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[there-must-be-a-lock]

Wake-Up Calls and Watermelon (SPN/CM)

Criminal Minds / Supernatural crossover! 

Word Count: ~2140

Warnings: Irresponsible use of pink feathery handcuffs, but don’t worry, Sam is there to give a safety lecture. Kiddie pools, kittens, an emotional support cyberterrorist, and so much fluff. Ridiculous escapism at its finest. Everybody needs a smile these days, right? 

A/N: Four mornings on the Wayward Sons World Tour. This is part of the Rockstar AU, but it can be read on its own, as can most of that series. There’s no real plot, just shenanigans and silliness. 

Thanks to @stunudo​ and @fookinghelljensensthighs​ for pre-reading and inspirational photographs, respectively! 

Wayward Sons World Tour, Day 4: somewhere between Miami and Orlando, FL

Something is meowing. 

Rossi frowns to himself and opens his eyes, staring up at the ceiling of his bunk. 

Something is meowing on his bus. 

His first thought would ordinarily be Penelope and one of her assorted stuffed animals or weird talking figurines. Spencer could also potentially be the culprit, depending on what sort of chemicals were in his system. Last time Rossi checked, though, both of them were on the other bus, where the shenanigans are supposed to happen. This is the quiet bus, where the grownups sleep. 

The mysterious something meows again. 

Bad enough that he’s slumming it sleeping on a goddamn tour bus. Now there’s a goddamn petting zoo on board. Rossi sighs and gets out of his bunk to investigate. 

“Who’s the cutest kitten in the entire world?” Morgan is sitting on the ground in the front, smiling adoringly at a tiny ball of black fuzz he’s cradling in his palms. “Who’s the sweetest little furball I’ve ever seen, hmm?” 

“How on God’s green earth did you find a kitten at —” Rossi glances at the clock on the microwave. “—nine in the morning in the middle of Florida?” 

Morgan looks a little guilty, but Rossi can’t tell if it’s because he has a kitten or because he got caught using that ridiculous high-pitched voice. 

“We’re at a rest stop so the drivers can get a couple hours’ sleep, and Hotch and I were stretching our legs, and they were in a box close to the highway,” Morgan explains. “He was the only one who was still alive. I couldn’t just leave him there.” 

The door opens, and Hotch comes in, carefully carrying a small dish of water. He’s followed by Sam Winchester, who has an upside-down drum that’s padded with a towel. 

“You gotta be kidding me,” Rossi mutters, watching the three grown men surround the kitten and coo at it. Morgan tucks it into the drum and it curls up happily, meowing its appreciation. 

Sam’s phone rings, and he digs it out of his pocket and answers: “Yeah? No, we got water, we just — no, Dean, Jesus. Just the hoodie. Did you find it?” He pauses and scowls, stepping away from the others and lowering his voice. “No, that’d be way too big for it, are you kidding me? That collar was specially made… no! Leave the fucking leash, Dean, it’s not like we’re taking the kitten for walks.” He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, okay, bring the feathery thing, just — oh for fuck’s sake, leave that bag alone before you find something you really don’t — Dean. Yeah. Cool.” He grimaces and hangs up. 

“Do I want to know?” Rossi asks, with a new sense of respect. 

“No,” Sam says firmly. He turns back to Hotch and Morgan and announces, “Dean’s bringing some stuff we can use as cat toys, and a big hoodie with a pocket so you can carry it around.” 

“Sweet. Thanks, man,” Morgan says, flashing a bright grin. He’s all googly-eyed. 

“What should we name it?” Sam asks, crouching down and rubbing under the kitten’s chin with one careful finger. 

They all take a moment to consider. The little ball of fluff is purring, and even Rossi has to admit that it’s goddamn adorable. 

“What kind of drum is that?” Hotch asks Sam, who grins. 

“Pearl.” 

“Pearl!” Morgan echoes delightedly. “Who’s the prettiest little black pearl, hmm?” 

“I guess we need to find a pet store,” Rossi sighs, and settles in to get to know his grand-kitten.

***

Wayward Sons World Tour, Day 7: Atlanta, GA

“Wheels up in fifteen,” Hotch is shouting, banging on the hotel room door. JJ groans without opening her eyes and tries to pull Emily closer, rubbing her cheek against the soft worn cotton of Emily’s shirt. 

“What the fuck,” Emily mumbles. 

“Oh, seriously, what the fuck,” comes Penelope’s voice. The fact that it’s coming from somewhere above JJ is what makes her frown and open her eyes. 

She and Emily are on the floor, lying in a sort of nest, which upon closer inspection seems to be made up of an inflatable kiddie pool filled with blankets. 

Penelope is peering over the edge of her bed at them, squinting blearily, last night’s hot pink lipstick smeared down her chin. She appears to be wearing a plastic coconut bra over her shirt. 

“Huh,” JJ says. She pulls a lei off her neck. “Did we throw a tiki party last night?” 

“That would seem to be the case,” Emily says slowly. She rolls over and wraps her arms around JJ. “Five more minutes.” 

“Solid plan,” JJ answers, snuggling in. The kiddie pool is surprisingly comfortable. 

“Not if we have to pack up and get our sorry asses on the bus in fifteen minutes,” Penelope reminds them. 

“Fuck.” 

“I smell like… like daiquiris and regret,” Penelope sighs. She wrestles the coconut bra off and flings it across the room. 

“You can have first shower,” Emily says generously. 

JJ hears Penelope pad across the floor, and then there’s a surprised yelp from the bathroom. 

“Is Spencer in the tub again?” JJ mutters. 

“Yes, but oh my god, you guys, you need to come see this,” Penelope says, giggling. JJ groans, head spinning, but manages to get up. She hauls Emily to her feet. 

JJ pokes her head through the bathroom door and snorts. Spencer’s wearing one of those cheap fake grass skirts over his jeans and there’s a top hat perched on his head. He’s got his arms wrapped around a tacky pink flamingo lawn ornament. 

“Em, get your—”

“On it,” Emily says, already reappearing with her phone to snap a picture. 

Spencer stirs with a pathetic sort of whining noise. 

“Next time I suggest coconut rum,” he slurs, without opening his eyes, “...remind me I’m a moron, ‘kay?” 

*** 

Wayward Sons World Tour, Day 10: near Dallas, TX

“Get your hooves out of the toaster!” Cas says urgently. Dean starts awake and almost falls out of the bunk. He really needs to give up trying to sleep with Cas on the bus; these things were not meant for two people. 

Cas mumbles something about Mufasa and opens his eyes groggily. 

“Fun dreams?” Dean asks, voice raspy with sleep. He cuddles close and presses a kiss to Cas’s pulse. 

“There were wildebeests in the kitchen,” Cas croaks. 

“Sounds like a good time. Coffee?” 

“Mmm.” 

Dean rolls out of the bunk and stretches. The door to the back lounge is open, and he can hear music; he looks inside curiously. 

He remembers Sam saying something about a Doctor Who marathon. Geek.

The DVD menu is up on the little flat-screen, playing the theme music in a loop. Sam’s sprawled out on one of the couches with popcorn in his hair, and Penelope and Charlie are leaning against each other on the other couch. 

Someone snores loudly, but it doesn’t seem to be any of those three. Dean looks around, momentarily confused, until he spots Spencer, who has wedged himself under the tiny table. He’s curled up with what looks like Charlie’s favorite purple hoodie as a pillow, and Pearl is kneading happily at one of his arms. 

“Time’s it?” Sam asks quietly. He sits up, and something pops audibly as he stretches his shoulders. 

“Coffee time,” Dean whispers back. 

He wants to make a snarky quip about how they’ve clearly been partying hard, but Sammy’s looking around the room with such a fond little smile on his face that Dean can’t bring himself to say anything. Instead, he just leads the way through the bunk area, out to the front, where Cas is watching the coffee drip slowly into the pot. 

Dean wraps his arms around Cas and nuzzles into his neck. It’s a good morning. 

***

Wayward Sons World Tour, Day 14: Chula Vista, CA

Penelope is just about to get up for a gloriously self-indulgent shower (and if she uses all the hot water while the others are hitting snooze, that’s fully their problem) when there’s a knock on the door.

She peers through the peephole. It’s Dean, aka not at all who she expected. 

“Hey, sorry to bother you,” he says gruffly, when she opens the door. “Um… Spencer said he knows how to pick locks?”

Ooh, this is gonna be fun.  

“He sure does. What’s up?” 

“Um… we need to pick a lock,” Dean tries, and Penelope laughs. 

“Nice try. Gimme the dirty deets.” 

Dean sighs. “Jack is maybe handcuffed to the bed.” 

“No way,” Penelope says gleefully. “Okay, I will wake the boy wonder, hang on.” 

She ushers Dean into their room, shushing him and pointing to JJ and Emily, who are still asleep, before poking Spencer. 

“Are you sleeping in a kiddie pool?” Dean asks. 

“Mmph,” Spencer assents, rubbing his eyes. “M’comfy.” 

Penelope shrugs at Dean as if to say, what can you do? 

“So there is a bit of a situation I was hoping you could help with,” Dean says. “A lock picking situation? It’s, um, a pair of handcuffs.” 

Spencer doesn’t bat an eye, bless his heart. He just shrugs and unfolds himself from the kiddie pool, picking up his wallet from the desk. 

Penelope grabs a robe and her glasses, because while she wouldn’t ordinarily show her face while she’s still in pajamas, there’s no way in hell she’s missing this. Dean looks like he’s about to protest. 

“She’s my emotional support cyberterrorist,” Spencer tells him. “She’s coming.” 

“Excuse you, former cyberterrorist,” Penelope says, as dignified as she can manage while wearing a fuzzy zebra-patterned robe. “I prefer to think of myself as your fairy godmother.” 

“No teasing him,” Dean says sternly, but leads the way out the door. 

“You really trying to tell me you found the kid handcuffed to a bed and nobody is going to tease him about it?” 

“Well,” Dean amends, with a smug grin. “Nobody but his family is allowed to tease him. Don’t worry, though, we took pictures.” 

“Yeah, okay. That seems fair.” 

Dean leads the way into the Ceiling Fires’ suite and points them to one of the bedrooms. 

Penelope can hear Sam’s voice when they get to the open door: “I told you, they’re single-latch. You pull on those the wrong way, they’ll cut off your circulation and — oh, hey, guys.” 

Not only are they handcuffs, they’re handcuffs adorned with pink fluff. They’ve pulled a blanket up to Jack’s chest, but he’s clearly naked under it, and he’s blushing so hard he basically matches the handcuffs. 

“Good morning,” he says politely. 

Penelope gives him a cheerful wave. “Don’t mind me. Spencer’s here to rescue you.” 

Spencer is unfazed. He pulls a tiny flat case from inside his wallet and pulls out a couple picks. Sam and Dean are both watching him like hawks. Mother hens. Overprotective mother hawks? Something like that. 

It barely takes a second before the lock clicks open. 

Jack breathes a sigh of relief and rubs his wrists. “Thank you. Seriously.” 

“You gotta teach me that,” Sam says to Spencer. He grabs the handcuffs and lifts them between two fingers like they’ve personally offended him. 

“It’s easy once you understand the principle of it,” Spencer tells him, showing him the picks. “See, this pushes the tumbler—” 

“Where’d you go?” comes a low British voice from the main room, and then Harry motherfucking Styles is wandering through the door, wearing a turquoise silk kimono and holding a half-eaten slice of watermelon. “What on Earth are you doing with those? I have my leather — oh.” He looks from Penelope to Spencer, blinking. “I… don’t know you, do I?” 

“Shit,” Dean mutters. “When did you get here?” 

“Wee hours.” He takes a bite of watermelon, tongue-first, and chews slowly. 

Penelope is staring. She should really stop staring and say something cool. 

“You look sorta familiar,” Spencer offers, with a little wave. “Did you sell me E at a warehouse party in Boston a couple years ago? Cause I gotta say, that was a weird night.” 

“Pretty sure that wasn’t me,” he says pensively. “But stranger things have happened.” 

Harry goddamn Styles is licking juice off his fingers and dimpling in her general direction and this cannot be real life. 

“The watermelon is a little on the nose, don’t you think?” Penelope blurts out. Sam snorts from somewhere behind her. 

“They were all out of kiwis, I’m afraid,” Harry drawls. “You want some? More in the kitchen. Bananas, too, and—”  

“Hey, guys?” Jack interrupts, from where he’s got the covers pulled up to his chin. “Um… would you mind taking this outside so I can put some clothes on?” 

There’s a chorus of apologies. Spencer asks about coffee as they all start to filter out the door, and Penelope heads to the kitchen to eat watermelon with Harry Styles, because apparently this is her life now. 

.

.

.

[dorky-spider]

Written Version of Dom’s Podcast #3

For people who don’t understand a thing going on or for those who struggle to hear it, I’ve typed out what is said in the podcast “Podcast 3 - father and sons chewing the fat...”

it is long so it is under a read more. Enjoy!

S-Sam 

T-Tom

H-Harry

D-Dom

D: Are we filming Harry?

 H: Yeah we’re filming

T: We are in atlanta GA

 S: Surprise 

D: We aren't supposed to be here are we

 S: We’ve come out to surprise tom 

S: 10 hour flight for a game of gulf 

D: Harry was definitely coming that was always the plan 

T: I knew Harry was coming and you did it very well actually. I’m glad you didn’t do it in a restaurant. It was a bit emosh

 H: that was the original plan

 D: It was pretty emotional. It would have been awful if Tom was just like “HI” 

T: yeah ah hi guys how you doing 

*pause* 

T: it took me a minute to figure out what was going on though. I was tired from working and I’m so homesick 

D: that’s why we came btw

 T: you didn’t just decide to come on holiday 

D: I cancelled gigs at pubs(?) to get here 

T: what pub? 

