Channing L Martinez

community organizer working for the revolution at the Labor Community Strategy Center

[Channing L Martinez @channingphoto]

Even AI raises an eyebrow at why the school board is choosing to say that the police and violence are essential, but equity programs are not? Hmm 🤔 I thought LA was mostly a democratic city.. but it seems like the policies are telling a different story 👀

[Channing L Martinez @channingphoto]

Someone at the @LASchools is not being truthful.. Why is it that BSAP is being cut by 75%? Why is SENI is being cut by 100% but the district has not exclusively acknowledged how much they are cutting from the LA school police department’s budget?

[Channing L Martinez @channingphoto]

Hmm 🤔 I think you know it’s bad when I put the budgets of @LASchools into AI and ask it to make a chart about police spending over the last six years.. unprompted AI reported that the current proposed cuts are policy choices and not requirements 👀 hmm 🤔

[Jesus Freakin Congress @TheJFreakinC]

🚨This is one of the most disturbing ICE brutality videos I’ve seen in a long time…

Another angle of this incident shows ICE agents suddenly rushing protesters outside the Newark ICE Facility, then continuously shoving U.S. citizens toward the wheels of a MOVING TRUCK…

until an activist’s LEG is run over.

And the most disturbing part?

The protesters are not charging the agents… The agents are the ones creating the escalation.

And not only that, they are forcing civilians backward toward a MOVING VEHICLE, escalating a situation that was not violent until THEY made it violent.

That is reckless, dangerous force.

So, let’s go over the obvious constitutional violations happening in this video…

1. First Amendment violations, because Americans have the constitutional right to peacefully protest the government.

2. Fourth Amendment violations, because federal agents cannot use excessive or objectively unreasonable force against nonviolent civilians.

3. Fifth Amendment due process concerns, because the government cannot arbitrarily target, intimidate, or assault citizens exercising protected rights.

4. Federal officers can also face liability under 18 U.S. Code § 242 for depriving people of constitutional rights “under color of law.”

When armed federal agents create chaos themselves, then use that chaos to justify violence against civilians, that is an abuse of power.

Call your representatives.
Demand accountability.

[KTLA @KTLA]

A student’s graduation speech has gone viral after he went off script, calling his school’s entire student body “oppressed youth” and accusing the school of being “built on racism, sexism and homophobia.”

[Melina Abdullah @DocMellyMel]

Continuing to learn from the incredible @DoloresHuerta, who teaches and models for us how to walk, live, and organize, even in the midst of her own pain.
My latest in the @LAProgressive.
#DoloresHuerta
https://t.co/wsqDSpW0gM

[FFSC @FightSoulCities]

On #GivingTuesday we hope you can help us thrive for the next decade as we move into 2026 celebrating the last 10 years of #movementbuilding at our #StrategyAndSoul Movement Center.

Check out this short timeline of ten years of memories.

Contribute: https://t.co/k0maatHD3r

[Mikkel ☭ 🏴🚩 @mikkel_314]

Thomas Sankara was killed 38 years ago on this day but his words and legacy live on 🧵

[AFRICAN & BLACK HISTORY @AfricanArchives]

38 years ago today, Thomas Sankara, a revolutionary African leader, was assassinated by French imperialists. Rest In Power!

Sankara drove out French imperialism from Burkina Faso and withdrew from IMF and made the country non-reliant on foreign aid.

He was assassinated in a coup led by his close ally, Blaise Compaoré supported by French imperialists

As far as African leadership goes, Thomas Sankara was cut from a different piece of cloth.

Here are some of his accomplishments, ONLY 4 YEARS in power (1983-87):

– He vaccinated 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles in a matter of weeks.
– He initiated a nation-wide literacy campaign, increasing the literacy rate from 13% in 1983 to 73% in 1987.
– He planted over 10 million trees to prevent desertification
– He built roads and a railway to tie the nation together, without foreign aid
– He appointed females to high governmental positions, encouraged them to work, recruited them into the military, and granted pregnancy leave during education.
– He outlawed female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy in support of Women’s rights
– He sold off the government fleet of Mercedes cars and made the Renault 5 (the cheapest car sold in Burkina Faso at that time) the official service car of the ministers.
– He reduced the salaries of all public servants, including his own, and forbade the use of government chauffeurs and 1st class airline tickets.
– He redistributed land from the feudal landlords and gave it directly to the peasants. Wheat production rose in three years from 1700 kg per hectare to 3800 kg per hectare, making the country food self-sufficient.
– He opposed foreign aid, saying that “he who feeds you, controls you.”
– He spoke in forums like the Organization of African Unity against continued neo-colonialist penetration of Africa through Western trade and finance. • He called for a united front of African nations to repudiate their foreign debt. He argued that the poor and exploited did not have an obligation to repay money to the rich and exploiting
– In Ouagadougou, Sankara converted the army’s provisioning store into a state-owned supermarket open to everyone (the first supermarket in the country).
– He forced civil servants to pay one month’s salary to public projects.
– He refused to use the air conditioning in his office on the grounds that such luxury was not available to anyone but a handful of Burkinabes.
– As President, he lowered his salary to $450 a month and limited his possessions to a car, four bikes, three guitars, a fridge and a broken freezer.
– A motorcyclist himself, he formed an all-women motorcycle personal guard.
– He required public servants to wear a traditional tunic, woven from Burkinabe cotton and sewn by Burkinabe craftsmen. (The reason being to rely upon local industry and identity rather than foreign industry and identity)
– When asked why he didn’t want his portrait hung in public places, as was the norm for other African leaders, Sankara replied “There are seven million Thomas Sankaras.”
– An accomplished guitarist, he wrote the new national anthem himself

[Iskra Books @iskrabooks]

“Imperialism often occurs in more subtle forms—a loan, food aid, blackmail. We are fighting this system that allows a handful of men on Earth to rule all of humanity.”

Today we remember the great Thomas Sankara who was lost on this day in 1987.

[Channing L Martinez @channingphoto]

@admcrlsn He’s going to make a great mayor. I wish he was running for mayor in Los Angeles.

[Channing L Martinez @channingphoto]

@Damaan4u33 Because they never created those services, Black people did! Their racial hatred means more to them than the basic social safety net that they reap the benefits of begrudgingly.

[Kehinde 🇳🇬 @kalonge93]

Happy 100 year birthday to one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century, Frantz Fanon. I always love reading how folks interpreted Fanon in real time—as opposed to the appropriated nonsense we get today at times 🥴.

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

He’s talking about concentration camps — about locking people up without due process in foreign-based concentration camps.

And he’s giddy about his fascism.