Black August: We're Not Free Until We All Are Free

 

Community,

Black August has commenced. Amid the continuation of reactionary, white supremacist, and fascist politics, we are called to hold each other close, especially those of us who have been systematically disappeared, ostracized, and revolutionized by the plantations and concentration camps known as prisons.

Throughout the month of August, the National Black Food and Justice Alliance will share deeper analysis and practices for studying, fasting, training, and fighting for political prisoners, prisoners of war, and incarcerated siblings amid these conditions. We invite you to practice relationally, face to face, and in community to support the movement and embody how the struggle for abolition is not separate from our own. Please explore this blog for in-person opportunities that may be in your local area.

Disconnection is incentivized and planned. We refuse to be separated from each other, whether through bars or across borders, and we will reach out and organize Black August and beyond. #FreeThemAll #BlackAugustResistance

Train

Train Together 

  • Make a training group! Go on runs, to the gym, or other exercise courses with your community. Hold each other accountable for showing up and giving it your best. Try to track your progress as the month continues and set goals to keep yourself motivated. Training is about strength and fortification, not body shame. 

  • Dedicate time to journal with someone you care about. Reflect on the spirit of rebellion and the political prisoners we commemorate and honor this month. What sacrifices have allowed you to live the life you live today? 

  • Practice meditation, centering, and other embodiment practices with your people. Overwhelm and disconnect is the empire’s goal, and we refuse through these tactics. We will root ourselves in presence, connection, and readiness.

Train Your Organizing Arm

  • Are you familiar with organizations that could support the housing, nourishment, healing, or release of your neighbors? If someone were in need, what networks are you equipped to lean on in times of emergent community crisis? 

    • Commit to identifying and engaging with organizations like National Bail Out, Black Men Build, Community Movement Builders, and Movement for Black Lives, who offer training for folks both inside and out. 

  • Are you a part of organizations that support your discipline and growth? 

    • Training can look like deprogramming the individualist conditioning Western societies instill in us.  If you feel lost on how to solve community problems or build necessary initiatives, lean on the collectives already organizing around you. 




“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — African Proverb

Fight

How are you willing to fight for this movement? 

Whether you join your local Jericho Committee or organize with other groups fighting for the freedom of political prisoners and abolition, it is our collective responsibility to remember them, reach out to them, and fight for their freedom. Explore some of the options below:

An illustration depicting John “Balagoon” Cole (left) and Christopher (Naeem) Trotter (right).

Ways to Support the Pendleton 2 

  • Visit pendleton2.com to learn more about Naeem and Balagoon’s stories and view the “The Pendleton 2: They Stood Up” documentary. Schedule a screening with your local community or family members during August and beyond. 

  • Follow @thependleton2 on social media to stay up to date with their cases and support initiatives

  • Write Naeem and Balagoon with encouragement and curiosity for their passions, interests, and well-being. They are both currently incarcerated at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility, and you can find their addresses and  

  • Sustain the movement to support their freedom!! Sign the petitions for clemency to demonstrate to the state that we have not and will not stop fighting until they are not just released, but free. 

  • Donate to the cause. All funds support legal fees, commissary and other material support, and phone and messaging credits.

Organizations to join, sustain in the fight

  • Jericho Movement—View the link to see all local chapters and join their fight to gain amnesty and freedom for political prisoners. They currently have chapters in Atlanta, Chicago, D.C., Detroit, Boston, New York City, Oakland, Oregon, Providence, and Rochester.

  • Movement for black lives—M4BL’s platform for amnesty demands the safety, respect, and fair treatment of all freedom fighters and political prisoners. You can visit the link to 

  • national bail out—Explore their available resources at the link, including a toolkit, political education curriculum, and a list of state organizations they’ve partnered with and can be directly supported to continue bailing out as many Black mamas and caregivers as possible. Dive into their page to see how to get involved.

  • Black Men Build—Join a local circle with BMB and click the link to see their locations. Explore their 9Bars platform to learn their values and fights they are within. Joining a local circle requires a demonstration of discipline and rigor up front, with values pledges, orientations, mass calls, a political education program, and 9 hours of service. Engaging with BMB is a call to evolve your commitments and embody them.