D: the turks head in Switzerland 

S: I thought it was the badcat 

D: Yeah S: ah thats a good gig

T: but yeah it took me a minute to figure out what was going on 

S: Your reaction was unreal

T: Because I saw your face first (Sam) and then I saw dad’s face and I really thought I was hallucinating

 S: its the sign of disappointment 

T: I was like I am so tired or I’ve had too many beers. Because I surprised dad in Edinburgh

 S: that was massive 

 T: and we have a video of that that we’ve never shown

 D: It got into my show didn’t it. The Glory year. Remember the Glory year? Other three: Yeah

 D: You had to leave, you had to leave before the end.

 T: oh did the video. Did the video play at the end of the show? 

S: no it didn’t play but dad spoke about it. 

T: ohhh okay 

H: dad’s not. Dad’s not able to do that

 D: I told the story about how excited i was and how I was wearing pjs, your (toms) pjs, coming off a first class flight. 

T: which I still want back btw 

D: what about the other surprise in um Thailand.

  T: oh yeah. That was a good one. You’re good at surprises

 D: your birthday and your end of filming, mom called me up in london and said dad, you old dog, come out to Thailand. So I wen, I flew out on Thursday and flew back on sunday.

T: oh yeah, I went scuba diving that day

 D:  that right you came out 

T: I came out and you came out from a pillar

D: and you were telling everyone what you saw

S:yeah bc you were on a ripstick(?) werent you. You were going around a fountain 

T: right right right 

S:and then dad just walked out

 T: my reaction was not as good as harry’s

. *pause* 

T: the surprise in Edinburgh, we surprised mom for her birthday. 

H: coming from Canada 

D: we’ve got a lot of surprises going on don’t we 

T: sam ruined that one S: yeah lets talk about the shit

 D: we kept this one quite 

T: I actually had no idea

 S: thing is though it was so on a whim 

D: well it was on a thursday that we came. Mom flew me in

 S: I think it was wednesday that we kind of thought about it 

D: nah

 S: I remember I was like are we doing this then and you said ah its all good 

D: yeah cool and here we are in Atlanta. Played golf today

T: ugh I played so bad 

D: Harry and I played Sam and … Tom. 

Everyone laughs

 D: I’m jet lagged and what was the score boys 

T: it was all square. We were one down going up the 18th and then dad cracked under the pressure 

S: I was one down

 D: and who won the hole then

 T: Sam did because I was exhausted 

S: I’m jet lagged

 D: Sam you played really well

 S: I did. I was very pleased. It was that driver you kno

w D: you diver was well. You know it was all very square.

 S: I was glad it ended like that 

H: We should have won 

T: no you shouldn’t have 

D: yeah we definitely should have 

T: no you finished like one hole on the front line 

H: your point is.? 

D: Harry lost his, how many balls did you lose man?

 H: too many man 

T: I lost a lot of balls. I think I lost an entire 

S: you threw one in the lake 

T: well that was a stupid ball. I missed the par

 S: yeah that was the problem, the ball

 T: it was all the balls fault.it was an oblong

 H: in golf you have expensive golf balls and they’re like 8 pound each

 T: no they’re 5 pounds

S: they’re expensive 

H:okay so 5 pounds. And I took paddy to play golf a week ago and out of his bag. He’d obviously going to your drawer and taken 6 pro-b1s. And i was like paddy you can’t be hitting pro-b1s. You can’t soi took all of them out his bag and out them in mine and replaced them with my crummy ones. I lost all 6 in 6 holes. 

D: its expensive being a dad with 4 kids but talking about expenses. We’re very excited because the brother’s trust has just launched this new event. It’s gone brilliantly. 

S: it was launched friday 

T: its raised over 90(?) thousand dollars 

D: what is it. It’s now sunday so we launched it Friday in london during the screening time  

T: what screening

D,S,H: we watched the avengers 

T: oh right 

D: your mom and I phoned it.

 S: oh is that why she left? 

D: yeah to make sure it was up. She was on wifi, she launched it. So while we were watching the film we were also looking at the counter at how many views 

H: how do you do that? 

D: mom’s got it on her phone T: 90 thousand is amazing already 

H: we can use that extra 2 thousand to replenish the golf balls we lost

D: actually that is a good disclaimer. None of the money is used for luxury holland  days out. All of the money goes to

 T: entirely non- profit

 D: yeah no one gets paid at the brother trust 

T: should we talk about the charities? We could each talk about one of the charities 

S: should we establish what it is?

 T: Why don’t you (harry) tell us about your trip to Kibera(?) 

D:wait before we do that, why don’t we tell people what they can win in the do’s 

S: why don’t you (tom) do that cause you’re the man 

H: you can see me 

T: harry will be there. So hang out with him. 

D: its the premier in LA 

T: its the LA premier for Spiderman far from home 

D: which we just watched the trailer of 

T: we just watched the trailer of. Which we dont know when it comes out and we can’t disclose any information for

 S: when is the premier? 

T: I think the premier is June 

H: ask for the trailer and then

 D: June 15th I believe … mid june

T: mid june but if you go online or on my instagram and the link in my bio, you can see all the details about when the event is and when it will be taking place. But whats really exciting is the ability to go to the far from home premier, we’ll give you $1000 spending money, we’ll put you up in a snazzy hotel. The winner will basically get the opportunity to fly with a friend from anywhere in the world to LA to attend the FFH premier with me. Harry will be there, Sam and dad will probably be there. On the carpet, we’ll take pictures, there’s an amazing after party that we’ll go to. Obviously we’ll get to see the film which is the most exciting part of the process. I haven’t even seen the film yet so you’ll be watching the fim for the first time with me watching for the first time which will be pretty awesome. And uh yeah, it’ll be pretty awesome 

D: it’ll be a great night. And that’s what people are entering the raffle for. The money that we raise guys we are really 

T (off camera): ow!

*pause*

 H: I really hope I get credit as your hand double in spiderman 

D: oh right yeah 

T: harry’s hand was in the first trailer 

S: yeah because when you unzip the suitcase wasn’t that you 

H: that was the first time I did it. It was terrifying 

S: were you nervous?

 H: oh my god

S: you’re just unzipping a suitcase 

H: no no no it was the first day of filming… 

*pauses for spoilers*

 T: start again.we were on set for ffh

 *Pauses again for spoilers* 

D: good I’m glad that resolved. So the brother’s trust when we founded it we have the idea that we would shine light on the charities that don’t get the publicity that big charities can generate. And we wanted to use charities that are very sort of cost effective. That sort of have most of the money going to the recipients not offices in london or new york. The big things what we didn’t want the money being spent on. And one of the charities is Lunchbowl and you just been to kibera so you 

S: you (Harry) go on all the trips, you do 

T: I know, you do all the cool trips H: I know, I’m the cameraman D: it was a great trip wasn’t it 

H: I went to Kibera, Which is the second largest town(?) in the sub saharan in africa and its the place of a charity we support, lunchbowl. What lunchbowl does is they have a nursery and now a primary/ secondary school and they basically take kids out of the slum and provide them with school and then on saturdays I believe it is they have a feeding program within the slum where they have 300 kids from within kibera come and they feed 300 children and they give them food and a stash of milk and then on sunday they have rugby. 

T: they play rugby?

 D: yeah they go to a posh school

 H: they go to a regular posh school in Kenya. The posh schools have it then they have these coaches that come 

S: we bought one of the busses, didn’t we?

 H: yeah. So one of things the brother’s trust did was we bought a bus which when I first heard that I was like why do they need a bus. But really the rugby ground is 5 kilometers 

D: a long walk

 H: so what happens is the bus is completely full to the point of them sitting on top of one another like this. And then what happens is when I was there, I saw like 20 kids at the gate. They’re just outside waiting at the gate and I went over with the head coach and he was explaining to me that these kids walked there 2 hours. Some of them are barefoot. To play rugby and then they get a meal afterwards. Another thing the bus does is take the kids from kibera to the new secondary school. I think the reason its so great is because the chance of a child making it to 5 years old is 50%. So you’re talking like the flip of a coin. So taking a child out kibera for the day. For 8 hours, 10 hours a day drastically improves the chance of survival 

S: mom was telling me during holidays they get really upset because they miss school so much.

 H: they say teachers can tell a massive change in behaviors after a holiday

 T,S: Really? 

H: because for these kids going to school is like, its like heaven

 D: and what they’re trying to do in kibera is what we take for granted. We have school from 4 - 18 mandatory, free for us in Britain/England. And what they’re trying to do is give these kids a chance to become educated.

 H: They want, so they used to have this school that went from I think 2-6 which is great but its not great because when a kid finishes at 6 years old where are they going to go? They go right back into the slum. So now that it goes up to 15, they only started that last year, that’s so massive for them. Because they can take a child from 2 years old to 15 and they can really shape the person they are with the teachers. 

D: its worth saying in light of what I was saying earlier, every pound that we give to lunchbowl, 97p is given to the children, 3p is postage. 

S: last campaign did 406? 

D: yeah yeah and we had a guy come over from america 

T: was his name Erik? 

D: yeah

T: he was really nice that guy 

H: we gave him a tour of set 

T: he came to set, we had a good time. He was lucky because they were about to tear down that venice set weren't they 

H: I feel like .. marvel police

 T: well that was in the trailer. There’s gonna be a red laser on your forehead 

H: right over there by the building with his marvel cap on 

D: and he stayed at the Sevoy(???) 

T: the venice set was so amazingS: I couldn’t .. they like dyed the water and everything 

*another pause* 

D: i don’t remember ever reading a marvel comic 

*tom plays a sound effect* 

D: what is that applause? 

S: are these like loads of sound effects? 

T: yeah its got loads of sound effects. I bought it for your … 

*Tom plays booing*

 D: Oh I’ve heard that! I’ve got that at work 

Tom (off camera): take us out sam. Send us home.

 S: okay that enough golf talk. But the main thing is the brothers trust campaign we’ve launch. You can go on Brother’s trust instagram and find the link, donate, and enter into the raffle. We can’t wait to see you at the LA premier. 

D: 2 people

 T: 2 people and 1 has to be over the age of 13 and its going to be amazing. Peace out. 

D: no more surprises.

[destinationcasting]

🍿RUSH CASTING TESTED BG TONIGHT🍿 Destination Casting is excited to announce we are accepting submissions for a brand new FEATURE FILM for a major streaming network! We are accepting submissions for paid, stand ins, background and featured talent to work as local hires in the Atlanta GA area! WE ARE NOW CASTING... 🍿COLLEGE KIDS Any ethnicity MALE or FEMALE Appears Ages: 18-25 For a frat party scene! Rate: $80/8+ot Date: TODAY 7/9/2021 ASAP Subject: "RUSH COLLEGE" Shoot Location: MONROE GA area Must be able to head to set ASAP tonight! -All dates subject to change -Must have fulltime availability -Some locations may be outside of perimeter or not on Marta/bus line MUST HAVE A PCR TEST TAKEN NO EARLIER THAN 7/6!!! ⬇️⬇️🍿HOW TO SUBMIT🍿⬇️⬇️ SEND ALL OF THE FOLLOWING: 1. NAME 2. D.O.B (for Covid-19 testing registration) 3. PHONE NUMBER 4. Height & Weight 5. ALL sizes -top/waist/chest or bust/inseem or pants/shoe 6. 2 CLEAR CURRENT PHOTOS -NO filters/hats/sunglasses/other people -1 full body & 1 at least chest up -MUST be a jpeg no pdf or word documents 7.COPY OF PCR RESULTS SEND TO:➡️➡️GABExtrasCasting@gmail.com⬅️⬅️ *Serious inquires only. Please only submit if you have full open availability SEE YOU ON SET!! https://www.instagram.com/p/CRIWu7ugtYD/?utm_medium=tumblr

[crimethinc]

The Power is Running–A Memoir of N30: Shutting Down the WTO Summit in Seattle, 1999

On November 30, 1999, tens of thousands of anarchists, indigenous people, ecologists, union organizers, and other foes of tyranny converged in Seattle, Washington from around the world to blockade and shut down the summit of the World Trade Organization. The result was one of the era’s most inspiring victories against global capitalism, demonstrating the effectiveness of direct action and casting light on the machinations of the WTO. The crisis of capitalism has only intensified since 1999. Today, we should learn from the struggles of the past, take inspiration from the courage of those who fought in them, and renew our assault on the structures that impose inequality and ecological destruction. The following narrative recounts one participant’s experiences in the events of that historic day.

This text is excepted from the zine N30: The Seattle WTO Protests, which also includes a blow-by-blow account and analysis of the events of the week. For perspective on how far-right nationalists have dishonestly attempted to co-opt opposition to the consequences of neoliberalism, read “What Did You Do in the Anti-Globalization Movement, Mr. Trump?” To learn about the infrastructure of the mobilization, read the Seattle Logistics Zine in our archives.

I can’t do it. I can’t. I can’t tell you what it felt like any more than a bird could tell me what it feels like to fly. I can tell you my story, but it’s only my head talking. My heart can’t write, and my guts don’t have lips. I cannot truly explain how it felt to taste ecstasy in every breath as the invincible forces of privilege and coercive power finally lost control, how it felt to stare down the world’s most ruinous and abusive bullies and watch them blink, how it felt to fall in love with tens of thousands of people at once, to not know what would happen next, to become dangerous.

And that is a tragedy that haunts me as I write every one of these words. Because if somehow I could share with you what I felt for ten days in Seattle, you would never settle for anything less again. You would kick in your TV, run outside buck naked, tear up the freeway with your bare hands, flip tanks upside down, and dance with panda bears through the streets. The barbarians would emerge from exile to knock down heaven’s door and the dead would rise up from their coffins and cubicles. And once you got a taste of the sublime joy of reclaiming control of your life and your world, of regaining your lost kinship in a human community of which you are an integral component, of realizing your wildest dreams and desires, you would do whatever it takes to make it happen again.

