Toward Freedom released this volume of essays by past writers, editors and board members at an event celebrating its 71 years of publication during the Vermont Film Festival in Burlington, VT on Saturday, October 28, 2023.
Click here to download the Toward Freedom Commemorative Book
Dear TF readers and supporters –
In the aftermath of World War II, anti-colonial movements spread throughout the world giving rise to the non-aligned movement. At the end of 1952 Bill Lloyd started a newsletter to inform readers in the US about independence movements in Africa and the non-aligned movement in general.
Called Toward Freedom, Lloyd’s newsletter would evolve over the next 70 years into a print magazine and then a website with the mission to publish international reporting from a grassroots perspective and incisive analysis that exposed government and corporate abuses of power, while supporting movements for universal peace, justice, freedom, the environment, and human rights.
Toward Freedom’s online panel discussion, “Breaking the Colonial Grip on African Journalism,” launched the Africa Reporting Fund. The fund is designed to enable Toward Freedom to publish more reports from and about Africa. The discussion took place on May 24—the day of Eritrea’s 32nd independence anniversary and one day before African Liberation Day—to hear from African journalists about how they best see to break the colonial grip on African journalism.
Register for Toward Freedom's online panel discussion, "Breaking the Colonial Grip on African Journalism," an event to launch the Africa Reporting Fund.
Sean Blackmon, activist, organizer and broadcaster, currently serving as co-host of Radio Sputnik's "By Any Means Necessary"; Jacqueline Luqman, Black Alliance for Peace Mid-Atlantic Region Co-Coordinator, co-host of Radio Sputnik's "By Any Means Necessary" and host of "Luqman Nation" on the Black Power Media YouTube channel; Kamau Franklin, former practicing attorney, first program director of New York City Police-Watch and co-founder of Black Power Media; executive director of Community Movement Builders and co-founder and host at Black Power Media; and Karanja Gaçuça, a U.S.-based Kenyan journalist, publisher of thebriefscoop.com and executive editor of panafricmedia.org; discussed the power of story at the first-ever African Peoples’ Forum.
Paul Sankara, consultant, activist and brother of assassinated Burkina Faso leader Thomas Sankara; Eugene Puryear, community organizer and host at BreakThrough News; Erica Caines, a Black Alliance for Peace Coordinating Committee member, co-editor of Hood Communist and founder of Liberation Through Reading; and Nebiyu Asfaw, co-founder of both the Ethiopian American Development Council and the #NoMore Movement discussed connecting African peoples' struggles across the continents at the first-ever African Peoples’ Forum.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019