The New African Film Festival is now playing at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring, MD May 13-16th. It opened with Nigeria's selection for foreign Oscar, MY FATHER'S SHADOW and it was a powerful opening. The festival presents 26 contemporary African films from 18 different countries, including a doc on Kwame Nkrume's official photographer (EYES ON GHANA).
https://silver.afi.com/naff/

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New African Film Festival | AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center

AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center
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Want to know where cities can get the money to pay for healthcare, childcare, housing, food security? We can stop paying out millions in taxpayer dollars for police misconduct. We can start there and add in overtime fraud. You can do something with that kind of money. https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-taxpayers-on-the-hook-for-more-than-117m-in-police-misconduct-payouts-last-year
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Breakthrough has one of the best examples I’ve seen of how to create a stable community. They work with youth, economic development, housing, wellness, and violence prevention, all within their targeted area. This is abolitionist theory in action. We can all have safe communities, free of violence by the police or others, if the needs of the community are being met. Lets hope the Mamdani team finds and explores good alternatives. 7/7
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Another alternative can be the approach breakthrough.org provides in Chicago. Their goal is to provide a “safe, stable and engaged neighborhood where everyone thrives.” In addition to a number of programs they run, they also provide a free grocery store called Fresh Market. Residents within their targeted area can shop at the store twice a month for free. 6/ 7
https://breakthrough.org/mission-values-key-concepts/
Mission, Vision, Key Concepts – Breakthrough

Learn more about Breakthrough's mission, vision, and key concepts and how they inform our work and create opportunity in our community.

Breakthrough
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The disruption highlights one of the dangers of the state relying on corporations to decide which community needs will be met. The corps are just trying to get those tax deductions. Philanthropic literature criticizing the perils of reliance on corporate prioritizing goes all the way back to Andrew Carnegie’s financing of libraries. City owned groceries could help avoid the reliance on “charity” to feed hungry people. 5/7
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The idea is to get alternative access to food into underserved communities. Recently one of our local weekly food distributions was impacted by Amazon’s decision to close its cashless store Amazon Fresh. Some of the groceries donated to our food distro came from Amazon Fresh. The organizers distributed a memo saying the availability of some foods would be affected by the closure. At this distro we service 150 food insecure people. 4/7
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If we look at the PX on our military bases we can see an example of how that might work. The PX is where soldiers and their families shop. Government purchasing power allows prices to be lower than regular commercial stores. It’s been going on for years. Outside of the military, a city backed grocery store recently opened in Atlanta. 3/7
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/zohran-mamdani-promised-city-owned-160022195.html
Zohran Mamdani Promised City-Owned Groceries. Atlanta Already Has One

When major chains refused to open in downtown Atlanta, Mayor Andre Dickens carved his own path forward

Yahoo News
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During Mamdani’s campaign for mayor he proposed NYC create a city owned grocery store. His opponents at the time ridiculed the idea, partly do his cost estimate ($470 mil), partly because the idea of a city run grocery store seems weird to some. Of course his proposal targets those poorer communities where food insecurity is a constant problem, not the overall city. 2/7
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Saw a great a cappella play last weekend in DC called Octet. It’s about a group of people who have digital addictions. One of the songs is about a person who did not post a joke because so many terrible things were happening in the world it seemed inappropriate. I think I haven’t been doing my abolition threads for the same reason. But I have to stop that because things will be bad for a while. Today I’m looking at food security. 1/7
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Will have a couple of abolition posts later this week but I wanted to mention a thing that happened last week at one of the food distros. I had a hood up and my back was to the person handing out food tickets. The person tried to hand me a ticket and the folks in the line said "No, she's our police." At first I was salty about it but then I laughed. They know I am there to help keep them safe! We keep each other safe.