Monday, November 22 to Thursday, November 25

On Monday I leave for Seattle from Columbus, Georgia on a Greyhound bus, alone, already hungry, with no money and nothing to eat. Six hours later in Atlanta my bag is whisked away to a different bus, leaving me with no warm clothes and nothing to read, either. I stare blankly out the window at the bleak, diseased wasteland of concrete and smoke and cars, at the trees and fields and hills and rivers, at all the cities I’ve never seen before—Chattanooga, Nashville, Louisville, Indianapolis, Gary, Chicago.

I scrounge what little food I can at bus stations, but by Tuesday night I am hungry enough that I’m starting to get mean. In Chicago a grizzled old man gives me a sandwich, which I eat, and a dollar, which I give to another grizzled old man. I stare and think and try to sleep. Milwaukee, Madison, Eau Claire… Wednesday morning, Minneapolis. Haggard young women with kids, disgruntled truckers, teenage runaways. Fargo, Bismarck, Billings. The North Dakotan whose car broke down in Minnesota who can’t afford to fix it. Butte, Missoula, Coeur d’Alene, Spokane. The grizzled young man who buys me a waffle in Montana because he hasn’t seen me eat in a day and a half. I fall asleep a few hours past Spokane in the Cascades and wake up, Thursday November 25, at about midnight, in Seattle.

I stagger off the bus, meet my mysterious liaison Ms. J, and am miraculously reunited with my long lost bag. Fifteen minutes later I stand outside of the 420 Denny Space, a nerve center of sorts where I find dozens of people bustling around with saws and paint and walkie-talkies, plotting and planning and building. This is a very good sign, but after seventy-eight hours of Greyhound time it’s also pretty jarring. I’m utterly exhausted, ravenously hungry, and in no condition to conspire yet. I catch a ride south from downtown to the Roasted Filbert, a cavernous, dusty, unmarked warehouse with concrete floors, no windows, and a purple door; which is serving as a refuge for everyone who shows up at 420 with nowhere to stay. I find a space inside, curl up in my bag, and pass out listening to warm bodies breathing all around me.

Friday, November 26

At dawn I ride back up to Denny with four others from Filbert. None of us know each other. Downtown the towers glitter in the distance like decorated tombs, spectacular monuments to wealth and power that loom overhead just as the institutions they embody loom over every aspect of our lives. I know that we are flying under their radar, and that we are not alone. For the first time in my life those almighty towers, and all that they stand for, look vulnerable to me.

Up at Denny, the bustle and activity of Thursday night has multiplied exponentially. I help out with the kitchen and the dishwashing, finally get some food, and spend most of the day getting my bearings. Around dusk Critical Mass issues out of 420. I ride with somebody on the back of her bike since I don’t have one. Later I just run. We ride around and around the upscale shopping districts downtown, taking over whatever streets we want, whenever we want, without any authorization or permission, singing, dancing, howling, and conversing with anyone who will listen. Someone begins chanting “We’re gonna win! We’re gonna win!” and for the first time in my life I believe it.

Much to my surprise and delight, I chance upon Mr. X in the midst of Critical Mass. I have only seen him once since I spent much of the summer of 1998 in a van with him. He is in Seattle with Ms. X and X-Dog. Our reunion is cut short, however, when a psychopath in a fancy car tries to run us over. Mr. X screams like a banshee, jumps onto the hood, slips a piece of cardboard under the wipers and over the entire windshield, pounds three big ass dents in the hood with his fist, and disappears into the night.

Later we invade the Washington Trade and Convention Center, where the WTO summit is supposed to be held, and ride in circles through the foyer for quite some time before a security guard punches someone in the face and the police finally manage to chase us away.

Saturday, November 27

I spend all morning and early afternoon at Denny. The 420 Space is serving as a welcome mat, training grounds, mess hall, and nerve center, and it is turning into a complete madhouse. Countless meetings and workshops, endless training and skill sharing, and ceaseless cooking, cleaning, eating, and welding all rage perpetually and simultaneously under Denny’s roof. More and more people pour in throughout the day, and it is beginning to get difficult to move around inside. I leave late Saturday afternoon for the Hitco space to make lockboxes. Hitco is every bit as wild as Denny. While others hammer away at mammoth puppets and matching sea turtle suits we set up an assembly line and build hundreds of lockboxes out of PVC pipe, chicken wire, framing nails, tar, sand, yarn, and duct tape. We turn them out late into the night. I ride to 420, walk to Filbert, and sleep covered with tar.

Sunday, November 28

Sunday morning Denny is an utterly unfathomable zoo. I learn that Saturday night banners were dropped all over downtown, one from the top of a crane over I-5. At noon a parade complete with giant puppets, street theater, radical cheerleading, and an anarchic marching band rolls out of Seattle Central Community College (SCCC). The street party is a roaring success, reclaiming downtown for hours and railing fiercely at all manifestations of corporate dominance. Unfortunately I miss it. I go back to Hitco around five to finish the lockboxes, unaware that the festival is still bumping. I get back to 420 around eight and run across Ms. C. We are eating dinner when we hear that a mass public squat is about to be opened on Virginia St. The word is free shelter downtown for anyone who needs it during the protests, and for Seattle’s homeless after. About forty of us steal through the night to recover a fragment of the world that has been stolen from us.

913 Virginia Street. The door opens, and two masked heads emerge from the darkness. “GET IN!” I run through the door, up the stairs, through a wooden hatch, onto the second floor. The door closes behind me. The building is enormous. This floor could harbor a horde of barbarians. The power is running. Androgynous ninja elves scamper about everywhere around me, hammering away furiously on a thousand different project. I board up windows at a breakneck pace with a tireless Danish carpenter. Plywood, two-by-fours, chicken wire, black plastic, anything. Next room. The cops are coming. They’re about to fire tear gas through all these windows. No they’re not. More rooms. Yes they are. Cover all this up so they can’t tell how many of us are in here. No they’re not. “WHO THE FUCK LET IN PHOTOGRAPHERS? I’VE GOT FELONY WARRANTS IN WASHINGTON STATE!” The cops are coming. Two rooms left. No they’re not. “KEEP THOSE FUCKING PHOTOGRAPHERS IN THAT FRONT ROOM! SOMEBODY GO TALK TO THEM!” Yes they are. We’re done. No they’re not…

There are two doors, one in front and one in back. The former can be opened from inside by dismantling the contraption that braces it. The latter, where Mr. N has constructed a virtually impregnable barricade out of toilets, concrete, rebar, plywood, and an iron fire door, could only be opened by a tank. The doors are adjacent to two stairwells, one in front and one in back, which lead to either end of a long winding hallway that connects about ten rooms. The rooms are vast and spacious, with 25’ ceilings, gigantic windows, and giant stages and lofts of various shapes and sizes. One has been furnished with an ample supply of food, water, and medical supplies. Someone runs out of another, arms raised in triumph, a crescent wrench in one fist and a plunger in the other. “THE TOILET WORKS!” In yet another Ms. I and Ms. S arm a security team with short wave radios. Every window on this floor is boarded up except for those in the front room—where earlier we gave a full fledged press conference before banishing the blow-dried talking heads of the corporate media altogether—and nothing inside can be distinguished from below. The third floor is essentially identical to the second, except that none of the windows are boarded up and there is a ladder to the roof in the back stairwell. There is no way to approach the building that is not visible from the roof, where someone stands guard with a short-wave radio, waiting for the inevitable. Here come the cops, this time for real…

We assemble in The Spiral Room and send Mr. G outside to negotiate, agreeing that he will not accept, refuse, offer, or request any proposal before we have all consensed to do so. The cops say we need to let in a fire inspector. They need to know if we are posing a fire hazard to ourselves. After much discussion we consense that this is complete bullshit. They don’t know the layout of the building, they or how many of us are inside, how sturdy our barricades are, or for that matter if we all have machine guns or not. They want to inspect the building to determine how difficult it will be to raid. When we refuse they cut the water, then the power.

By this time a bizarre circus has gathered below. Reporters, feds, and undercover agents film us, and our friends from 420 and the Independent Media Center film them. We hang banners and signs from the roof and windows. Mine says “RESISTANCE IS FERTILE.” Outside Mr. G wrangles with the cops. Inside we are embroiled in an absolutely endless meeting regarding their ever-changing promises and threats. As it gets later and later we are left with less friends and more enemies, who make less promises and more threats. The situation becomes increasingly tense, but they never move in on us. Around four they finally leave, swearing that they will return at eight with the landlord to chase us out. I sleep with one eye open, and wake up four different times to false alarms. The cops are coming. No they’re not. Yes they are. No they’re not.

Monday, November 29

Throughout the morning a crowd from 420 and everywhere else gathers outside, beating drums and singing. The cops return at eight with the landlord, block the doors, and refuse to let anyone in or out. Around noon we manage to get a lawyer inside. He tries to cut us a deal. We will occupy the building until Friday, then hand it over to Share/Wheel, a homeless advocacy group, who will convert it into a free shelter. The landlord claims he will get sued if someone gets hurt in his building. We write up a waiver clearing him of any liability for anything that happens inside. He refuses to sign it. This all takes hours.

The negotiations break down completely by late afternoon. The landlord wants us disposed of. The cops slaver in anticipation. Around 5:30 they swear that in thirty minutes they will kick down the doors, beat ass, break heads, and arrest everyone inside. They will let anyone who is willing to leave out now. This is our “last chance.” Nearly everyone opts out at this point, understandably having no desire to spend the 30th in jail. They promise to tear ass up to Denny and return with as much backup as they can scrape together. I know that whether this is our “last chance” or not, there are nowhere near enough cops outside to actually raid the building, and I cannot fathom why. Later I learn that crowds have amassed all over downtown. Some have surrounded The Gap, some the Westin Hotel so that the WTO delegates can’t get in to sleep, and some have attacked a McDonald’s, breaking some windows.

About fifteen of us remain inside. There a lot of people out front, but not enough. The situation looks bleak. At 6 p.m. the riot cops show up. We decide that there is no longer any way to defend the building, and that there is no point in making martyrs of ourselves—except for Mr. B, who says he will hide in the rafters and hold out alone if he has to. We dismantle the barricade at the front door and run outside.

We are greeted with a wondrous sight. The cavalry has arrived from 420. Somehow hordes of people have slid in between the cops and the door, and more stream in from all around. Everyone goes berserk. We pound and bang on everything we can get our hands on, howling and dancing and taking up most of the block. Mr. B is up on the roof, roaring at the top of his lungs with his arms raised to the sky as if all the indomitable power of the avenging squatter demon is running through the marrow of his bones. The cops are at a loss. Every time they try to give us an order or command we just dance, but when they try to charge their van across the block to disperse us we surround it and slow it down to a crawl, then beat and kick and rock it while the couple inside squirms. It is all they can do to limp their wounded warhorse through to the other side before all the little elves flip the damn thing over. The cops leave.

Pandemonium reigns. Up on the roof Mr. B roars in triumph, and the walls tremble at the tops of the tombs. I suspect that the cops are not prepared to start a riot on Virginia Street when so much of their force is downtown protecting the world’s most ruinous and abusive corporations and the delegates who represent them. A fragment of the world has been recovered, and it is safe for now. About forty people run inside, and I run back up to Denny.

A few hours later, right before I leave 420 for the night, I run into Ms. X and X-Dog. She tells me that Mr. X is in jail. She is trying desperately to bail him out before the state discovers exactly who he is and what he has done. I promise to keep in contact with her and to do all I can to help. Before I fall asleep back at the squat, beneath a window with the glittering banks looming over me, I remember the time Mr. X told me that there were only two things that he would never do. He would never hurt anyone, and he would never take anyone’s food. His captors do both, and some day they will suffer the consequences. They have locked Mr. X in a cage, and tomorrow it’s time for payback.

Tuesday, November 30

I wake up before dawn and walk to SCCC, where the festivities begin. Before long I am surrounded by thousands of friends, and at 7 a.m. we set out for the Washington Trade and Convention Center, where the summit is supposed to be held. As we near it we fan out, taking over the surrounding streets and blockading entrances to the building. Everything you can imagine turns into a barricade. Bodies, puppets, lockboxes, a fifty foot tripod, barrels full of concrete, dumpsters, cars. We begin to form a human chain around the convention center.

In an amusing display of either arrogance or stupidity the delegates all wear matching beige suits and big ID tags that say “DELEGATE.” Whenever they try to approach the building we stop them and chase them off. Without the protection of their armed servants they are as powerless as a brain without a body, and their expressions are priceless as they run away. Before long the chain is complete, and the only ways in are through parking garages, hotels, and underground tunnels. We cut these off one by one. I dart around by myself, patching up holes where blockades need help and trailing delegates to their secret entrances. I dog one for blocks, grinning malevolently at him as he searches in vain for a way into the convention center. He finally gives up and asks a cop for advice, and I listen in, rubbing my hands with glee. “How do we get inside?”

“Well, sir… right now there is no way to get inside.”

The opening ceremonies of the summit are postponed, then canceled altogether. This is when the cops begin to riot. They have failed their masters miserably and they are pissed.

I run up to the barricade at 5th and Seneca, which I hear is about to be attacked. The cops, sporting Darth Vader suits and unmarked raincoats, have formed a line across Seneca. Behind them there are five or six more on horses and a couple with big ass guns. We push a line of dumpsters in front of them so that they can’t trample us, and form an enormous immovable knot so that they can’t drag us away and arrest us. The cops flip on gas masks and begin to fire tear gas into the crowd. Others blast us with jumbo tanks of pepper spray. One throws a can of gas into my lap. Ronald McDonald and his band of merry devils run amok through my organs, burning plastic bonfires in my windpipe and hacking at my lungs with chainsaws dipped in DDT. Vampire fangs sunk down to the gums suck the soul from my skull, and all that remains in the hellish wasteland between my ears is fear and hatred.

