One last picture from the Sansa-Alyssa Love Connection.
Jelani Cobb on the present and future of Black Lives Matter:
Black Lives Matter has been described as “not your grandfather’s civil-rights movement,” to distinguish its tactics and its philosophy from those of nineteen-sixties-style activism. Like the Occupy movement, it eschews hierarchy and centralized leadership, and its members have not infrequently been at odds with older civil-rights leaders and with the Obama Administration—as well as with one another. So it wasn’t entirely surprising when Pulley, a community organizer in Chicago, declined the White House invitation, on the ground that the meeting was nothing more than a “photo opportunity” for the President. She posted a statement online in which she said that she “could not, with any integrity, participate in such a sham that would only serve to legitimize the false narrative that the government is working to end police brutality and the institutional racism that fuels it.” Her skepticism was attributable, in part, to the fact that she lives and works in a city whose mayor, Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, is embroiled in a controversy stemming from a yearlong coverup of the fatal shooting by police of an African-American teen-ager.
Romance-loving Toasties who live in Los Angeles should check out The Ripped Bodice!
Uterus transplant technology and what it will mean to some trans women:
“If you’re a trans woman, this is a way of completing the dream,” she said. “Looking like a woman, feeling like a woman, and being able to bear a child like a woman. The whole notion of being like anyone else who wants to carry a baby — the opportunity for that is blowing people’s minds, in a good way.”
Bowick said she doesn’t expect bearing a child will make her feel like a more complete woman. “There are biological women who cannot bear children and they’re not lesser women because of it,” she said. She’d already been planning to adopt children and still plans to do so, even if she’s able to bear her own children as well.
do not do this unless you’ve been kidnapped and it’s an emergency
This thread very quickly became me RTing stories from (mostly) women about their (mostly) male high school teachers who crossed boundaries, please read:
Calling the Flint water issue a “crisis” does stress something serious, but it almost gives the impression that a natural occurrence happened, like when there’s a drought. Like when you live in the South and there’s a heat wave and you’re only supposed to water your lawn every other day.
Instead of crisis, a more accurate descriptor would be the thing in Flint when the government actively poisoned the residents for two years and the only reason the cycle is slowly being reversed now is because they got caught, but they probably never thought they’d get caught because so many of the residents are poor and black, but, news flash, it’s not just black people getting sick; it’s everyone in Flint, but unfortunately that’s what happens when you exist near black people.
All of this is important and infuriating:
In a 43-part tweetstorm on Tuesday, Doucette recounted a recent experience defending a 17-year-old black teen from claims by a police officer that the teen was doing 360s in the middle of the street. Over the course of the story, Doucette demonstrates many of the problems black people face in the U.S. court system and why changes never seem to stick.
We’ll let him take it from here.
I think Captain Awkward NAILED it in her response to this question:
Hello Captain,
I’m 29 years old, living with my parents, my older sister and my niece.My mother stopped work when she gave birth to me, so she’s pretty much been a housewife all her life. My father is that wonderful combination of breadwinner and financial abuser (i.e, he has enough money to buy expensive shoes and perfumes for himself, but asking him for money so we can have food and power supply is like talking to a wall), so when things are down, it falls to my sister and me to pick up the slack when it comes to money. My sister just started a new job, and I’m still entry-level at the job I’ve had for nearly three years.
The thing is, it usually falls to me to pick up the financial burden. I’m asked to pay the cable, the internet, the groceries etc all the time. I’ve asked my sister for both of us to split the bills, but she doesn’t agree. And when I ask my mother to talk to her, her preferred method is to placate me rather than talk to my sister. Usually, this means that I’m counting every cent until payday because I don’t have a lot for myself. Despite this, anytime I buy food/toiletries for myself, I’m expected to share with the two of them. I plan out my groceries and needs for the month, and I literally cannot afford to be replacing items if they finish earlier than expected.
I need help saying no, especially to my sister. Every time I try to be firm, I’m called ‘selfish’ and ‘I used to be so nice’ and ‘we’re family, so we share everything.’ I don’t think it’s selfishness to want to let my personal groceries last as long as possible, especially when I can barely afford to look after myself, and especially when my sister won’t do anything. I’m at that point where I’m seriously considering buying a small cupboard/fridge, putting it in my room and keeping everything locked up when I’m not home. What should I do?
On the dearth of diverse advice columnists in mainstream media:
Hiring is where resources like @WritersofColor comes in. In 2015, New York Times Magazine editor Jazmine Hughes, along with Durga Chew-Bose, Vijith Assar and Buster Bylander, started the database in part as a way of showing hiring managers that talented, qualified people of color aren’t difficult to come by, as long as you make the effort to expand your network.
“I generally don’t believe that people are malicious. I think that people are just lazy,” Hughes said. “Obviously there are egregious and explicit exceptions to this, but for the most part I don’t think newsrooms across the board are going, ‘We’re not going to hire any people of color, or any queer people, or any disabled people.’”
