In late July, flyers were spotted around so-called Austin. These flyers described and celebrated the various acts of expropriation (aka looting) that took place at the beginning of the uprisings in June. We’ve transcribed the text along with an image of the flyer for preservation and to help spread the message.
Black Sovereign Nation Calls for Boycott of Austin Public Libraries
Modified from a series of Facebook posts by Black Sovereign Nation. Read below for background on the #NoSanctuaryForBlackFutures Campaign. Visit BSN’s campaign website for more links, info, & ways to plug in.
From now until August, Black Sovereign Nation’s No Sanctuary for Black Futures Campaign is calling for a boycott of Austin Public Library. We would like to send the library administration and the City of Austin a strong message that our community takes equity very seriously. The library is an amazing space at which Black youth should feel welcome, celebrated, and supported. Unfortunately, APL does not have policy or training that can engender that type of environment. Our ask is simple! Develop stronger policy so that our kids can return to the libraries, where they belong.
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UT Protects YCT Misogynoir & Rape Apologism
Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable
On Wednesday evening, the YCT hosted an event where Michael Quinn Sullivan & Cary Cheshire of the right-wing advocacy group Empower Texans came and spoke to them. Following on the heels of the mass protest against the YCT’s pro-Kavanaugh demonstration on West Mall, figures like Paul Bettencourt pressured the University in ramping up their already extravagant efforts to protect the group. In anticipation of possible protests, police swarmed the area around Waggener hall. On the outside, 5-7 cops stood on guard and patrolled the area. Hidden away by the GDC and SAC, two patrol cars waited. On the inside, the lobby of the building contained another 4 police officers. Finally, the room for the YCT’s even contained approximately 5 police officers.
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The 5% Project (It Really Be Ya Own People!)
By La’Kayla Celeste. Republished with permission of the author.
I don’t make a habit of reading The Daily Texan, one of the nation’s largest college newspapers and source of great pride at the University of Texas at Austin. I don’t pick up the paper because of the residual bad taste in my mouth from several casually racist encounters I’ve had with the Texan over the 4 years of my undergraduate education. Now, as a second-year graduate student at the University completing a Masters Degree in Women’s and Gender Studies, my main concern is meeting my deadlines. This was the business I was minding when I happened across Volume 118, Issue 131 of the publication while on campus one morning a few weeks ago. It was the image that struck me: a close-up of Daniel Nkoola, Black creative and undergraduate student in Radio-Television-Film, the major I earned one of my bachelor’s degrees in. I picked up the paper, excited to read when something else in the top, right hand corner caught my eye. A graphic proclaimed that this story was the 6th installment in ‘The 5% Project,” a collaboration between The Daily Texan and UT’s chapter of the National Association of Black Journalist. I stared at the notation for a few minutes before snapping a picture on my phone, leaving the paper where I found it.
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Crash The Party: Shitty Moments from Roundup
Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable
CW: sexual assault, harassment, homophobia, racism
We’ve just made it through another series of hellish weeks, with SXSW and Roundup hitting us back to back. As we come out on the other side of Roundup, we wanted to highlight some of the moments from this weekend that made even clearer why Greek Life is, at its core, a racist, cisheteropatriarchal institution. We’ve captured some of the student discussions and other events of this weekend, including catcalls, insider secrets, and assaults. Remember that this is only a small sampling of the events and experiences of this weekend, and there are likely many more stories that remain untold due to fear, shame, stigma, or the normalization of the horrors of Roundup & Greek Life.
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Words from Texas Prisoners: Excerpt from “Prisons are Plantations”
Anonymously published document. Full document here. Originally spotted on Revolutionary Horizon‘s facebook page.
We are republishing a collection of excerpts from a larger piece composed of interviews with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated folks from Texas, Illinois, and Florida. The original document uses interviews and case studies with prisoners, guards, and historical analysis to demonstrate how prisons are extensions of the plantation system and mirror pre-1865 slave codes. We’ve highlighted passages that reflect the experiences and conditions of inmates in Texas prisons. We hope this will give students and other non-incarcerated folks a better idea of the conditions and struggles of prisoners, and expose students to some of the worlds that we are isolated from. In particular, students should recognize the complicity of their own schools in this system. UT’s Investment Management Corporation indirectly invests in two of the largest private prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO group [1]. The prison has long been the hidden underside of the University. While the University produces new citizens & professionals, the prison strips away citizenship and produces captivity. We hope the following excerpts will inspire greater awareness and energy for anti-prison organizing.
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Marielle Franco: Local Reflections on Transnational Anti-Blackness
Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable
On Tuesday, March 20th, the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies hosted a Foro Urgente–a regular series of panels & discussions on important recent events in Latin America–to discuss the assassination of Marielle Franco. Marielle Franco was a councilwoman in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil who was a black woman from the favelas, a lesbian, and a socialist. Marielle frequently spoke out against the police genocide against black people and the military occupation of the city. She was shot to death in what many are calling a police assassination, as the bullets were the same kind used by the federal police.
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