Everyone around me starts to run. While I am getting up a cop bucks me in the face with pepper spray. Tony the Tiger is scouring my eyes with his chemical claws, my nostrils are searing, and I can’t see a damn thing. I scramble down Seneca stone blind and finally collapse in the street, gasping and convulsing. Someone pours water on my face and rubs life back into my eyes. I am born again in their hands. We all tear ass back up Seneca towards 5th to make out what the cops are doing and how to stop them. I realize that my friends are not all just going to bail when things start to get ugly.

And here come the cops, storming through the sickly clouds, ejaculating toxic gas as fast as they can stroke their triggers. They open up on us with rubber bullets and concussion grenades, and we stampede back down Seneca and around the corner. The stampede becomes a fairly orderly retreat as we book down 4th Avenue, hurling everything we can get our hands on out into the street to protect ourselves from their cars and horses. Trash cans, newspaper stands, concrete tree planters, dumpsters, construction barricades, anything that will stop them or slow them down. The gas is inescapable but we grab the cans and throw them back. The rubber bullets are legitimately scary but we chuck sticks, stones, and bottles and hope for the best. I find myself on top of a newspaper stand in the middle of 4th Avenue, unleashing a psychotic stream of invective at the interchangeable bullies who are approaching through the smoke. “FUCK YOU, COWARDS!, I’M INVINCIBLE!”

This is happening all over town. They can move us but they cannot disperse us. At 4th and Union the worm is beginning to turn. The cops, facing thousands and thousands of us now, are a little less gung ho than they were at 5th and Seneca. They form a line across 4th and we come to another standoff. Only this time no one is going to sit down for them. I find myself on top of another newspaper stand in the middle of 4th Avenue, roaring at the top of my lungs. “I can’t TELL you how THRILLED I am to BE here right now. I LOVE every ONE of you, like a SISTER or a BROTHER. There is NOWHERE, in the WORLD, EVER, that I would RATHER BE then WHERE I AM right now. There is NOTHING I would RATHER BE DOING than WHAT I AM DOING right now. I would RATHER be OUT HERE than spend another FUCKING SECOND in my CAR, or at my JOB, or WATCHING TV. I DON’T think these cops can say that. I DON’T think those delegates can say that. I would rather EAT MORE TEAR GAS than any more of their FUCKING fast food. I would rather DRINK MORE PEPPER SPRAY than any more of their FUCKING soft drinks. I would rather DEAL WITH THAT than ACCEPT THIS SHIT for another FUCKING SECOND. And I would rather DIE LIVING than continue to LIVE DYING…”

Black bloc in Seattle during the WTO protests, 1999.

Somebody hugs me. It has been so long since anyone has touched me that I nearly melt in their arms. Someone else jumps up and roars, and then someone else, and then someone else. I rest for a minute while a stout Chicano man recounts some interesting news. While the servants were busy terrorizing us and the rest of the blockades, the wily and mobile Black Bloc dealt with their masters in kind. Masked little elves armed with slingshots, sledgehammers, mallets chains, and crowbars attacked The Gap, McDonald’s, Niketown, Bank of America, Starbucks, Levi’s, Fidelity Investment, Old Navy, Key Bank, Washington Mutual, Nordstrom’s, US Bankcorp, Planet Hollywood, and other manifestations of corporate dominance, smashing windows and redecorating facades. I am ecstatic. Those glittering towers are not invincible after all. The greatest trick the vampires ever played was convincing us that garlic did not exist. Let their facade be torn to pieces, and may the walls come tumbling down.

The stout Chicano man tells me that during the LA riots he and his friends burned down police stations and nothing else. We freestyle from the newspaper stand until my larynx is throbbing. Eventually the cops get impatient and one of them bucks my man full in the face with pepper spray. I kiss him on the head, they club me and everyone else they can reach, and back down 4th Avenue I go, a phalanx of crocodiles in ankylosaurus suits at my heels wreaking havoc and pain.

Yet another standoff at 4th and Pike. The cops form a line across 4th Avenue. This is getting repetitive. I have inhaled so much tear gas, ingested so much pepper spray, and ducked so many concussion grenades and rubber bullets that running the bulls on 4th Avenue is no longer novel or fun. It’s just frustrating. We outnumber them almost immeasurably, yet they still attack us with impunity. They hold all the cards, they make all the rules, and they cheat all the time. I am terrified. We are in no way seriously prepared to defend ourselves. All it would take would be for one dumb ass aggro cop to decide to get his rocks off and open fire for all the rest to follow suit. It would be a massacre. Kent State. Bonfires smolder behind my eyes, and the smoke rises out of my mouth. I choose one—at random, for they all look exactly the same. Every inch of his body is hidden under black cyborg armor. He is armed to the teeth. His face is hidden under a gas mask, face shield, and full helmet. “O’Neil” is embroidered on his bulletproof vest. I plant myself squarely in front of his face and I stare dead into his eyes. He won’t look at me. He blinks constantly, looks down, left, up, right; anywhere but at me. It infuriates me almost beyond words that this coward has the impudence to attack me when I am unarmed but lacks the courage to even look me in the eyes. “Can you look me in the eyes? CAN YOU LOOK ME IN THE EYES? LOOK ME IN THE EYES, O’NEIL.” Nothing.

I know why he won’t look at me. When he was halter-broken he joined his trainers in a companionship stimulated not by love, but by hatred—hatred for the “enemy” who has always been designated as a barbarian, savage, communist, jap, criminal, gook, subhuman, drug dealer, terrorist, scum; less than human and therefore legitimate prey. I try to make it impossible for him to label me as a faceless protester, the enemy. I pull off my ski mask and continue to stare into his eyes. I tell him that I am from the south, about fixing houses and laying floors and loading tractor trailer trucks, about nearly getting killed in a car wreck in October, about carrying my dog around crying to all the bushes that she loved to root around in the day she died of cancer. I tell him that we all have our stories, that there are no faceless protesters here. Nothing.

“Can you look me in the eyes, O’Neil? I am a human being, and I refuse to let you evade that. I won’t let you label me as a protester, and I don’t want to have to label you as a cop. I refuse to accept that they have broken you completely, that there is not something left in you which is still capable of empathizing with me. I want to be able to treat you as an equal, but only if you prove to me that you are willing to do the same. And the only way you can do that is by joining us, or walking away.”

I remain dead still, staring into his weak cow eyes. He is blinking excessively and is visibly uncomfortable. “Can you look me in the eyes, O’Neil? The difference between me and you is that I want to be here and you don’t. I know why I am here. I am enjoying myself. I am reveling in this. I am rejoicing. I have been waiting for this to happen since I was a little kid. There is nowhere, in the world that I would rather be than where I am right now. There is nothing I would rather be doing than what I am doing right now. It has never been so magnificent to feel the sublime power of life running through the marrow of my bones. I know that you don’t want to be here. I know that you don’t know why you are here. I know that you are not enjoying yourself. I know that you don’t want to be doing this. And no one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to. Wherever you want to be, go there, now. Whatever you want to be doing, do it, now. Go home and get out my way. Go make love with your girlfriend or boyfriend, go snuggle with your kids or dog, go watch TV if that’s what you want, but stay out of my way because this is a lot more important to me than it is to you.”

I have not moved my feet or my eyeballs at all. I have been trying to blink as little as possible. O’Neil’s eyes are quivering and squirming to avoid me beneath the mask. “O’NEIL! CAN YOU LOOK ME IN THE EYES? CAN YOU DO THAT FOR ME, O’NEIL? CAN YOU LOOK ME IN THE EYES. Basically this whole ‘Battle of Seattle’ boils down to the relationship between you and me. And really, there are only two kinds of relationships that we can have anymore. If you can either join us or walk away then you will be my brother, and I will embrace you. If you cannot then you will be my enemy, and I will fight you. The relationship that we are not going to have is the one where you are dominant and I am subservient. That is no longer an option. That will never be an option again. “Which kind of relationship do you want to have with me, O’Neil? Look around you. Look at all of these people singing and dancing and making music. Don’t you see how beautiful this is? Don’t you see how much more healthy and strong and fulfilling and desirable and fun relationships that rest on mutual respect and consent and understanding and solidarity and love are than ones that rest on force and fear and coercion and violence and hatred? Don’t you see that the life and the world that we are beginning to create out here is superior to the one that you have been trained to accept? Don’t you see that we are going to win? Don’t you want to be a part of this? I know you do because you still can’t look me in eyes. If you want to remain my enemy then so be it. But if you want to be my brother all you have to do is join us or walk away.”

Rebel Girl with the Infernal Noise Brigade, Seattle WTO protests.

At this exact moment the Infernal Noise Brigade appears. For the first time since I began this surreal monologue I look behind me. A small man wearing a gas mask and fatigues is prancing about in front, dancing lustily with two oversized black and green flags. Behind him two women wearing gas masks and fatigues march side by side, each bearing an oversized black and green mock wooden rifle. Two columns of about fifteen march behind the women with the guns. They are all wearing gas masks and fatigues, and they are all playing drums and horns and all sorts of other noisemakers. They are making the most glorious uproar that I have ever heard.

The Infernal Noise Brigade marches all the way to the front where we are standing. When they reach the line the columns transform into a whirling circle. We form more circles around them, holding hands and leaping through the air, dancing around and around in concentric rings like a tribe of elves. We dance with absolute abandon, in possibly the most unrestrained explosion of sheer fury and joy I have ever seen. On one side of the line across 4th Avenue there is a pulsating festival of resistance and life. On the other side there is a blank wall of obedience and death. The comparison is impossible to miss. It hits you over the head with a hammer.

The Infernal Noise Brigade.

When the dance is over I return to my post up in O’Neil’s face. I stare into his eyes and invoke all the love and rage I can muster to fashion an auger to bore through his mask and into his brain. And Cow Eyes cries crocodile tears. His eyes are brimming, with red veins throbbing. His cheeks are moist. He won’t look at me. “O’Neil, I don’t care if you cry or not. I don’t care what you’re thinking right now. I only care about what you do. Before long you will get orders to attack us, or one of you will get impatient and provoke another confrontation. What are you going to do? When that happens I am going to be standing right here. If you choose to remain our enemy then you are going to have to hit me first. You are going to have to hurt me first. I dare you to look me in the eyes when you do it. You may be able to hurt me and not look at me. You may be able to look at me and not hurt me. But you won’t be able to look me in the eyes while you hurt me, because you are afraid you will lose your nerve. You are afraid of me, and you should be.

“O’Neil, you all have been terrorizing us all day. If this goes on all night we will have to start fighting back. And you and I will be standing right here in the middle of it. I have no illusions about what that means. Neither should you. We may get killed. But I would rather deal with that than accept this one second longer. I would rather die than give in to you. I don’t think you can say that, can you, O’Neil? Would you rather die than be my brother? Who are you dying for? Where are they? Whoever gives you orders is standing behind you, man. Whoever gives them orders is relaxing down at the station, and whoever gives them orders is safe in some high rise somewhere, laughing at your foolish ass! Why isn’t your boss, and their boss, out here with you, O’Neil, risking their lives and crying in the middle of 4th Avenue? Why should they? You do it all for them! What are you thinking? I just don’t get it. They don’t care about you, hell, I care about you more than they do. You’re getting used, hustled, played, man, and you will be discarded the minute you become expendable. Please look me in the eyes. I’m serious, O’Neil, come dance with me…”

Someone whispers in my ear that another cop is crying down the line to my right. For a fleeting moment I can feel it coming, the fiery dragon breath of the day that will come when the servants turn their backs on their masters and dance…

…And then it’s gone. Because O’Neil is not dancing. He is completely beaten. His lifeless eyes don’t even quiver or squirm. And he won’t look at me. I could whisper in his nightmares for a thousand years, I could burn my face onto the backs of his eyelids, I could stare at him every morning from the bathroom mirror, but he would never look me in the eyes. He is too well-trained, too completely broken, too weak to feel compassion for the enemy. His eyes are dead. There is nothing left. The magic words that could pierce his armor and resurrect him elude me, if they exist at all.

“O’Neil, I know that you have been broken and trained. So have I. I know that you are just following orders and just doing your job. I have done the same. But we are ultimately responsible for our actions, and their consequences. There is a life and a world and a community waiting for you on this side of the line that can make you wild and whole again, if you want them. But if you prefer to lay it all to waste, if you prefer death and despair to love and life, if all of these words bounce off of your armor and you still choose to hurt me then FUCK you, because the Nuremberg defense doesn’t fly.”

I have nothing left to say. I sing the last verse of my beaten heroes’ song, softly, over and over and over again, staring into O’Neil’s eyes and waiting for the inevitable. “…In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold, greater than the might of armies magnified a thousand fold—we can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old…”

Eventually a cop down to my right either gets impatient or gets orders. He grabs a guy, completely randomly, pulls him across the line, and starts beating him. The crowd surges to rescue our friend, and O’Neil makes his choice. “LOOK ME IN THE EYES, O’NEIL!” He clubs the person standing next to me, and the cop standing next to him clubs me. “LOOK ME IN THE EYES, MOTHERFUCKER!” But he never does. I ram into him as hard as I can, praying that the sea behind me will finally break through the wall, drown the both of us, and carry my friend away to safety. But I am not strong enough, and the wall of death beats us back once more. Over my shoulder I watch one cop walk up to a very small older woman and unload a tank of pepper spray into her eyes. Her indomitable and bitter face is the last thing I see before I have to run away.

There are no words that are poisonous enough to convey the venom that I hold for O’Neil and all of the rest of his kind. These wretched scabs, these Uncle Toms, these despicable bullies, these hellish machines, these dead bodies are utterly beneath contempt. I look at their faces and I feel nothing but hatred. I run down 4th Avenue, ducking gas and grenades, my eyes brimming with red veins throbbing. Training has dehumanized me in O’Neil’s eyes, and O’Neil in mine.

Breaking the Spell, a documentary about the WTO that CrimethInc. helped to circulate widely afterwards.

