophe.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore said, “The issue is not whether the master uses, or endorses the use of, some tool or another. Rather, who controls the conditions and the ends to which any tools are wielded? ... [Audre] Lorde proposes a decisive seizure whose strategy works toward multiple ends.”

Frederick Douglass had a debate with the labor movement about its use of slavery as a metaphor and how the singularity of slavery and its impact on Black people were dismissed. It is a debate that has yet to be resolved as many of us struggle for a language to articulate the impact of big tech/AI.

When you got a bunch of parts and start to figure out the story you're writing. Feels awesome.

The most important thing to know about tomorrow's holiday is what time the gym closes early.

Queen Mother by Ashley D. Farmer: Black Nationalism, #Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore www.reparations.now/queen-mother...

Incredible moment where Fox News puts up a graphic with all the reasons it opposes the DSA and why people should be afraid of them

Mamdani: "As we mark 250 years ... we see the wealthiest country -- one where children go to sleep hungry while the world's first trillionaire hungers for more ... we see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans"

All these Jalen Brunson workout videos circulating… dude’s mobility and balance are winning me over and I don’t appreciate that.

W.E.B. Du Bois, known for being a very, very, very politically committed man, enjoyed the company of women, fought for the right to dance, defended sports, and went on vacation.

Pope Leo is my nemesis. I think of him when I’m struggling through a workout, how, at his age, he carried the cross for the entire Good Friday procession and it makes me keep going. Whatever it takes.

Was talking to a Cape Verdean man about today’s game and the curfews being imposed around the festivities. We talked about the double standard for them vs the Scotland fans. He said they get to do whatever they want ”but we’re Black.”

Ran almost 5 miles in 90 degrees. I feel invincible.

New month, new habits. As Octavia E. Butler wrote in her journal, “All good things must begin.”

“I’m not hurting anyone. We just don’t want data centers.” “I just graduated from Stoklosa Middle School. I am the future.” www.bostonherald.com/2026/06/30/l...

From 2011: “Celebrity developer Donald Trump has revived the theory that President Barack Obama was born overseas… That theory first emerged in the spring of 2008, as Clinton supporters circulated an anonymous email questioning Obama’s citizenship.” www.politico.com/story/2011/0...