  • Community Movement Builders—Explore their abolitionist platform and demands, and see if there is a local chapter in your area that you can engage with. They currently have Atlanta, Dallas, Delaware, Detroit, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Newark, Sacramento, and Ypsilanti chapters.

We can only support what we are aware of. As you continue to study and learn the stories of political prisoners, make sure you note what organizations are fighting for their freedom, and ways you can support or join them directly.

Fast

There are many ways that people choose to practice fasting, and there is no right way to do it, so long as the original intention is maintained. Here are multiple ways to approach fasting this month:

Traditional Observance of Black August Fasting

  • Refraining from food from sunrise to sunset for the entire month

    • On Flea Days, August 1st, 7th, 13th, and 21st, complete a 24 hour fast

  • Not eating solid food for the entire month and solely drinking fruit juices and water 

  • Fasting sunrise to sunset only on Flea Days

  • Fast from a particular food habit, like sugary soda or processed food 

Other Offerings for Cleansing Your Body, Mind, and Soul

  • Avoid fast food chains and eat healthy, whole meals when breaking fast

    • Focus on foods that make you feel energized and nourished

  • Avoid mind-altering substances for the entire month 

  • Avoid purchasing from major corporate entities like Amazon or other bad actors in solidarity with divestment movement 

  • Avoid media institutions that conduct conservative, anti-Black, or generally damaging propaganda, especially those on social media

  • Reduce social media use, screen time, and watching television

Fasting with community

  • Solidarity and accountability are keys to discipline. Live with someone or have a friend or family in your community? Break fast with them on a regular basis throughout this month. Pick a few nights when you can get together.

  • Organize a group pick-up of fresh produce or other hearty foods from a local market, Black farmer, or Black food cooperative for the meals you break fast with. Make juices and smoothies together and share.

  • Hold your people accountable for using their phones less. How can you study, talk, or spend time with them without the use of devices?

  • Organize a People’s Feast on the last day of Black August with your people

Study

We ask ourselves how the first principle, study, is conducted through relational practices. Political education, as opposed to mere study of a text, is inherently relational, interdependent, and agitating. It is a process that calls all of us into in-person space, discourse and conflict, and accountability.

Those of us who are free must not only raise our consciousness but create opportunities for our incarcerated siblings to become revolutionaries armed with theory, analysis, and strategy.

Explore blackaugustcalendar.com to learn about Black August flea days and additional resources. We invite you to explore the opportunities for connection and mutual exchange below, and commit to making your study relational this month and beyond. 

Letter Writing

Engage with Letters for Liberation 

  • Volunteer-run penpaling collective sparking mutual connections between people inside and outside of prison

  • Become a pen pal or join their working groups dedicated to coordinating logistics for the penpaling program, organizing care events, and hosting book clubs. 

  • Explore their political education resource page to continue deepening your study. They include samples for letter writing, resources for connecting incarcerated folks with literature, and a list to connect folk with multiple organizations that can support them. 

"Free Huey" rally, DeFremery Park, 1968. Group study of Mao's Little Red Book. Photo by Bob Fitch.

Engage with The Jericho Movement 

  • Organizing committees for amnesty campaigns to free political prisoners and prisoners of war 

  • See thejerichomovement.com for local committees and a full list of political prisoners they fight for 

    • Includes their legal name and addresses for exchanging letters, and a national directory for sending funds directly to incarcerated folks.

National/Virtual

Malcolm X Grassroots Movement’s (MXGM) National Program 

Black Men Build Collective Study Sessions

  • They’re hosting collective virtual study sessions regularly on all Wednesdays of August from 8-9:30 PM EST. They will also hold a mass call on August 28th, from 8-9:30 PM EST. Check linktr.ee/blackmenbuild to register for sessions and more information.

    • See this link for opportunities to gather with them in person.

Black Organizing for leadership and dignity (BOLD) STudy & Jo Sessions

  • They’ll be hosting Monday Jo Sessions from 12:30-1 PM EST, Political Study on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 12:30-1 PM EST and a closing call on August 28th from 6-7:30 PM EST. Learn more and register at bit.ly/m/BOLDBA2025.