[glorioustimetraveldinosaur]

Why Have The Video Games Bus Parties

Why Have The Video Games Bus Parties

By Joseph McDonald

Despite their age, adults are still humans. They might have overcome their childish fantasies however it does not really mean that they are gone. It is still inside their heart. Those fantasies are still inside your heart. Better awaken it. In just a day, it would never be that bad to awaken those feelings. If you are planning to host or prepare a special event, you should get the video games bus parties Atlanta GA. Clients should secure the security of their players too. If not abused, these games can be quite educational. Some games allow them to improve their flexibility. Others enhance their spatial skills. Every game has its unique features. Overall, if they are brought to the public, these tools may be able to break communication barriers. Rather than discouraging children to take part on this kind of activity, once in a while, teachers should support this idea. In reality, more and more students are drawn to virtual world. The school should adapt too. As long as they are played on the right time and moment, for sure, these games would never affect the studies of their students. Your child can use this opportunity to impress their classmates or schoolmates. In some cases, it could be valuable. Thanks to this activity, your kid would gain more social confidence. They will have more friends. They could use this event as an instrument to be closer to their classmates. There are a lot of smart people who are still seeking for a job today. That is a fact. Teachers should embrace this idea, particularly, if they want to produce future leaders. You could never judge someone based on their academic grades. Using this activity, learn more about your class. You must address your needs. Take note of your wants. List them down. Think of evaluating your options. There are various types of games and gaming tools that you can try. You have to be considerate in picking up a solution. Be realistic. Always consider what would happen if you would pick this option rather than picking that. Consider your reasons again for taking this service. Know the characteristics and interests of your players. Using those as preferences, imagine their potential behavior after interesting the bus. Before you use this idea, you need to make sure that your ideas are remarkable and interesting. It may greatly affect the way you watch and experience things. Educators should never stop progress. They do not have the power to make it happen, anyway. Educators serve as guides. To become an effective guide, they should continue watching these developments. They have to adapt to it. If they are against with it, they could always run a debate to acquire the opinions of all their stakeholders, especially, their pupils. By running this campaign, they can raise awareness and minimize the negative effects of these tools. As for now, while the pros still outweigh the cons, they could still support students to try this. Give this activity a try. See if it is ideal enough for your event.

About the Author:

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from Blogger https://ift.tt/2U7MpIj

[magicwebsitesnet]

Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future

Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future http://www.nature-business.com/nature-driven-by-souths-past-black-women-seek-votes-and-a-new-future/

Nature

AMERICUS, Ga. — Lorena Barnum Sabbs thought the past really was past. Born 67 years ago in a segregated hospital, she was arrested when she was 11 for trying to integrate the local movie theater and locked in a stockade for several days without beds, working toilets or running water. Later, as one of the first black girls to attend the formerly whites-only high school, she ventured to the bathroom only in groups for fear of attacks.

“I was the recipient of that hate and disrespect, and I thought, I have finally outlived it,” she said. “I was wrong.”

Nearly two years after Donald J. Trump’s election, with racial divisions increasingly in public view and voting rights under regular attack, Ms. Sabbs is one of a small army of African-American women across the South using networks originally forged in segregation to muster turnout for Democratic candidates in the November elections. They are mobilizing in conservative states and districts, hoping to pull off upsets like Doug Jones’s stunning Senate victory last year in Alabama, where 98 percent of black women voted for him and proved a critical base of support.

In Columbus, Ga., women sit in the fellowship hall of the Emmanuel Christian Community Church, clipboards at the ready to register voters. In Panama City, Fla., sorority sisters park themselves at a street corner across from an imperiled elementary school, holding signs reminding people to vote. And in Greenville, Miss., the mayor of a nearby town founded by sharecroppers says she will not give up on coaxing young people to the polls, even as they complain their votes don’t matter.

As both political parties prepare for what many see as the most consequential midterm elections in memory, black women’s votes will be critical. Exit polls consistently indicate they are the single most loyal Democratic voting bloc.

It was Mr. Jones’s longshot victory in Alabama that brought national attention to the tremendous political influence these women can wield through the bedrock institutions of black life, from churches to historically black universities, sororities and beauty parlors. Once relegated to supporting roles, many are now major players, both in getting out the vote and in running for office in record numbers.

“When you invest in a black woman, she brings her house, her block, her church and her story,” said Glynda C. Carr, co-founder of Higher Heights, one of the many organizations that have sprung up to foster black women’s political leadership. “I use my mother as an example — until the day she died, she organized our little micro-precinct. She drove me to city hall to register when I was 18. Black women have been doing this since Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.”

But whether black women can replicate their success in Mr. Jones’s Senate race is far from certain. No Republican candidate this fall is as vulnerable as his opponent in Alabama, Roy Moore, the conservative former judge who was accused of preying on teenage girls. And the South still remains solidly Republican: Mr. Trump easily won every state in 2016 except Virginia, and Republicans overwhelmingly control most levers of power throughout the region.

There are other hurdles. African Americans make up a third at most of the electorate in much of the region. Candidates vying to make history as the first black woman governor in the nation (Stacey Abrams of Georgia), Florida’s first black governor (Andrew Gillum) and Mississippi’s first black senator since Reconstruction (Mike Espy) still need white votes to win.

There is the sense of futility and alienation that has depressed black turnout. Organizers hear from reluctant voters about black men being killed by police, health insurance out of reach, school budgets cut and local economic development thwarted, even after the election of a black president. While black women’s turnout is consistently among the highest of all demographic groups, higher than black men’s, it dropped in 2016.

And there is the daunting and sometimes confusing landscape of voting restrictions — picture IDs, shorter voting hours, voter purges, attempts to close polling places and criminal prosecutions of ineligible voters that have erased some blacks from the voting rolls, raised barriers to voting that could depress black turnout and soured others from voting at all.

Interviews with more than 50 black women, encountered during a recent voter mobilization bus tour across Georgia, Florida and Mississippi, offered echoes of the South’s past and glimpses of its future. These are some of their stories.

Image

LaTosha Brown at the offices of the New Georgia Project in Atlanta.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Greenville, Miss./The Organizer

LaTosha Brown lifted her voice and sang: “I woke up this morning with my mind set on freedom.”

In the Mississippi Delta, home to some of the country’s poorest concentrations of rural black communities, Ms. Brown asked a room of women what local issues could help convince people that their votes would bring change. Eulah Peterson, mayor of nearby Mound Bayou, told of losing a battle to save a storied black high school — decades after Fannie Lou Hamer, the civil rights leader, helped to found the rural development organization in Greenville where they met.

That history and this place resonated for her, Ms. Brown told them, her braids cascading down her back. She grew up in Selma, Ala., but visited her grandmother over the summers in Summit, Miss. “Every Sunday she made sure her grandbaby came to church and sang,” she said. “I am so moved. I know where I am.”

As the bus crisscrossed the South, similar gatherings began with a spiritual and ended with a prayer, the rhythms echoing the call and response of church services.

From Cuthbert, Ga., where a spirited meeting at the Stone House restaurant drew activists who beat back an attempt to close polling places, to Gifford, Fla., where people at a barbecue sported “I Voted” stickers on Primary Day, Ms. Brown worked to rouse crowds of volunteers — mostly women, but with men among them.

In Panama City, Fla., black drivers honked upon seeing the bus, which was plastered with pictures of black fists raised in the power salute. Some white drivers looked stonily ahead. And then there was Montgomery, Ala., where the bus’s front window was shattered. Ms. Brown believes something was hurled at the glass.

Many of the women are motivated by what they see as President Trump’s attempt to turn back the clock. But Ms. Brown says that alone will not drive people to the polls; they also want action on issues that touch their lives.

Image

Women steped off the “South Is Rising” tour bus in Cleveland, Miss., in August.CreditAndrea Morales for The New York Times

She is a co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, which aims both to motivate black voters and help them wield local power. Her work has convinced her that delivering on issues and building local relationships not only persuades black voters to cast ballots, but also to become regular voters.

“Folks have been so used to what I call ‘round the Negroes up,’” Ms. Brown said. “Wait until the last minute, drop a couple of dollars and throw some ads on the TV or radio and say, ‘It’s a Democrat.’ That’s not been working for us. We’re trying to stir up the spirits of the folks who’ve been turned off this damn process.”

In 45 Congressional districts, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is spending what it described as a record midterm sum of $25 million specifically earmarked for nonwhite voters, with black women a major target of focus groups, digital, radio and mail advertising, and customized social media posts and text messages, officials said.

But the work remains grueling, and sometimes halting. Ms. Brown’s co-founder, Cliff Albright, struck out with two young men in Florida who said they had no intention of voting. At Edward Waters College in Jacksonville and in front of a small house in Titusville, he tried to make a connection, asking one what kinds of local changes he wanted to see, another if he was worried about getting shot. But they offered him only polite smiles and no commitments.

Image

Kewyata Dice at her home in DeSoto, Ga.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Americus, Ga./ The Voter

Kewyata Dice kept meaning to vote again, but life got in the way. She cast her ballot for President Barack Obama in 2012, but sat out the 2014 and 2016 elections, much to her father’s dismay. Ms. Dice, a soft-spoken 29-year-old nursing assistant living in rural DeSoto, Ga., had to support two children, now 11 and 5, while working at a series of nursing homes and hospitals.

Her address changed, and under Georgia’s strict voting laws, she had to re-register and figure out where her new polling place was. In Georgia, polls close at 7 p.m., often a challenge for parents who need child care or struggle to pick children up after work.

“It really always looked as if my vote didn’t matter, being a single mom of two kids, struggling most of my life, losing a parent at a young age,” she said, explaining that her mother died when she was 14. “My state is really a Republican state, and I felt like the Democratic vote didn’t matter.” While she backed Hillary Clinton for president, when it came to voting, she said, “I just didn’t even make time to do it.”

But her father, a truck driver who is also active in the local NAACP, kept pushing her. Americus, where she works at a hospital, has a long history of civil rights protests, and Dr. King was jailed there. Her father is considering running for the county’s school board — one that was sued for drawing district boundaries that prevented blacks from gaining a board majority.

“Now I’ll be able to vote for Miss Stacey,” she said of the Democratic candidate for governor. “Some of the dream is coming alive that Dr. Martin Luther King had. I really would love to see a powerful black woman in Georgia.’’

She heard that a voting group was going to visit Americus and ventured out on a day off. The black-wrapped bus carrying Ms. Brown and the other organizers in the parking lot caught her eye, along with a small cluster of young men and women who gaped at its vivid, black empowerment design. She brought a friend who would be voting for the first time.

It turned out to be easy to register. Shy but smiling as she handed in her completed form, Ms. Dice had to rush back home so she could meet her children at the school bus stop, fix them dinner, read to them, and put them to bed.

She says she intends to vote in November — and she’s promised to reach out to five more of her friends to try to coax them to the polls.

“I feel like I should get out and make my vote matter,” she said. “Make myself matter.”

Image

Kayla and Kiana Blaine on the campus of Florida A&M University in Tallahassee.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Tallahassee, Fla./The Students

The eternal flame was burning brightly on the campus of Florida A & M University. A DJ was spinning “Fight the Power.” Students line danced in fluid formation on the lawn. The night before Mr. Gillum’s come-from-behind primary victory in late August, Kayla and Kiana Blaine put on their bright blue Gillum T shirts. They cheered him on when he spoke to his alma mater, recalling his days of leading student marches and urging them to honor a tradition of political activism at this historically black university.

FAMU, as everyone calls it, is a Blaine family tradition: the sisters’ parents and grandparents are graduates, and Kayla, a freshman, followed Kiana, a junior, from their home in Tampa to the campus in Tallahassee. Campuses like these have long nurtured black leaders, but there is less of a track record for instilling students with a desire to vote.

Yet in the era of Black Lives Matter, there’s a new motivation to cast a ballot. Fueling the Blaine sisters’ determination to bring classmates to the polls and elect Mr. Gillum is a protectiveness and fear about the fate of black men. The Democratic primary allowed the sisters to choose between two firsts for governor — the first woman in Gwen Graham, or the first black man. For Kayla and Kiana, it was no contest.

“I stand behind Andrew Gillum when he’s on the job to stand behind our black men,” Kayla said, applauding his opposition to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law allowing shootings in self-defense, a flash point after George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin in 2012.

There are other urgent reasons to turn out. Both sisters back (as Mr. Gillum does) Amendment 4 to the state’s constitution, which would restore voting rights to most felons who serve their terms. Florida is one of four states that permanently bans felons from voting. “They’ve served their time,” Kiana said. “Their voices could make a huge difference.”

The very issue that has alienated many young black people — a belief that the criminal justice system is stacked against black men — can also be used to persuade them to vote, said DeJuana Thompson, a veteran of the Alabama Senate effort who founded the advocacy group Woke Vote to reach black millennials. She said she tells them, “You can do something to change what is happening to you and your friends. Part of that is voting, part of that is protest.”

So the Blaines plastered the dorms with posters listing Mr. Gillum’s policies, and say they will continue to be active on social media to recruit their fellow students. They posted pictures of themselves voting — Kayla’s ballot for Mr. Gillum was the first she has cast.

Still, sometimes getting out each vote can feel like a personal challenge. “Two of the boys I’m really close with, we got them to go vote,” Kayla said. “They didn’t much care, they just cared that I wanted them to vote. If you don’t care, at least do it for me.”

Image

Lorena Barnum Sabbs at her home in Americus, Ga.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Americus, Ga./The Fighter

For Ms. Sabbs, the activist who grew up in segregated Americus, marshaling the vote is a family legacy. It’s something she remembers most vividly being taught by her grandmother, who took her to civil rights protests when she was eight years old. The fifth-generation family funeral home Ms. Sabbs now runs in Americus has offered rides to the polls for decades.

Ms. Sabbs added a voter registration station to the funeral home, and describes her approach when people walk in: “Baby, have you registered to vote? It’s really easy; we can do it right here.” She hands out absentee ballot forms and offers free notary services — often crucial if people have to justify why they can’t vote in person or prove their address given Georgia’s strict voter registration laws.

