Just as the US Department of Defense should change its name back to the more accurate and honest War Department—its true function and its title from 1789 until 1947 when it morphed into the National Military Establishment (NME), and then, with mad-help from a PR offensive in 1949, the DoD—state and city organizations with names such as “child welfare” and “family services” should stop air-brushing their true functions—the Departments of Family Policing. We’re joined in conversation today with Erin Miles Cloud, the mother of two dazzling kids, a civil rights attorney, and co-editor of a new book from Haymarket called How to End Family Policing: From outrage to action.

The severe challenges and unforeseen possibilities facing humanity today cry out for clarity. We need it all: poetry and politics, art and the people’s army, agitation and organization, theory and practice, deep study and sustained action, joy and justice, both the moments of quiet contemplation and the times of swift, sharp thrusts, dreams as well as deeds. We’re delighted to be joined from Santiago, Chile by Vijay Prashad, a preeminent Marxist theorist and activist intellectual. His work continues the initiative of the Tricontinental Conference in Cuba which brought together revolutionary movements from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Today Vijay is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, and an advisory board member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Vijay is refreshingly dialectical in his thinking and writing—witness a dangerous mind in ongoing argument with itself.

In 1922 a commission made up of prominent citizens—six Black men and six white men appointed by the governor of Illinois—issued a report about the 1919 Race Riot entitled The Negro in Chicago: A Study on Race Relations and a Race Riot. Eve Ewing’s dazzling poetry collection, 1919, excerpts small bits from the report as epigraphs for each poem, comments like “…the presence of Negroes in large numbers in our great cities is not a menace in itself,” and “the sentiment was expressed that Negro invasion of the district was the worst calamity that had struck the city since the Great Fire.” Today the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project (CRR19) aims to ignite conversations about white supremacy in Chicago and around the country and the world. Formally launched on the 100th anniversary of the riot, CRR19 remembers the worst incident of racial violence in the city’s history, and the events that swept the city and set the framework for racial segregation to this very day. We’re joined by Franklin Cosey Gay and Peter Cole, co-directors of CRR19 on the eve of their annual commemoration and slow-rolling south-side bike tour.