Blog
I remember standing in our family's living room, watching one of CNN's embedded journalists report from a fleet of tanks as they sped over the desert, toward Baghdad. This captivating, concerning spectacle was one of many hours of pro-invasion propaganda. I remember turning to my parents on the couch and asking why the US was invading Iraq. Appropriately, they shrugged and shook their heads in response. They didn't get it either.
These economic sanctions have come on the heels of a series of violent government-initiated attacks on the Uhuru Movement that began in earnest with the July 29, 2022 militarized FBI raid on seven Uhuru properties and includes two acts of arson, one arrest and interrogation, censorship in the removal of a change.org petition and a U.S. state department announcement of a $10 million reward for information that could tie Uhuru leaders to Russian government interference in U.S. elections and public opinion influencing.
We’re happy to announce that the Student Loan Debt Relief Application has officially launched! As part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s one-time student loan debt relief plan, you can now apply for relief of up to $20,000.
...fresh, frozen, and shelf stable food items and other products from local and black farmers, producers, creatives, and other providers...
Several days ago, on Friday June 29, the FBI raided the homes and offices of black liberation activists in St. Louis, Missouri, and St. Petersburg, Florida...
According to research produced by Stanford University and a black-led asset management firm in 2019, high-performing, black-led asset management firms are perceived less favorably than are their high-performing, white-led peers...when considering their interests as a class of black professionals, despite the racism they face, capitalism affords them the privilege of livable-to-luxurious incomes and the uniquely important power of being financial capital allocators. They are skilled at framing their struggles against racism as central to advancing social justice while avoiding meaningful criticism of capitalism itself...
Without reengineering our economic activity and defining a class conscious political agenda, then even in this post Civil Rights era, black life in the US will continue to be undervalued...
The Democratic Party is ideologically incapable of protecting black or indigenous peoples from its own fascism or from Republican fascism… Continuing to subordinate black peoples' various political agendas to the leadership of the Democratic Party out of fear of electing Republicans or Trumpists is understandable, but self-defeating…
Dedrick Asante-Muhammad is the Chief of Membership, Policy and Equity at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. Here, he is interviewed by Dr. Jared Ball and Jacquie Luqman of Black Power Media in a discussion about wealth in US ethnic groups and public policy.
The initiative for a community-owned grocery store in Cherry Hill will hold a Town Hall on October 13, 2021 at 6pm ET. It’s happening in person and digitally...
At best, diversity-in-capitalism is a contaminated band aid that inadvertently distracts marginalized communities from genuine solutions – self-determined, truly democratic power. At worst, it is a clever distraction from solutions that would confront the root causes of marginalization that is put forward by wealthier liberals who support the idea of social justice, but not enough to give up the trappings of neocolonialism...
A Black Agenda Radio interview about the article, "From Black Wall Street to Black Capitalism" by Too Black
Two open letters, republished by Kuumba Report
Red power institutions that reject capitalist visions of "development" and that prioritize the sovereignty and self-determination of indigenous people are needed much more than is Thanksgiving...
Please join the Ujamaa Works Accounting & Finance Network this Saturday, November 21 at 2pm Pacific / 5pm Eastern. We're talking about Tax Deductions for Black Business Owners...
Please join the Ujamaa Works Accounting & Finance Network this Saturday, November 14 at 2pm Pacific / 5pm Eastern. We're talking about COVID-19 Financing Options for Black Businesses...
Originally published on page 17 of Wartime, the publication of Black Men Build, in October of 2020
Financial resources for cooperatives, traditional businesses and nonprofits, plus mutual aid resources
Treating the fascism of “liberal” capitalism as a safeguard against the more overt fascism of conservative capitalism does not protect anyone, but the ruling class. A genuine challenge to fascism requires more than a cosmetic shift from one capitalist political party to another. It requires an economic evolution towards egalitarian, anti-capitalist enterprise and a political vision that abandons capitalism and neoliberalism, which are the financial motivation and the philosophical justification underlying fascism...
During this pandemic, our entrepreneurs should reflect on the reality of business as usual and recognize it for what it is - the underlying force behind systemic injustice and a hindrance to the highest expression of black commerce. Instead...
...the cycle of racist brutality, outrage, inadequate reform, repeat seems to be endless. This cycle is perpetuated, in part, by the fantasy that apolitical, black capitalism can spontaneously reverse the downward trend of black household wealth and economically empower us to destroy the systems of injustice that have plagued Africans in America for centuries...
As long as we continue to give liberal and conservative capitalists control of black economic practice and black politics, systemic racism will not end. It will only evolve like a virus that disproportionately kills black people and prompts no anti-racist policy changes... Organize with other African people, study Pan-African socialism and start accumulating financial capital from non-extractive assets for your independent solutions and for the black power to implement them.
A general strike begins on May 1, 2020, May Day. Participants will not work or shop and will withhold rent, mortgage and other payments...
What is fascinating is that despite decades of hard work culminating in a financial cliff, many middle class Boomers continue to vote the same way and even scoff at my generation’s inclinations toward socialism or even watered-down capitalism in the form of democratic socialism...
The Ujamaa Works network exists because black households, native households and low income households live in a constant state of crisis under the lethal effects of systematic oppression including racism, patriarchy and healthcare capitalism, among other things. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these long-ignored problems of systemic injustice and greed... If you’d like to request assistance, volunteer, contribute or apply for business grants or loans related to the pandemic, then this page offers some options...
This is how capitalism affects most black people in the US. These are systemic failures that cannot simply be attributed to the “deficiencies” of black people, black cultures or to any other racist rationale that would somehow justify our obstructed access to clean air, clean water, a livable global climate or reasonable financial wealth...
Last weekend, from Friday October 18 to Sunday October 20, 2019, the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives held the Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy at University of Baltimore School of Law...
Systems-change is essential and yet, it too is not enough. What is also needed – and possibly more essential – is an evolutionary step forward in human consciousness...
In the United States, the need for anti-racist, democratic businesses that are pro-black and pro-indigenous comes from the institution of legal whiteness and the necessity of self-reliance among black and indigenous peoples...
The Ujamaa Works Accounting & Finance Network is a political, professional organization that’s rooted in pro-black, pro-indigenous, cooperative economics. This means that regardless of the color of our membership, we are here to develop ideas, relationships and financial practices that economically empower black and indigenous people, without replicating the destructive traits of capitalism...
Exploring the prospect of a cooperatively-owned, community-controlled grocery store in South Baltimore...
As accountants, bookkeepers and finance professionals implementing pro-black, pro-indigenous, cooperative economics, we believe that most black people, most indigenous people, most people and most ecological systems can be best-served by cooperation and collective interest...
"What does a professional organization or a corporation, have to do with human rights?"
Descendants of enslaved Africans have organized ourselves cooperatively for about as long as we have been in North America. In this interview, economist and professor, Dr. Jessica Gordon-Nembhard discusses her book about that history...