Black August with Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) Solidarity Network 

  • Offering two more virtual sessions for Black August Praxis. They have also developed a Teach-In Guide for organizing your own teach-in or study group! Visit bit.ly/BASN25 to see session dates, materials, and register. 


IN PERSON—Multiple Cities in US & African Diaspora: Noname Book Club

  • The organization connects community members both inside and outside carceral facilities with radical books. They run over 20 book club chapters across U.S. cities and have expanded to 13 chapters across the African Diaspora. Visit their Instagram to find your local chapter meeting date and get their book for Black August.

Local

Atlanta: Yes, Please bookhouse & carespace

  • They are hosting reading groups every Thursday of August at 7 PM EST in person. No sign up is required, just show up. They’ll also be hosting a showing of Angela Davis and the Soledad Brothers on August 8th from 6-9:30 PM EST, RSVP here to attend. Please purchase or borrow copies of their selected books for the month directly on yespleasebooks.com or bookshop.org. Respect the space’s wishes and honor their request to “not bring books purchased from Amazon into this house.”

Washington D.C.: MXGM DC

  • They are hosting four in-person sessions on Wednesdays from 7-9 PM EST discussing the ongoing fight against medical genocide in our communities. Free food and face masks will be provided, and you can visit bit.ly/DCBlackAugust2025 to learn more.

Detroit: Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network

  • Join DBCFSN for their Black August: Land, Liberation and Legacy in the Midwest Regional Conference from August 23rd-24th. The event is geared toward Black farmers and stewards, organizers, and cultural workers across the Midwest. They’ll honor the legacy of Black political prisoners, revolutionary struggle, and ancestral resilience while applying their teachings to contemporary conjunctural analysis. Check their page for details! 

New Orleans & Jackson: Cooperation Jackson x BAP x Frantz Fanon Foundation

  • This collective is holding in-person programming in Eversville (Jackson, MS) and New Orleans, with two events per location. Each place will hold a discussion featuring Mireille Fanon, daughter of Frantz Fanon, and a film festival. New Orleans’ events will also commemorate the 20-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Check their respective pages linked above for details on how to join them!

Deepening Our Praxis

Since its inception by the Black Guerrilla Family in San Quentin State Prison in California on August 21, 1979, Black August has served as a commemorative month to honor the righteous freedom fighters who have rebelled against the state. Their rebellion was in response to the brutal conditions of incarceration, the targeted assassinations of Black revolutionaries like George Jackson, and the violent systems of white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism that continue to criminalize Black resistance and the struggle for self-determination.

Black August rose from the same fascist playbook still used today—first weaponized by Nixon and Reagan through “law and order,” the war on drugs, and mass incarceration to crush Black resistance and cage those deemed expendable or a threat.

Today, those same tactics show up as over-policing, surveillance, and attacks on Black autonomy, Indigenous sovereignty, immigrant survival, and queer and trans life.

Through their internationalist and socialist analysis, George and Jonathan Jackson remind us: this isn’t just about survival—it’s about fighting a global system built to exploit, erase, and disappear us.

Then and now, we are reminded that this call is not one of blind rage, self-sacrifice, or unguided rebellion against these reactionary politics. It’s about holding each other close while pushing against the systems that harm us.

Then and now, we are reminded that this call is not one of blind rage, self-sacrifice, or unguided rebellion against these reactionary politics. It’s about holding each other close while pushing against the systems that harm us.

Remember: incarceration is not just punishment—it’s a system of dehumanization and exploitation, carrying forward the legacy of the plantation. It extracts labor and profit from Black, Indigenous, and poor communities.

Remember: political prisoners are targeted because their resistance threatens the very foundations of this violent order—including a corporate-controlled food system built on control, extraction, and dispossession.

As we honor political prisoners, prisoners of war, and our incarcerated siblings, we’re called to deepen our commitment to Black liberation—and to study, remember, and defend freedom fighters of the past and present. Our work must include defending those who have dared to fight, and dismantling every system that threatens Black life, dignity, and liberation.

 
NBFJA