'Black Panther' celebrates a monarchy, an all-Black female military, and a superhero who colludes with government agencies and extends carceral punishment for wrongdoings.
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Posted inRACE & PLACE
How 'the shadow of state abandonment' fostered then foiled Young Thug's YSL
There's a deep connection between policing and "urban renewal" in Atlanta. Through the state's various strongholds, including the police, transforming urban space always ends up taking some communities off the map entirely. YSL (and Young Thug) might be the next big casualties.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
Abolition on TV: Pop Justice Wrapped
The top shows of 2022 crafted new realms, drew parallels to social issues and, whether intentionally or not, illuminated many elements within broader policing structures.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
Why your new diet is antiblack
The author of 'Belly of the Beast' weighs in on racism, fatphobia, and diet culture.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
Haunting the archive
What happens when the child of a slave writes over the texts that conspired to kill their mother? Haunted by the headlines that dehumanized their mother even after her death, poet Victoria Newton Ford scrapes the media record in order to answer the question.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
Sentenced to Trauma: Inside the volatility and disorder of prison
How arbitrary punishment in prison spurs invasive nightmares, dissociative events, crippling anxiety, and substance abuse.
Posted inARTS & SOUL
In the soil, in the sound: Houston's Jamal Cyrus gets to the root of Southern Black aesthetics
Houston-based visual artist Jamal Cyrus' first career-survey exhibition 'The End of My Beginning' comes to the Mississippi Museum of Art, showcasing his decadeslong exploration into the aesthetics of Black radical expression.
Posted inPOLITICS & THE PEOPLE
'A modernized, streamlined incarceration experience.' New prison technology surveils life on both sides of the wall.
While new tech promises prisoners connection, safety, and security, it also weakens incarcerated people's connection to loved ones—and hands their information over to law enforcement.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
Only Murders in the Building exemplifies the lies in 'true' crime
"The most insidious message of the show is masked behind the comedic brilliance of the performances by Gomez, Martin, and Short—an obsession with true crime makes us, citizens, arm-chair cops eager to figure out who-dun-it, violating boundaries and ethical lines, endangering ourselves and others, and confirming biases."
Posted inPOLITICS & THE PEOPLE
The Dropout dramatizes Elizabeth Holmes' fraudulent rise. Endless military funding is also a scam.
"The Dropout portrays, with acute awareness of this reality, the priorities and allegiances of our political leaders. Theranos raised $945 million from high-profile investors and public figures."
Posted inRACE & PLACE
The number of women in U.S. prisons is skyrocketing, but little data exists about their experiences.
Almost all of the data that exists about prison is based on the experiences of men.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
Longtime Memphis rapper Princess Loko died in obscurity. Will a Beyoncé feature grant her the 'Renaissance' she's overdue?
"It's like she knows they're looking for her to slip up, to linger just a little too long. Like she's telling them, 'I know you're waiting for me, but I already left.'"
Posted inSCALAWAG UPDATES
Media coverage of abortion is under attack
Scalawag is committed to fighting disinformation alongside trusted news organizations like Prism, DAME Magazine, and Rewire News Group.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
What the history books won't tell you about abolition
From the Quakers to the Black Panthers to your neighborhood sex workers, as long as there's been police, communities have created their own systems to replace them.
Posted inARTS & SOUL
The abolitionist podcast that reveals how little you know about prison
For something realer than any episode of Orange is the New Black, check out Teleway 411, a new podcast on queer life in prison from A.B.O. Comix.
Posted inSCALAWAG UPDATES
Read, Watch, Listen, Do: An Abolitionist Media Guide
From music to movies to podcasts, this guide to abolitionist media will help you understand the harms of the carceral state.
Posted inPOLITICS & THE PEOPLE
This couple wants you to know that conjugal visits are only legal in 4 states
There are only four U.S. states that currently allow conjugal visits. Couple Steve Higginbotham and Jordana Rosenfeld discuss the rules strangling intimacy on the inside.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
Abolition, popular culture, and justice: introducing 'pop justice'
"We did not come out of the womb abolitionists, but many of us feel born into this work. And as we push back against the prevailing, popular narratives about cops and prisons, we also want to make abolition more accessible."
Posted inPOLITICS & THE PEOPLE
How Durham, North Carolina, became the first US city to ban police exchanges with Israel
A successful North Carolina campaign in solidarity with Palestine adds to a Southern legacy dating back to the Civil Rights Movement.
Posted inPOLITICS & THE PEOPLE
Bad medicine in Louisiana prisons
The majority of doctors working for the Louisiana Department of Corrections have histories of sexually assaulting patients, writing under-the-table narcotic prescriptions, possession of child pornography, and drinking alcohol on-duty.
Posted inPOLITICS & THE PEOPLE
The BAmazon Loss and the Road Ahead
What can union activists across the country take away from the high-profile defeat in the union vote at Amazon in Alabama?
Posted inARTS & SOUL
The Color of Freedom: Reimagining portraits of the formerly enslaved
Honoring the people photographed in the 1930s "ex-slave narratives," researcher and documentarian Lee Hedgepeth renders their portraits in color. Part science, part art, colorization allows us to bear deeper witness to their lives—if only in our imaginations.
Posted inRACE & PLACE
Meet the Southern librarians fighting for racial justice and truth-telling
The year's battles for racial reckoning bolstered the work of abolitionist and progressive librarians as they fight neutrality and erasure in one of the oldest public institutions.
Posted inARTS & SOUL
Why drill and trap are the soundtrack of this generation's protests
Chief Keef's "Faneto" validates feelings of rebellion, but could never be described as healing. Why the drill and trap music played at protests is fitting for a generation that's through with empty promises.
Posted inSCALAWAG UPDATES
Black Power in the South: How to keep supporting the movement
As we ground our future organizing in building and expanding independent Black political power, here are some groups on the ground across the South already doing that work.
Posted inPOLITICS & THE PEOPLE
Meet Mokah Johnson, heading up a new wave of activism in Georgia politics
When a bar in the supposedly progressive college town put a racist drink called "the n****rita" on their menu, they weren't expecting to launch a political movement.
Posted inPOLITICS & THE PEOPLE
'I'm Black. I'm a mom. I'm mad.'
Erica Robbins, a Black mother and activist in Birmingham, tends to life and death issues for the homeless. As the summer of protests for Black lives comes to an end, organizers like her are holding on to the momentum—and money—raised for their work.
Posted inSCALAWAG UPDATES
Introducing Abolition Week
Scalawag's editorial team explains the motivation behind publishing work centered on Abolition—and why perspectives from incarcerated writers must be included in the news cycle.
Posted inPOLITICS & THE PEOPLE
Alabama wrote the book on Black Lives Matter, but today's challenges to defund police have Freedom Fighters back at the drawing board
Black freedom fighters in Birmingham, Alabama, changed the country. Now, Black Lives Matter organizers hope to do it again.
Posted inARTS & SOUL
'I hate that thug music.' How 'progressive' music outlets fuel false arrests in the trap scene
What led to the ICE arrest of 21 Savage? Progressive outlets profiling trap artists as criminals—even when they have no criminal history.