Author: TheGuardian

Taken on South 8th Street Williamsburg between Berry and Wythe on a Zeiss Ikon that my Grandmother had swapped for cigarettes during the Berlin airlift. – Toby Amies | When 9/11 happened, I’d been living on South 8th Street in Williamsburg, New York, for about a year. To the right, you can see a pale awning – that was my studio, a windowless shed. My apartment was the top flat in that three-story red building further down. I don’t remember the exact time I took this, though you could work it out from the state of the towers. I remember...

The first NFL player to take a knee may also need to go further and take a stand against the injustices of capitalism itself. Gil Scott-Heron famously noted that the revolution would not be right back after a message, would not go better with Coke, and certainly would not be televised. It now appears, if Nike’s current advertising campaign is to be believed, that the revolution comes embossed with a Swoosh. On September 3 the famously underemployed NFL player Colin Kaepernick tweeted a black and white image of his face, his eyes staring at us, with the words “Believe...

Photo by Gage Skidmore and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 McCain, who had been battling brain cancer, was known for his heroism in Vietnam, his independent-mindedness and recently his rebukes of Trump. John McCain, prisoner of war, presidential candidate and one of the most influential American politicians of his generation, has died after suffering from brain cancer. The six-term senator from Arizona, who was 81, had been absent from Washington since last December but remained outspoken to the end, railing against Donald Trump and urging defense of the post-war liberal democratic order. A statement from his office said: “Senator...

It is half a century since the Last Poets stood in Harlem, uttered their first words in public, and created the blueprint for hip-hop. At an intimate open house session, they explain why their revolutionary words are still needed. You can trace the birth of hip-hop to the summer of 1973 when Kool Herc DJ’d the first extended breakbeat, much to the thrill of the dancers at a South Bronx block party. You can trace its conception, however, to five years earlier – 19 May 1968, 50 years ago this weekend – when the founding members of the Last...

It was some time after 8pm when Angela Smith’s teenage daughter contacted her with an urgent request. Bria, 17, wanted to leave home the next morning to join a weeks-long national bus tour for gun violence prevention. The bus, filled with student survivors of the school shooting six months ago in Parkland, Florida, was leaving Milwaukee very early the next morning. Could she go? “We don’t know those people!” was Smith’s first reaction, concerned at how much the fury and the venom of America’s gun debate might tear at her youngest child’s spirit. She was also worried whether Bria...

President condemned for ‘strategic’ attacks as Sarah Sanders refuses to disagree with Trump’s view of the press as the enemy. Donald Trump’s attacks on the media have been condemned by experts at the United Nations, who warned that the US president’s vitriolic rhetoric could result in violence against journalists. In a joint statement, two experts on freedom of expression – David Kaye, who was appointed by the UN human rights council, and Edison Lanza, who holds the corresponding position at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said: “These attacks run counter to the country’s obligations to respect press freedom...