Raise your hand if you’re going to Pride this year! 2020 has been voted off the island. More importantly, we missed Pride. As we strut our stuff under the sun, let’s not forget why we have the parades in the first place. The queers, drag queens, and trans women—especially the folx of color—who fought back against police violence. The fight for LGBTQ rights has never stopped since the Stonewall uprisings. Whether it’s the fight for self-acceptance and self-expression, for the right to marry, for the right to use the bathroom aligned with your gender identity, for affordable access to HIV medication, for the abolition of violent and oppressive systems, there’s always a fight. Read more →

There is no other way to put it. The start of this year’s Pride Month was painful. We can’t stop thinking of the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and of too many before and after them. Witnessing modern-day lynch mobs during a pandemic is soul-crushing. Do not be tempted to say the upheaval happening now is “unique” or “unprecedented.” Because it is not. The US has centuries of history inflicting violence and death on Black bodies. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his “The Other America” speech, “the riot is the language of the unheard.” And the US has not listened since the days of slavery and settler colonialism. So the protests and riots rage on. Read more →

With the diploma in hand and the graduation cap thrown jubilantly into the air, the question remains: What’s the next step? Graduation heralds new beginnings and transition. But where and how to start? How should we prepare for the future when the world around us changes on a compulsory basis? In his book Don’t Knock the Hustle, S. Craig Watkins asks the same question and says we should plan to be future-ready. “What should schools be doing? Instead of preparing students to be college-ready or career-ready, schools must start producing students who are what I call ‘future-ready.’ The skills associated with future readiness are geared toward the long-term and oriented toward navigating a world marked by diversity, uncertainty, and complexity . . . a future-ready approach prepares students for the world we will build tomorrow.” Read more →

Are you ready for the holiday season and on the hunt for gifts to inspire someone in your life? Our holiday sale is back! Save 30% on everything at beacon.org through December 31 using code HOLIDAY30. This year, Beacon Press is also donating 10% of our web sales in December to Unitarian Universalist Assocation Disaster Relief Fund to the help the communities in California recover from the wildfires. Here are our holiday picks for the year. Drum roll, please Read more →

By Charlene Carruthers | Unapologetic is an offering to our ancestors, my family, our movement, and the generations who will hold the struggle for Black liberation to come. I began writing this book over five years ago as a personal exploration of freedom, liberation, and movement building. Much like my life in general, where I landed in the book is both far away from and close to where I began. I was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago to parents whose own parents migrated from the Deep South. Their ways of talking, eating, and dealing with life still live in my body and in the choices I make. Read more →

By Louis Roe | Now that we’re in summer’s final stretch, Beacon’s design department is busy putting together jackets for our Fall 2018 titles. Our cover designs are typically finalized about a year in advance of the on sale date for in-house and marketing purposes, so there’s finally enough emotional distance from the design process to reflect on these! Here’s a peek at a few of my favorites from this list. Read more →

A Q&A with Charlene Carruthers | Our national and local work focuses on various issues that impact Black LGBTQ people. For example, our Washington, DC chapter is leading a campaign, within a coalition, to end the criminalization of sex work. This issue disproportionately impacts Black trans women (whether they engage in sex work or not), queer people, and gender-nonconforming people. We have always done our work in the tradition of radical Black feminist and LGBTQ movements. Read more →

Today, on the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, we honor his legacy. We reached out to some of our authors and staff members to reflect on the impact of his global vision for social justice and his tireless work in the civil rights movement. We share their commemorative responses with you below. Read more →