Her college sorority is another basis for political action: She belongs to Delta Sigma Theta, one of the “Divine Nine” black sororities known for social activism (Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan were among many famous alumnae). She attends their monthly meetings, where sorority sisters are urged to work on voter education and persuasion.

When she was 11, Ms. Sabbs joined another band of women, girls protesting segregated seating in 1963 at the Martin Theater. She remembers “walking up the steps, three, four floors to watch movies in the balcony of that movie theater, and you never saw anything nastier.” Refusing to disperse, about 30 girls were arrested and transferred an hour away to be locked in the Leesburg Stockade. Sleeping on cement floors, with only an intermittent dripping shower, the girls were threatened and even had a snake thrown into their cells.

Ms. Sabbs cannot remember whether she was there for four or five days, but some of the girls were jailed for as long as 45 days. Not until a local dogcatcher spread the word did their parents even know where their children were — and not until the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee got a photographer to record their plight did pressure mount for their release.

Ms. Sabbs does not dwell on that time, but she evoked it briefly in a voting pep talk at a barbershop across from the parking lot where the theater once stood.

“When you sit home and you don’t do what is your privilege but also your responsibility — a whole lot of folks did a lot of suffering to get you to that point,” she said.

She understands that shaming tactics can backfire, and invoking the past alone is not enough to prod people — especially younger voters — to the polls. Turnout efforts fell short in 2016. They clearly could in 2018 as well.

“There’s a ton of pressure on black-led, women-led organizations,” said Nse Ufot, executive director of the New Georgia Project, founded by Ms. Abrams to register a newly diverse electorate. “If for some reason we don’t pull off this blue wave in November, people will say these organizations failed.”

Whatever the outcome, Ms. Sabbs traces a profound shift in the way many black women see themselves.

“Black women have tried to balance over the years the sensitivity in the black community that black men are not respected or that we have to somehow hide our light under a bushel in order not to offend,’ she said. “And you know what, we’re just over it.”

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/us/politics/black-women-voters-south.html |

Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future, in 2018-10-04 10:41:14

[blogparadiseisland]

Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future

Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future http://www.nature-business.com/nature-driven-by-souths-past-black-women-seek-votes-and-a-new-future/

Nature

AMERICUS, Ga. — Lorena Barnum Sabbs thought the past really was past. Born 67 years ago in a segregated hospital, she was arrested when she was 11 for trying to integrate the local movie theater and locked in a stockade for several days without beds, working toilets or running water. Later, as one of the first black girls to attend the formerly whites-only high school, she ventured to the bathroom only in groups for fear of attacks.

“I was the recipient of that hate and disrespect, and I thought, I have finally outlived it,” she said. “I was wrong.”

Nearly two years after Donald J. Trump’s election, with racial divisions increasingly in public view and voting rights under regular attack, Ms. Sabbs is one of a small army of African-American women across the South using networks originally forged in segregation to muster turnout for Democratic candidates in the November elections. They are mobilizing in conservative states and districts, hoping to pull off upsets like Doug Jones’s stunning Senate victory last year in Alabama, where 98 percent of black women voted for him and proved a critical base of support.

In Columbus, Ga., women sit in the fellowship hall of the Emmanuel Christian Community Church, clipboards at the ready to register voters. In Panama City, Fla., sorority sisters park themselves at a street corner across from an imperiled elementary school, holding signs reminding people to vote. And in Greenville, Miss., the mayor of a nearby town founded by sharecroppers says she will not give up on coaxing young people to the polls, even as they complain their votes don’t matter.

As both political parties prepare for what many see as the most consequential midterm elections in memory, black women’s votes will be critical. Exit polls consistently indicate they are the single most loyal Democratic voting bloc.

It was Mr. Jones’s longshot victory in Alabama that brought national attention to the tremendous political influence these women can wield through the bedrock institutions of black life, from churches to historically black universities, sororities and beauty parlors. Once relegated to supporting roles, many are now major players, both in getting out the vote and in running for office in record numbers.

“When you invest in a black woman, she brings her house, her block, her church and her story,” said Glynda C. Carr, co-founder of Higher Heights, one of the many organizations that have sprung up to foster black women’s political leadership. “I use my mother as an example — until the day she died, she organized our little micro-precinct. She drove me to city hall to register when I was 18. Black women have been doing this since Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.”

But whether black women can replicate their success in Mr. Jones’s Senate race is far from certain. No Republican candidate this fall is as vulnerable as his opponent in Alabama, Roy Moore, the conservative former judge who was accused of preying on teenage girls. And the South still remains solidly Republican: Mr. Trump easily won every state in 2016 except Virginia, and Republicans overwhelmingly control most levers of power throughout the region.

There are other hurdles. African Americans make up a third at most of the electorate in much of the region. Candidates vying to make history as the first black woman governor in the nation (Stacey Abrams of Georgia), Florida’s first black governor (Andrew Gillum) and Mississippi’s first black senator since Reconstruction (Mike Espy) still need white votes to win.

There is the sense of futility and alienation that has depressed black turnout. Organizers hear from reluctant voters about black men being killed by police, health insurance out of reach, school budgets cut and local economic development thwarted, even after the election of a black president. While black women’s turnout is consistently among the highest of all demographic groups, higher than black men’s, it dropped in 2016.

And there is the daunting and sometimes confusing landscape of voting restrictions — picture IDs, shorter voting hours, voter purges, attempts to close polling places and criminal prosecutions of ineligible voters that have erased some blacks from the voting rolls, raised barriers to voting that could depress black turnout and soured others from voting at all.

Interviews with more than 50 black women, encountered during a recent voter mobilization bus tour across Georgia, Florida and Mississippi, offered echoes of the South’s past and glimpses of its future. These are some of their stories.

Image

LaTosha Brown at the offices of the New Georgia Project in Atlanta.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Greenville, Miss./The Organizer

LaTosha Brown lifted her voice and sang: “I woke up this morning with my mind set on freedom.”

In the Mississippi Delta, home to some of the country’s poorest concentrations of rural black communities, Ms. Brown asked a room of women what local issues could help convince people that their votes would bring change. Eulah Peterson, mayor of nearby Mound Bayou, told of losing a battle to save a storied black high school — decades after Fannie Lou Hamer, the civil rights leader, helped to found the rural development organization in Greenville where they met.

That history and this place resonated for her, Ms. Brown told them, her braids cascading down her back. She grew up in Selma, Ala., but visited her grandmother over the summers in Summit, Miss. “Every Sunday she made sure her grandbaby came to church and sang,” she said. “I am so moved. I know where I am.”

As the bus crisscrossed the South, similar gatherings began with a spiritual and ended with a prayer, the rhythms echoing the call and response of church services.

From Cuthbert, Ga., where a spirited meeting at the Stone House restaurant drew activists who beat back an attempt to close polling places, to Gifford, Fla., where people at a barbecue sported “I Voted” stickers on Primary Day, Ms. Brown worked to rouse crowds of volunteers — mostly women, but with men among them.

In Panama City, Fla., black drivers honked upon seeing the bus, which was plastered with pictures of black fists raised in the power salute. Some white drivers looked stonily ahead. And then there was Montgomery, Ala., where the bus’s front window was shattered. Ms. Brown believes something was hurled at the glass.

Many of the women are motivated by what they see as President Trump’s attempt to turn back the clock. But Ms. Brown says that alone will not drive people to the polls; they also want action on issues that touch their lives.

Image

Women steped off the “South Is Rising” tour bus in Cleveland, Miss., in August.CreditAndrea Morales for The New York Times

She is a co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, which aims both to motivate black voters and help them wield local power. Her work has convinced her that delivering on issues and building local relationships not only persuades black voters to cast ballots, but also to become regular voters.

“Folks have been so used to what I call ‘round the Negroes up,’” Ms. Brown said. “Wait until the last minute, drop a couple of dollars and throw some ads on the TV or radio and say, ‘It’s a Democrat.’ That’s not been working for us. We’re trying to stir up the spirits of the folks who’ve been turned off this damn process.”

In 45 Congressional districts, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is spending what it described as a record midterm sum of $25 million specifically earmarked for nonwhite voters, with black women a major target of focus groups, digital, radio and mail advertising, and customized social media posts and text messages, officials said.

But the work remains grueling, and sometimes halting. Ms. Brown’s co-founder, Cliff Albright, struck out with two young men in Florida who said they had no intention of voting. At Edward Waters College in Jacksonville and in front of a small house in Titusville, he tried to make a connection, asking one what kinds of local changes he wanted to see, another if he was worried about getting shot. But they offered him only polite smiles and no commitments.

Image

Kewyata Dice at her home in DeSoto, Ga.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Americus, Ga./ The Voter

Kewyata Dice kept meaning to vote again, but life got in the way. She cast her ballot for President Barack Obama in 2012, but sat out the 2014 and 2016 elections, much to her father’s dismay. Ms. Dice, a soft-spoken 29-year-old nursing assistant living in rural DeSoto, Ga., had to support two children, now 11 and 5, while working at a series of nursing homes and hospitals.

Her address changed, and under Georgia’s strict voting laws, she had to re-register and figure out where her new polling place was. In Georgia, polls close at 7 p.m., often a challenge for parents who need child care or struggle to pick children up after work.

“It really always looked as if my vote didn’t matter, being a single mom of two kids, struggling most of my life, losing a parent at a young age,” she said, explaining that her mother died when she was 14. “My state is really a Republican state, and I felt like the Democratic vote didn’t matter.” While she backed Hillary Clinton for president, when it came to voting, she said, “I just didn’t even make time to do it.”

But her father, a truck driver who is also active in the local NAACP, kept pushing her. Americus, where she works at a hospital, has a long history of civil rights protests, and Dr. King was jailed there. Her father is considering running for the county’s school board — one that was sued for drawing district boundaries that prevented blacks from gaining a board majority.

“Now I’ll be able to vote for Miss Stacey,” she said of the Democratic candidate for governor. “Some of the dream is coming alive that Dr. Martin Luther King had. I really would love to see a powerful black woman in Georgia.’’

She heard that a voting group was going to visit Americus and ventured out on a day off. The black-wrapped bus carrying Ms. Brown and the other organizers in the parking lot caught her eye, along with a small cluster of young men and women who gaped at its vivid, black empowerment design. She brought a friend who would be voting for the first time.

It turned out to be easy to register. Shy but smiling as she handed in her completed form, Ms. Dice had to rush back home so she could meet her children at the school bus stop, fix them dinner, read to them, and put them to bed.

She says she intends to vote in November — and she’s promised to reach out to five more of her friends to try to coax them to the polls.

“I feel like I should get out and make my vote matter,” she said. “Make myself matter.”

Image

Kayla and Kiana Blaine on the campus of Florida A&M University in Tallahassee.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Tallahassee, Fla./The Students

The eternal flame was burning brightly on the campus of Florida A & M University. A DJ was spinning “Fight the Power.” Students line danced in fluid formation on the lawn. The night before Mr. Gillum’s come-from-behind primary victory in late August, Kayla and Kiana Blaine put on their bright blue Gillum T shirts. They cheered him on when he spoke to his alma mater, recalling his days of leading student marches and urging them to honor a tradition of political activism at this historically black university.

FAMU, as everyone calls it, is a Blaine family tradition: the sisters’ parents and grandparents are graduates, and Kayla, a freshman, followed Kiana, a junior, from their home in Tampa to the campus in Tallahassee. Campuses like these have long nurtured black leaders, but there is less of a track record for instilling students with a desire to vote.

Yet in the era of Black Lives Matter, there’s a new motivation to cast a ballot. Fueling the Blaine sisters’ determination to bring classmates to the polls and elect Mr. Gillum is a protectiveness and fear about the fate of black men. The Democratic primary allowed the sisters to choose between two firsts for governor — the first woman in Gwen Graham, or the first black man. For Kayla and Kiana, it was no contest.

“I stand behind Andrew Gillum when he’s on the job to stand behind our black men,” Kayla said, applauding his opposition to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law allowing shootings in self-defense, a flash point after George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin in 2012.

There are other urgent reasons to turn out. Both sisters back (as Mr. Gillum does) Amendment 4 to the state’s constitution, which would restore voting rights to most felons who serve their terms. Florida is one of four states that permanently bans felons from voting. “They’ve served their time,” Kiana said. “Their voices could make a huge difference.”

The very issue that has alienated many young black people — a belief that the criminal justice system is stacked against black men — can also be used to persuade them to vote, said DeJuana Thompson, a veteran of the Alabama Senate effort who founded the advocacy group Woke Vote to reach black millennials. She said she tells them, “You can do something to change what is happening to you and your friends. Part of that is voting, part of that is protest.”

So the Blaines plastered the dorms with posters listing Mr. Gillum’s policies, and say they will continue to be active on social media to recruit their fellow students. They posted pictures of themselves voting — Kayla’s ballot for Mr. Gillum was the first she has cast.

Still, sometimes getting out each vote can feel like a personal challenge. “Two of the boys I’m really close with, we got them to go vote,” Kayla said. “They didn’t much care, they just cared that I wanted them to vote. If you don’t care, at least do it for me.”

Image

Lorena Barnum Sabbs at her home in Americus, Ga.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Americus, Ga./The Fighter

For Ms. Sabbs, the activist who grew up in segregated Americus, marshaling the vote is a family legacy. It’s something she remembers most vividly being taught by her grandmother, who took her to civil rights protests when she was eight years old. The fifth-generation family funeral home Ms. Sabbs now runs in Americus has offered rides to the polls for decades.

Ms. Sabbs added a voter registration station to the funeral home, and describes her approach when people walk in: “Baby, have you registered to vote? It’s really easy; we can do it right here.” She hands out absentee ballot forms and offers free notary services — often crucial if people have to justify why they can’t vote in person or prove their address given Georgia’s strict voter registration laws.

