This Op-Ed piece by Roxanne Gay appeared in The New York Times.

I AM tired of writing about slain black people, particularly when those responsible are police officers, the very people obligated to serve and protect them. I am exhausted. I experience this specific exhaustion with alarming frequency. I am all too aware that I have the luxury of such exhaustion.

One of the greatest lies perpetrated on our culture today is the notion that dash cameras on police cruisers and body cameras on police officers are tools of justice. Video evidence, no matter the source, can document injustice, but rarely does this incontrovertible evidence keep black people safe or prevent future injustices.

Sandra Bland, 28 years old, was pulled over earlier this month in Waller County, Tex., by a state trooper, Brian T. Encinia. She was pulled over for a routine traffic stop. She shouldn’t have been pulled…

in the next moment
and the next, you
will change the
way you look at
me – our perspectives
are never still
.
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“Avocado” singer Jah9 brings her roots revivalism to Hartford–Robert Cooper reports for the Hartford Courant.

In just three short years, a young group of Rastafarian artists have managed to dominate the world of reggae music with a back-to-the-foundations sound that has been dubbed a movement — neo-roots or reggae revivalist — by the Jamaican media. One of those artists, Jah9, a poet turned singer, will be making her Connecticut debut in Hartford July 30 at the Infinity Music Hall.

I think people relate to it because it’s a simple story, it’s a love story, and it’s about simplicity.
– Singer/Songwriter Jah9

Jah9 is one of the more prominent of the ever-growing group of so-called neo-roots artists, which also includes Chronixx, Jah Bouks, Jesse Royal, Protoje, Kabaka Pyramid, Hempress Sativa, and Kelissa. Although the Jamaican media has labeled this a new movement, Jah9 has lukewarm feelings about any journalistic tags and…

Holland Cotter reviews the exhibition “¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York,” held in three parts at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio and Loisaida Inc., for The New York Times.

On July 26, 1969, a group of young Latinos stood in the band shell in Tompkins Square Park, in the East Village, and made an announcement. They were founding a New York branch of a revolution-minded political party called the Young Lords.

Inspired by the Black Panthers and an earlier street-gang-turned-activist Young Lords group in Chicago, their purpose was to gain social justice for New York’s working-class Latino population, then largely Puerto Rican and treated with contempt by the city government.

Most of the members onstage that day were recent college graduates well versed in leftist political theory. To gain the trust and cooperation of Latino communities — concentrated in the East Village, East…