Friday, November 1, 2024

Signs of Stressful Times

“If you would like to respond to this notification, please place your response above the dotted line. Hello Homeowners, With it being election time, we understand the want to display political signs. However, according to the HOA documents, signs of any kind are not permitted. Error! Filename not specified. (Article XI section 11.20) We kindly ask that you remove any signs that have been placed. Thank you for your cooperation.” I got this notice from my home owners association regarding my yard signs. Is this legitimate? “I don't know the background or details, but it sounds legitimate. Many HOAs have restrictive covenants--and they apparently are citing a specific one that pertains to yard signs. “People often run into problems with their HOAs. Sometimes it is possible to mount a campaign to get a provision removed or modified, but it takes a lot of time and effort!” Is the Home Owners Association Constitution in line with this Virginia Law?: https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title15.2/chapter1/section15.2-109/ § 15.2-109. Regulations on political campaign signs. No locality shall have the authority to prohibit the display of political campaign signs on private property if the signs are in compliance with zoning and right-of-way restrictions applicable to temporary nonpolitical signs, if the signs have been posted with the permission of the owner. The provisions of this section shall supersede the provisions of any local ordinance or regulation in conflict with this section. This section shall have no effect upon the regulations of the Virginia Department of Transportation. Still waiting for a response from the Home Owners’ Association. Election stress is real. Be kind to your neighbors.

Thursday, October 17, 2024

Huge Honor

Dear Dr. Onwubiko (Biko) Agozino,
On behalf of the membership of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) Division on Critical Criminology & Social Justice (DCCSJ), it is my great pleasure to extend our warmest congratulations to you! We are thrilled to inform you that you have been selected as the recipient of the 2024 Division on Critical Criminology & Social Justice Lifetime Achievement Award! This award, our highest honor, is reserved for those who have demonstrated sustained and distinguished scholarship, teaching, and service in the field of Critical Criminology. The selection committee has provided a detailed narrative highlighting your remarkable achievements and contributions to the field, which will be shared in full during the DCCSJ Awards Ceremony. The ceremony will take place at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology in San Francisco, CA. We would be honored to have you join us on Thursday, November 14, 2024, at the DCCSJ Social, which will be held at The Woodbury (685 3rd Street) starting at 7:00 pm. Your accomplishments will be formally recognized at this event, and we hope you can attend to celebrate with us. Please let us know if you plan to attend the ceremony and social. We look forward to honoring you in person! We are deeply grateful for your dedication and all the contributions you have made to the field of critical criminology and social justice. The selection committee shared the following comment about your work, and I hope it reflects how significant your contributions are to both our field and the DCCSJ membership. From the selection committee: Dr. Agozino was born in Awgu, Enugu State, Nigeria, where he witnessed the genocide in Biafra (1967-1970), about which he writes in his 2019 book “Humanifesto of the Decolonization of Criminology and Justice.” In 2003, Dr. Agozino produced perhaps his most acclaimed work, “Counter-Colonial Criminology: A Critique of Imperialist Reason,” in which he addressed the Global North’s domination of criminology, leading, in part, to the discipline's theoretical and methodological underdevelopment. As a group of his nominators commented, Dr. Agozino’s “body of work is nothing less than extraordinary with his impact immeasurable. Biko has worked tirelessly to challenge the Global North’s dominance of the discipline, exposing its colonial roots while always confronting structural inequality and oppression.” In recognition of this tireless commitment to the values and principles of our division, which includes his many years of mentorship and pedagogy to scores of students, the panel is honored to select Dr. Agozino with the most prestigious award of our division. Indeed, this award is a testament to your remarkable commitment and the impact of your work in advancing the values we hold at the core of our division. Your scholarship continues to inspire the community, and we are honored to recognize you for your outstanding achievements. Once again, congratulations on this well-deserved honor !

Sunday, January 28, 2024

The Afrocentricity of Marx

By Onwubiko Agozino 

I was delighted to receive this attached clip from my daughter telling me about a mention of my work by the 'social media sensation, @theconsciouslee. It is a moving commentary on my paper about how much Karl Marx admitted that African history was at the center of his own intellectual activism. My paper was first published in the Review of African Political Economy in 2014. I was invited by roape.net editors in 2020 to blog a summary and update of the article after several authors cited it as ground-breaking. Monthly Review republished the blog in 2020. A graduate student at Cornell University interviewed me for the Unequal Exchange YouTube Channel about the article and the interview audio was made available on Spotify in 2022. Now, this awesome commentary by NAACP Image Award Winner, George Lee Jr. on TikTok has convincingly called attention to the same article. It is about time that I completed the promised book follow-up.




See also the popular podcast, I Mix What I like, that devoted nearly 90 minutes to a detailed discussion of the article that the host described as ‘work that is new to me’ with expressions of the desire to invite me to the show to answer questions arising. As I stated in the paper, some of such questions would only be fully answered in a book length manuscript.

Monday, January 15, 2024

Salute To Courage

 By Onwubiko Agozino

Today, January 15, I reflect on 'The World House' which MLK repeatedly said that we inherited from our ancestors. We must share with brothers and sisters in the Jim Crow South, in Vietnam, in apartheid South Africa, in Palestine and everywhere else. We must share all in a 'Beloved Community' or fight in 'chaos' and burn it down. Achebe identified the world house as Mbari, an ancient symbolic architecture still observed among the Igbo. It requires communal ritual selections of representatives to go into the forest and commune with the spirits of the ancestors for days. They return to restructure and reconstruct the miniature Mbari world (mud) house every now and then. When the foundations are shaky or the walls crumbled, a new one was collectively created to replace it. The new Mbari is  repopulated as usual with images of people from all over the world, along with ancestral spirit figures, animals and plants under the same roof. This symbolizes how tolerant of differences Africans are and it demonstrates that chaos is not always a bad alternative to order or the beloved community, since they coexist; as Abdul Bangura, Horace Campbell and Ron Eglash remind us with theories of the science, arts, and cultural politics of African Fractals. Desmond Tutu called the sharing spirit, Ubuntu or a bundle of humanity (and of nature too). Happy Martin Luther King Jr Day! Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday to You. Onwubiko Agozino