Her college sorority is another basis for political action: She belongs to Delta Sigma Theta, one of the “Divine Nine” black sororities known for social activism (Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan were among many famous alumnae). She attends their monthly meetings, where sorority sisters are urged to work on voter education and persuasion.

When she was 11, Ms. Sabbs joined another band of women, girls protesting segregated seating in 1963 at the Martin Theater. She remembers “walking up the steps, three, four floors to watch movies in the balcony of that movie theater, and you never saw anything nastier.” Refusing to disperse, about 30 girls were arrested and transferred an hour away to be locked in the Leesburg Stockade. Sleeping on cement floors, with only an intermittent dripping shower, the girls were threatened and even had a snake thrown into their cells.

Ms. Sabbs cannot remember whether she was there for four or five days, but some of the girls were jailed for as long as 45 days. Not until a local dogcatcher spread the word did their parents even know where their children were — and not until the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee got a photographer to record their plight did pressure mount for their release.

Ms. Sabbs does not dwell on that time, but she evoked it briefly in a voting pep talk at a barbershop across from the parking lot where the theater once stood.

“When you sit home and you don’t do what is your privilege but also your responsibility — a whole lot of folks did a lot of suffering to get you to that point,” she said.

She understands that shaming tactics can backfire, and invoking the past alone is not enough to prod people — especially younger voters — to the polls. Turnout efforts fell short in 2016. They clearly could in 2018 as well.

“There’s a ton of pressure on black-led, women-led organizations,” said Nse Ufot, executive director of the New Georgia Project, founded by Ms. Abrams to register a newly diverse electorate. “If for some reason we don’t pull off this blue wave in November, people will say these organizations failed.”

Whatever the outcome, Ms. Sabbs traces a profound shift in the way many black women see themselves.

“Black women have tried to balance over the years the sensitivity in the black community that black men are not respected or that we have to somehow hide our light under a bushel in order not to offend,’ she said. “And you know what, we’re just over it.”

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/us/politics/black-women-voters-south.html |

Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future, in 2018-10-04 10:41:14

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Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future

Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future http://www.nature-business.com/nature-driven-by-souths-past-black-women-seek-votes-and-a-new-future/

Nature

AMERICUS, Ga. — Lorena Barnum Sabbs thought the past really was past. Born 67 years ago in a segregated hospital, she was arrested when she was 11 for trying to integrate the local movie theater and locked in a stockade for several days without beds, working toilets or running water. Later, as one of the first black girls to attend the formerly whites-only high school, she ventured to the bathroom only in groups for fear of attacks.

“I was the recipient of that hate and disrespect, and I thought, I have finally outlived it,” she said. “I was wrong.”

Nearly two years after Donald J. Trump’s election, with racial divisions increasingly in public view and voting rights under regular attack, Ms. Sabbs is one of a small army of African-American women across the South using networks originally forged in segregation to muster turnout for Democratic candidates in the November elections. They are mobilizing in conservative states and districts, hoping to pull off upsets like Doug Jones’s stunning Senate victory last year in Alabama, where 98 percent of black women voted for him and proved a critical base of support.

In Columbus, Ga., women sit in the fellowship hall of the Emmanuel Christian Community Church, clipboards at the ready to register voters. In Panama City, Fla., sorority sisters park themselves at a street corner across from an imperiled elementary school, holding signs reminding people to vote. And in Greenville, Miss., the mayor of a nearby town founded by sharecroppers says she will not give up on coaxing young people to the polls, even as they complain their votes don’t matter.

As both political parties prepare for what many see as the most consequential midterm elections in memory, black women’s votes will be critical. Exit polls consistently indicate they are the single most loyal Democratic voting bloc.

It was Mr. Jones’s longshot victory in Alabama that brought national attention to the tremendous political influence these women can wield through the bedrock institutions of black life, from churches to historically black universities, sororities and beauty parlors. Once relegated to supporting roles, many are now major players, both in getting out the vote and in running for office in record numbers.

“When you invest in a black woman, she brings her house, her block, her church and her story,” said Glynda C. Carr, co-founder of Higher Heights, one of the many organizations that have sprung up to foster black women’s political leadership. “I use my mother as an example — until the day she died, she organized our little micro-precinct. She drove me to city hall to register when I was 18. Black women have been doing this since Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.”

But whether black women can replicate their success in Mr. Jones’s Senate race is far from certain. No Republican candidate this fall is as vulnerable as his opponent in Alabama, Roy Moore, the conservative former judge who was accused of preying on teenage girls. And the South still remains solidly Republican: Mr. Trump easily won every state in 2016 except Virginia, and Republicans overwhelmingly control most levers of power throughout the region.

There are other hurdles. African Americans make up a third at most of the electorate in much of the region. Candidates vying to make history as the first black woman governor in the nation (Stacey Abrams of Georgia), Florida’s first black governor (Andrew Gillum) and Mississippi’s first black senator since Reconstruction (Mike Espy) still need white votes to win.

There is the sense of futility and alienation that has depressed black turnout. Organizers hear from reluctant voters about black men being killed by police, health insurance out of reach, school budgets cut and local economic development thwarted, even after the election of a black president. While black women’s turnout is consistently among the highest of all demographic groups, higher than black men’s, it dropped in 2016.

And there is the daunting and sometimes confusing landscape of voting restrictions — picture IDs, shorter voting hours, voter purges, attempts to close polling places and criminal prosecutions of ineligible voters that have erased some blacks from the voting rolls, raised barriers to voting that could depress black turnout and soured others from voting at all.

Interviews with more than 50 black women, encountered during a recent voter mobilization bus tour across Georgia, Florida and Mississippi, offered echoes of the South’s past and glimpses of its future. These are some of their stories.

Image

LaTosha Brown at the offices of the New Georgia Project in Atlanta.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Greenville, Miss./The Organizer

LaTosha Brown lifted her voice and sang: “I woke up this morning with my mind set on freedom.”

In the Mississippi Delta, home to some of the country’s poorest concentrations of rural black communities, Ms. Brown asked a room of women what local issues could help convince people that their votes would bring change. Eulah Peterson, mayor of nearby Mound Bayou, told of losing a battle to save a storied black high school — decades after Fannie Lou Hamer, the civil rights leader, helped to found the rural development organization in Greenville where they met.

That history and this place resonated for her, Ms. Brown told them, her braids cascading down her back. She grew up in Selma, Ala., but visited her grandmother over the summers in Summit, Miss. “Every Sunday she made sure her grandbaby came to church and sang,” she said. “I am so moved. I know where I am.”

As the bus crisscrossed the South, similar gatherings began with a spiritual and ended with a prayer, the rhythms echoing the call and response of church services.

From Cuthbert, Ga., where a spirited meeting at the Stone House restaurant drew activists who beat back an attempt to close polling places, to Gifford, Fla., where people at a barbecue sported “I Voted” stickers on Primary Day, Ms. Brown worked to rouse crowds of volunteers — mostly women, but with men among them.

In Panama City, Fla., black drivers honked upon seeing the bus, which was plastered with pictures of black fists raised in the power salute. Some white drivers looked stonily ahead. And then there was Montgomery, Ala., where the bus’s front window was shattered. Ms. Brown believes something was hurled at the glass.

Many of the women are motivated by what they see as President Trump’s attempt to turn back the clock. But Ms. Brown says that alone will not drive people to the polls; they also want action on issues that touch their lives.

Image

Women steped off the “South Is Rising” tour bus in Cleveland, Miss., in August.CreditAndrea Morales for The New York Times

She is a co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, which aims both to motivate black voters and help them wield local power. Her work has convinced her that delivering on issues and building local relationships not only persuades black voters to cast ballots, but also to become regular voters.

“Folks have been so used to what I call ‘round the Negroes up,’” Ms. Brown said. “Wait until the last minute, drop a couple of dollars and throw some ads on the TV or radio and say, ‘It’s a Democrat.’ That’s not been working for us. We’re trying to stir up the spirits of the folks who’ve been turned off this damn process.”

In 45 Congressional districts, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is spending what it described as a record midterm sum of $25 million specifically earmarked for nonwhite voters, with black women a major target of focus groups, digital, radio and mail advertising, and customized social media posts and text messages, officials said.

But the work remains grueling, and sometimes halting. Ms. Brown’s co-founder, Cliff Albright, struck out with two young men in Florida who said they had no intention of voting. At Edward Waters College in Jacksonville and in front of a small house in Titusville, he tried to make a connection, asking one what kinds of local changes he wanted to see, another if he was worried about getting shot. But they offered him only polite smiles and no commitments.

Image

Kewyata Dice at her home in DeSoto, Ga.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Americus, Ga./ The Voter

Kewyata Dice kept meaning to vote again, but life got in the way. She cast her ballot for President Barack Obama in 2012, but sat out the 2014 and 2016 elections, much to her father’s dismay. Ms. Dice, a soft-spoken 29-year-old nursing assistant living in rural DeSoto, Ga., had to support two children, now 11 and 5, while working at a series of nursing homes and hospitals.

Her address changed, and under Georgia’s strict voting laws, she had to re-register and figure out where her new polling place was. In Georgia, polls close at 7 p.m., often a challenge for parents who need child care or struggle to pick children up after work.

“It really always looked as if my vote didn’t matter, being a single mom of two kids, struggling most of my life, losing a parent at a young age,” she said, explaining that her mother died when she was 14. “My state is really a Republican state, and I felt like the Democratic vote didn’t matter.” While she backed Hillary Clinton for president, when it came to voting, she said, “I just didn’t even make time to do it.”

But her father, a truck driver who is also active in the local NAACP, kept pushing her. Americus, where she works at a hospital, has a long history of civil rights protests, and Dr. King was jailed there. Her father is considering running for the county’s school board — one that was sued for drawing district boundaries that prevented blacks from gaining a board majority.

“Now I’ll be able to vote for Miss Stacey,” she said of the Democratic candidate for governor. “Some of the dream is coming alive that Dr. Martin Luther King had. I really would love to see a powerful black woman in Georgia.’’

She heard that a voting group was going to visit Americus and ventured out on a day off. The black-wrapped bus carrying Ms. Brown and the other organizers in the parking lot caught her eye, along with a small cluster of young men and women who gaped at its vivid, black empowerment design. She brought a friend who would be voting for the first time.

It turned out to be easy to register. Shy but smiling as she handed in her completed form, Ms. Dice had to rush back home so she could meet her children at the school bus stop, fix them dinner, read to them, and put them to bed.

She says she intends to vote in November — and she’s promised to reach out to five more of her friends to try to coax them to the polls.

“I feel like I should get out and make my vote matter,” she said. “Make myself matter.”

Image

Kayla and Kiana Blaine on the campus of Florida A&M University in Tallahassee.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Tallahassee, Fla./The Students

The eternal flame was burning brightly on the campus of Florida A & M University. A DJ was spinning “Fight the Power.” Students line danced in fluid formation on the lawn. The night before Mr. Gillum’s come-from-behind primary victory in late August, Kayla and Kiana Blaine put on their bright blue Gillum T shirts. They cheered him on when he spoke to his alma mater, recalling his days of leading student marches and urging them to honor a tradition of political activism at this historically black university.

FAMU, as everyone calls it, is a Blaine family tradition: the sisters’ parents and grandparents are graduates, and Kayla, a freshman, followed Kiana, a junior, from their home in Tampa to the campus in Tallahassee. Campuses like these have long nurtured black leaders, but there is less of a track record for instilling students with a desire to vote.

Yet in the era of Black Lives Matter, there’s a new motivation to cast a ballot. Fueling the Blaine sisters’ determination to bring classmates to the polls and elect Mr. Gillum is a protectiveness and fear about the fate of black men. The Democratic primary allowed the sisters to choose between two firsts for governor — the first woman in Gwen Graham, or the first black man. For Kayla and Kiana, it was no contest.

“I stand behind Andrew Gillum when he’s on the job to stand behind our black men,” Kayla said, applauding his opposition to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law allowing shootings in self-defense, a flash point after George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin in 2012.

There are other urgent reasons to turn out. Both sisters back (as Mr. Gillum does) Amendment 4 to the state’s constitution, which would restore voting rights to most felons who serve their terms. Florida is one of four states that permanently bans felons from voting. “They’ve served their time,” Kiana said. “Their voices could make a huge difference.”

The very issue that has alienated many young black people — a belief that the criminal justice system is stacked against black men — can also be used to persuade them to vote, said DeJuana Thompson, a veteran of the Alabama Senate effort who founded the advocacy group Woke Vote to reach black millennials. She said she tells them, “You can do something to change what is happening to you and your friends. Part of that is voting, part of that is protest.”

So the Blaines plastered the dorms with posters listing Mr. Gillum’s policies, and say they will continue to be active on social media to recruit their fellow students. They posted pictures of themselves voting — Kayla’s ballot for Mr. Gillum was the first she has cast.

Still, sometimes getting out each vote can feel like a personal challenge. “Two of the boys I’m really close with, we got them to go vote,” Kayla said. “They didn’t much care, they just cared that I wanted them to vote. If you don’t care, at least do it for me.”

Image

Lorena Barnum Sabbs at her home in Americus, Ga.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Americus, Ga./The Fighter

For Ms. Sabbs, the activist who grew up in segregated Americus, marshaling the vote is a family legacy. It’s something she remembers most vividly being taught by her grandmother, who took her to civil rights protests when she was eight years old. The fifth-generation family funeral home Ms. Sabbs now runs in Americus has offered rides to the polls for decades.

Ms. Sabbs added a voter registration station to the funeral home, and describes her approach when people walk in: “Baby, have you registered to vote? It’s really easy; we can do it right here.” She hands out absentee ballot forms and offers free notary services — often crucial if people have to justify why they can’t vote in person or prove their address given Georgia’s strict voter registration laws.

Her college sorority is another basis for political action: She belongs to Delta Sigma Theta, one of the “Divine Nine” black sororities known for social activism (Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan were among many famous alumnae). She attends their monthly meetings, where sorority sisters are urged to work on voter education and persuasion.

