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I met this beautiful, amazing woman one year ago today. 2:00pm. Luckiest day of my life. #swedishmeatballs #gray #love #weareinfinite #august #luckylady #eaglemonk #amandem

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Peppermint Narwhal, on Redbubble

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Now that’s how you ally. That’s putting it on the line and showing solidarity. That’s how you use your white privilege for good.

”It’s nice to go out and march, we can do that. It’s nice to wear black at the Golden Globes, but what are you doing behind closed doors?” - Jada Pinkett Smith

It’s easily one of the cleanest examples of intersectional feminism I’ve seen in a minute. It’s the polar opposite of white feminism, where white women are concerned primarily with the wellbeing and advancement of other white women. If more white men and women stood up and demanded basic fairness instead of just talking about it—and not just in Hollywood—we might really begin to impact racism and close the pay gap that always gets inflicted upon black people in most careers.

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Instead of inmates being able to receive donated books in the mail from family members and community groups, inmates at three New York prisons now have to purchase books selected by six, state-approved vendors. And the selection is limited. And expensive, activists say.

Novels cost $11.25 from one vendor.

A book about chess costs $29.95 from another.

And about a quarter of the titles are coloring books.

According to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, the directive is in an effort to restrict contraband from entering the prison “through a more controlled inmate package program.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office has made the point that inmates still have access to prison libraries, but some say it’s not enough. “The problem with prison libraries is that [the prisons] control who has access to them,” said Amy Peterson with NYC Books Through Bars. “So people who are in solitary confinement don’t have access to prison libraries.”

Peterson’s group has been mailing books to prisoners all over the country for nearly two decades, with a focus on New York. “We get letters from people saying they had to borrow a stamp in order to write to us. So if these people can’t even afford postage, we don’t know how they’re going to be able to afford buying books from a vendor,” she said.

Read more

From the NY Daily News:

Over the past several days, inmate advocates pointed out that the vendors combined offered only five romance novels, 14 religious texts, 24 drawing or coloring books, 21 puzzle books, 11 how-to books, one dictionary, and one thesaurus.

“No books that help people learn to overcome addictions or learn how to improve as parents. No Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, Maya Angelou, or other literature that helps people connect with what it means to be human. No texts that help provide skills essential to finding and maintaining work after release from prison. No books about health, about history, about almost anything inside or outside the prison walls,” advocacy group Books Behind Bars complained in a letter to the governor.

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Artist Daniel Rarela creates “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” memes to stop people from whitewashing MLK

follow @the-movemnt

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The boomers inherited a rich, dynamic country and have gradually bankrupted it. They habitually cut their own taxes and borrow money without any concern for future burdens. They’ve spent virtually all our money and assets on themselves and in the process have left a financial disaster for their children.     We used to have the finest infrastructure in the world. The American Society of Civil Engineers thinks there’s something like a $4 trillion deficit in infrastructure in deferred maintenance. It’s crumbling, and the boomers have allowed it to crumble. Our public education system has steadily degraded as well, forcing middle-class students to bury themselves in debt in order to get a college education.

How the baby boomers — not millennials — screwed America (via wilwheaton)

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Babies are strapped into airplane seats enroute to LAX during “Operation Babylift” with airlifted orphans from Vietnam to the US. April 12, 1975.

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Carrie Fisher as Leia Organa with her daughter Billie Lourd as Lieutenant Kaydel Ko Connix and Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair.

This is a common refrain among the new generation of Star Wars actors: that Fisher was the one who taught them how to deal. Boyega recalled that when there was a backlash against his appearance in the first Force Awakens teaser trailer, released in November 2014—the sight of a black man in stormtrooper armor drew ire from racists and doctrinaire Star Wars traditionalists—Fisher counseled him not to take it to heart. “I remember—and forgive me, I’m going to drop the f-bomb, but that’s just Carrie—she said, ‘Ah, boohoo, who fuckin’ cares? You just do you,’ ” he said. “Words like that give you strength. I bore witness in a million ways to her sharing her wisdom with Daisy too.”

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The Stanford prison experiment tapes were so stupid when I watched them in AP psych and so stupid when I watch this film about them. Literally they could’ve all sat and played cards and got $15 a day to tell ghost stories all day and be best friends. But masculinity and whiteness and power created this violent irrationality that positioned young ass men to be met with brutality and trauma and disrespect even when it was obviously taken too far. and it makes no sense. If someone put me in a room with Black girls and said I would get paid $90 a day (that’s the equivalent apparently) to be a prison guard, do you know how fast I’d be sitting with them and learning about them and exchanging Instagrams and like.. sleeping.. like what the fuck was the point of any of that…