I Should Really Edit My Desktop Theme

“Y— you’ve saved me! Why?”

On this day, 2 July 1839 enslaved people aboard the Spanish schooner Amistad rebelled off the coast of Cuba. The mutiny was led by Sengbe Pieh, also known as Joseph Cinqué, a Mende man from what is now Sierra Leone aged approximately 25. The Amistad was sailing from Havana to Puerto Príncipe in Cuba with 53 people who had recently been kidnapped from Africa. The Africans were mistreated and tortured on board, particularly by the sadistic cook. Before daybreak on July 2, the enslaved people got together and escaped their chains, killed the cook and the captain, and ordered the navigator to sail them back to Sierra Leone. But that night, the remaining Spanish crew secretly changed course and headed north-west, hoping to be rescued. Eventually, on August 26 by Long Island, they came across a US Navy vessel, who quickly freed the Spaniards and imprisoned the rebels in Connecticut, which was still a slave state at that time. There followed a high-profile legal battle, with former president John Quincy Adams offering to defend the Africans. After 18 months of imprisonment, the Supreme Court eventually upheld a ruling of a lower court ruling that the Africans had been taken to Cuba illegally and therefore were not legally enslaved, and set them free. The abolitionist movement then set about raising funds to take the men home. Two of the rebels were killed in the mutiny, some died in the subsequent journey and one died of possible suicide. In November 1841, the 35 survivors finally boarded a ship back to Sierra Leone. Learn more about struggles against slavery in the US in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/the-american-crucible-slavery-emancipation-and-human-rights-robin-blackburn

I didn’t wanna let America’s big 250 pass without a classic roadkill political comic . For people who don’t keep up with the news or don’t get the allegory erm imagine the lollipop is oil and the baby is a baby, but from a different country

So I wrote a piece for the pride edition of a literary magazine that my former classmates now run, on how the animated movie Astro Boy (2009) is an under-appreciated queer coming of age that shows the very real danger of being kicked out by parents who are mad that you aren’t the person that they made you to be, acknowledges that it’s traumatic, and presents an ending where those parents will risk themselves so that you can be who you want to be. Very fun, and I think I did a good job.