asha bandele

A writer’s life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity. ~ #ToniMorrison

Love is a word Another kind of open As a diamond comes into a knot Of flame I am Black Because I come from the earth's inside Take my word for jewel in your open light 87 in the Year of our Lorde #AudreLorde

"Follow the evidence." @drcarlhart is a national hero. Read his incredible new work, #DrugUseForGrownUps. It's about our courage to truly know freedom.https://twitter.com/AlexStevensKent/status/1361566897754537990 …

I came to love this film about people I love. I left broken hearted & disappointed but also hopeful that those of us who love liberation will take the time to learn the truth #FreeTheTruth #FreeEmAll

In the meantime, donate to #HamptonHouse and make it a National Landmark filled with a whole truth. A truth unredacted by police or their liberal “well-intentioned counterparts.”

The implication is that if he continued politically engaging Black people, things would be better. STFU. Engage the white killers & their silent coconspirators

The violence in Chicago like the violence everywhere there’s oppression has a source. And while #ChairmanFredHampton surely did more than most in shifting harm in his short life, the violence that continued was a result of real damn choices. He didn’t have to do EVERYTHING.

#JeffreyHaas whose book they use say the loss of #ChairmanFred helped also cause all the violence that would come to Chicago. I mean WTF?

I don’t even understand why there wasn’t a Black actor from Chicago or the US who could have played #ChairmanFredHampton. I don’t understand why anyone would be proud of a story grounded in the weakest & most broken among us, #WilliamONeal but not in our power

Why in the entire hell would a Black producer use a white guy’s telling of OUR history when it’s right there, still on the Westside?

They mention the medical program but that the very fact that we even care about sickle cell & pushed for Black-centered research comes from another Panther, a woman, #JanetCyril

#ChairmanFredHampton was a scholar, a prelaw student & master organizer, also from when he was a young teen.

#MarkClark was an organizer from a time he was a young teen. An artist. He organizes the churches to to the first Free Breakfast Program in #Peoria. And when called, he stood up with his life #SayHisName

We are our theories & our practices & our victories & our resistance, too rarely unpacked or considered. We are our whole lives.

Our strategy matters. The culture that informs that strategy, matters. We are more than our brutal murders.

I did love #MamaAkuaNjeri’s reading of her poem. That was beautiful. But also beautiful is all the ways the legacy continues in the work of #ChairmanFredHamptonJr

Why don’t we learn the breadth & brilliance of #ChairmanFredHampton’s strategy? Are we only supposed to learn, like Hoover said, we speak, we die?

Why are we not even asking why the founder & head of the Peoria Chapter, #DefenseCaptainMarkClark had to be called in as security?