When she was 11, Ms. Sabbs joined another band of women, girls protesting segregated seating in 1963 at the Martin Theater. She remembers “walking up the steps, three, four floors to watch movies in the balcony of that movie theater, and you never saw anything nastier.” Refusing to disperse, about 30 girls were arrested and transferred an hour away to be locked in the Leesburg Stockade. Sleeping on cement floors, with only an intermittent dripping shower, the girls were threatened and even had a snake thrown into their cells.

Ms. Sabbs cannot remember whether she was there for four or five days, but some of the girls were jailed for as long as 45 days. Not until a local dogcatcher spread the word did their parents even know where their children were — and not until the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee got a photographer to record their plight did pressure mount for their release.

Ms. Sabbs does not dwell on that time, but she evoked it briefly in a voting pep talk at a barbershop across from the parking lot where the theater once stood.

“When you sit home and you don’t do what is your privilege but also your responsibility — a whole lot of folks did a lot of suffering to get you to that point,” she said.

She understands that shaming tactics can backfire, and invoking the past alone is not enough to prod people — especially younger voters — to the polls. Turnout efforts fell short in 2016. They clearly could in 2018 as well.

“There’s a ton of pressure on black-led, women-led organizations,” said Nse Ufot, executive director of the New Georgia Project, founded by Ms. Abrams to register a newly diverse electorate. “If for some reason we don’t pull off this blue wave in November, people will say these organizations failed.”

Whatever the outcome, Ms. Sabbs traces a profound shift in the way many black women see themselves.

“Black women have tried to balance over the years the sensitivity in the black community that black men are not respected or that we have to somehow hide our light under a bushel in order not to offend,’ she said. “And you know what, we’re just over it.”

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/us/politics/black-women-voters-south.html |

Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future, in 2018-10-04 10:41:14

[internetbasic9]

Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future

Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future https://ift.tt/2DWHDJs

Nature

AMERICUS, Ga. — Lorena Barnum Sabbs thought the past really was past. Born 67 years ago in a segregated hospital, she was arrested when she was 11 for trying to integrate the local movie theater and locked in a stockade for several days without beds, working toilets or running water. Later, as one of the first black girls to attend the formerly whites-only high school, she ventured to the bathroom only in groups for fear of attacks.

“I was the recipient of that hate and disrespect, and I thought, I have finally outlived it,” she said. “I was wrong.”

Nearly two years after Donald J. Trump’s election, with racial divisions increasingly in public view and voting rights under regular attack, Ms. Sabbs is one of a small army of African-American women across the South using networks originally forged in segregation to muster turnout for Democratic candidates in the November elections. They are mobilizing in conservative states and districts, hoping to pull off upsets like Doug Jones’s stunning Senate victory last year in Alabama, where 98 percent of black women voted for him and proved a critical base of support.

In Columbus, Ga., women sit in the fellowship hall of the Emmanuel Christian Community Church, clipboards at the ready to register voters. In Panama City, Fla., sorority sisters park themselves at a street corner across from an imperiled elementary school, holding signs reminding people to vote. And in Greenville, Miss., the mayor of a nearby town founded by sharecroppers says she will not give up on coaxing young people to the polls, even as they complain their votes don’t matter.

As both political parties prepare for what many see as the most consequential midterm elections in memory, black women’s votes will be critical. Exit polls consistently indicate they are the single most loyal Democratic voting bloc.

It was Mr. Jones’s longshot victory in Alabama that brought national attention to the tremendous political influence these women can wield through the bedrock institutions of black life, from churches to historically black universities, sororities and beauty parlors. Once relegated to supporting roles, many are now major players, both in getting out the vote and in running for office in record numbers.

“When you invest in a black woman, she brings her house, her block, her church and her story,” said Glynda C. Carr, co-founder of Higher Heights, one of the many organizations that have sprung up to foster black women’s political leadership. “I use my mother as an example — until the day she died, she organized our little micro-precinct. She drove me to city hall to register when I was 18. Black women have been doing this since Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.”

But whether black women can replicate their success in Mr. Jones’s Senate race is far from certain. No Republican candidate this fall is as vulnerable as his opponent in Alabama, Roy Moore, the conservative former judge who was accused of preying on teenage girls. And the South still remains solidly Republican: Mr. Trump easily won every state in 2016 except Virginia, and Republicans overwhelmingly control most levers of power throughout the region.

There are other hurdles. African Americans make up a third at most of the electorate in much of the region. Candidates vying to make history as the first black woman governor in the nation (Stacey Abrams of Georgia), Florida’s first black governor (Andrew Gillum) and Mississippi’s first black senator since Reconstruction (Mike Espy) still need white votes to win.

There is the sense of futility and alienation that has depressed black turnout. Organizers hear from reluctant voters about black men being killed by police, health insurance out of reach, school budgets cut and local economic development thwarted, even after the election of a black president. While black women’s turnout is consistently among the highest of all demographic groups, higher than black men’s, it dropped in 2016.

And there is the daunting and sometimes confusing landscape of voting restrictions — picture IDs, shorter voting hours, voter purges, attempts to close polling places and criminal prosecutions of ineligible voters that have erased some blacks from the voting rolls, raised barriers to voting that could depress black turnout and soured others from voting at all.

Interviews with more than 50 black women, encountered during a recent voter mobilization bus tour across Georgia, Florida and Mississippi, offered echoes of the South’s past and glimpses of its future. These are some of their stories.

Image

LaTosha Brown at the offices of the New Georgia Project in Atlanta.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Greenville, Miss./The Organizer

LaTosha Brown lifted her voice and sang: “I woke up this morning with my mind set on freedom.”

In the Mississippi Delta, home to some of the country’s poorest concentrations of rural black communities, Ms. Brown asked a room of women what local issues could help convince people that their votes would bring change. Eulah Peterson, mayor of nearby Mound Bayou, told of losing a battle to save a storied black high school — decades after Fannie Lou Hamer, the civil rights leader, helped to found the rural development organization in Greenville where they met.

That history and this place resonated for her, Ms. Brown told them, her braids cascading down her back. She grew up in Selma, Ala., but visited her grandmother over the summers in Summit, Miss. “Every Sunday she made sure her grandbaby came to church and sang,” she said. “I am so moved. I know where I am.”

As the bus crisscrossed the South, similar gatherings began with a spiritual and ended with a prayer, the rhythms echoing the call and response of church services.

From Cuthbert, Ga., where a spirited meeting at the Stone House restaurant drew activists who beat back an attempt to close polling places, to Gifford, Fla., where people at a barbecue sported “I Voted” stickers on Primary Day, Ms. Brown worked to rouse crowds of volunteers — mostly women, but with men among them.

In Panama City, Fla., black drivers honked upon seeing the bus, which was plastered with pictures of black fists raised in the power salute. Some white drivers looked stonily ahead. And then there was Montgomery, Ala., where the bus’s front window was shattered. Ms. Brown believes something was hurled at the glass.

Many of the women are motivated by what they see as President Trump’s attempt to turn back the clock. But Ms. Brown says that alone will not drive people to the polls; they also want action on issues that touch their lives.

Image

Women steped off the “South Is Rising” tour bus in Cleveland, Miss., in August.CreditAndrea Morales for The New York Times

She is a co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, which aims both to motivate black voters and help them wield local power. Her work has convinced her that delivering on issues and building local relationships not only persuades black voters to cast ballots, but also to become regular voters.

“Folks have been so used to what I call ‘round the Negroes up,’” Ms. Brown said. “Wait until the last minute, drop a couple of dollars and throw some ads on the TV or radio and say, ‘It’s a Democrat.’ That’s not been working for us. We’re trying to stir up the spirits of the folks who’ve been turned off this damn process.”

In 45 Congressional districts, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is spending what it described as a record midterm sum of $25 million specifically earmarked for nonwhite voters, with black women a major target of focus groups, digital, radio and mail advertising, and customized social media posts and text messages, officials said.

But the work remains grueling, and sometimes halting. Ms. Brown’s co-founder, Cliff Albright, struck out with two young men in Florida who said they had no intention of voting. At Edward Waters College in Jacksonville and in front of a small house in Titusville, he tried to make a connection, asking one what kinds of local changes he wanted to see, another if he was worried about getting shot. But they offered him only polite smiles and no commitments.

Image

Kewyata Dice at her home in DeSoto, Ga.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Americus, Ga./ The Voter

Kewyata Dice kept meaning to vote again, but life got in the way. She cast her ballot for President Barack Obama in 2012, but sat out the 2014 and 2016 elections, much to her father’s dismay. Ms. Dice, a soft-spoken 29-year-old nursing assistant living in rural DeSoto, Ga., had to support two children, now 11 and 5, while working at a series of nursing homes and hospitals.

Her address changed, and under Georgia’s strict voting laws, she had to re-register and figure out where her new polling place was. In Georgia, polls close at 7 p.m., often a challenge for parents who need child care or struggle to pick children up after work.

“It really always looked as if my vote didn’t matter, being a single mom of two kids, struggling most of my life, losing a parent at a young age,” she said, explaining that her mother died when she was 14. “My state is really a Republican state, and I felt like the Democratic vote didn’t matter.” While she backed Hillary Clinton for president, when it came to voting, she said, “I just didn’t even make time to do it.”

But her father, a truck driver who is also active in the local NAACP, kept pushing her. Americus, where she works at a hospital, has a long history of civil rights protests, and Dr. King was jailed there. Her father is considering running for the county’s school board — one that was sued for drawing district boundaries that prevented blacks from gaining a board majority.

“Now I’ll be able to vote for Miss Stacey,” she said of the Democratic candidate for governor. “Some of the dream is coming alive that Dr. Martin Luther King had. I really would love to see a powerful black woman in Georgia.’’

She heard that a voting group was going to visit Americus and ventured out on a day off. The black-wrapped bus carrying Ms. Brown and the other organizers in the parking lot caught her eye, along with a small cluster of young men and women who gaped at its vivid, black empowerment design. She brought a friend who would be voting for the first time.

It turned out to be easy to register. Shy but smiling as she handed in her completed form, Ms. Dice had to rush back home so she could meet her children at the school bus stop, fix them dinner, read to them, and put them to bed.

She says she intends to vote in November — and she’s promised to reach out to five more of her friends to try to coax them to the polls.

“I feel like I should get out and make my vote matter,” she said. “Make myself matter.”

Image

Kayla and Kiana Blaine on the campus of Florida A&M University in Tallahassee.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Tallahassee, Fla./The Students

The eternal flame was burning brightly on the campus of Florida A & M University. A DJ was spinning “Fight the Power.” Students line danced in fluid formation on the lawn. The night before Mr. Gillum’s come-from-behind primary victory in late August, Kayla and Kiana Blaine put on their bright blue Gillum T shirts. They cheered him on when he spoke to his alma mater, recalling his days of leading student marches and urging them to honor a tradition of political activism at this historically black university.

FAMU, as everyone calls it, is a Blaine family tradition: the sisters’ parents and grandparents are graduates, and Kayla, a freshman, followed Kiana, a junior, from their home in Tampa to the campus in Tallahassee. Campuses like these have long nurtured black leaders, but there is less of a track record for instilling students with a desire to vote.

Yet in the era of Black Lives Matter, there’s a new motivation to cast a ballot. Fueling the Blaine sisters’ determination to bring classmates to the polls and elect Mr. Gillum is a protectiveness and fear about the fate of black men. The Democratic primary allowed the sisters to choose between two firsts for governor — the first woman in Gwen Graham, or the first black man. For Kayla and Kiana, it was no contest.

“I stand behind Andrew Gillum when he’s on the job to stand behind our black men,” Kayla said, applauding his opposition to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law allowing shootings in self-defense, a flash point after George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin in 2012.

There are other urgent reasons to turn out. Both sisters back (as Mr. Gillum does) Amendment 4 to the state’s constitution, which would restore voting rights to most felons who serve their terms. Florida is one of four states that permanently bans felons from voting. “They’ve served their time,” Kiana said. “Their voices could make a huge difference.”

The very issue that has alienated many young black people — a belief that the criminal justice system is stacked against black men — can also be used to persuade them to vote, said DeJuana Thompson, a veteran of the Alabama Senate effort who founded the advocacy group Woke Vote to reach black millennials. She said she tells them, “You can do something to change what is happening to you and your friends. Part of that is voting, part of that is protest.”

So the Blaines plastered the dorms with posters listing Mr. Gillum’s policies, and say they will continue to be active on social media to recruit their fellow students. They posted pictures of themselves voting — Kayla’s ballot for Mr. Gillum was the first she has cast.

Still, sometimes getting out each vote can feel like a personal challenge. “Two of the boys I’m really close with, we got them to go vote,” Kayla said. “They didn’t much care, they just cared that I wanted them to vote. If you don’t care, at least do it for me.”

Image

Lorena Barnum Sabbs at her home in Americus, Ga.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Americus, Ga./The Fighter

For Ms. Sabbs, the activist who grew up in segregated Americus, marshaling the vote is a family legacy. It’s something she remembers most vividly being taught by her grandmother, who took her to civil rights protests when she was eight years old. The fifth-generation family funeral home Ms. Sabbs now runs in Americus has offered rides to the polls for decades.

Ms. Sabbs added a voter registration station to the funeral home, and describes her approach when people walk in: “Baby, have you registered to vote? It’s really easy; we can do it right here.” She hands out absentee ballot forms and offers free notary services — often crucial if people have to justify why they can’t vote in person or prove their address given Georgia’s strict voter registration laws.

Her college sorority is another basis for political action: She belongs to Delta Sigma Theta, one of the “Divine Nine” black sororities known for social activism (Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan were among many famous alumnae). She attends their monthly meetings, where sorority sisters are urged to work on voter education and persuasion.

When she was 11, Ms. Sabbs joined another band of women, girls protesting segregated seating in 1963 at the Martin Theater. She remembers “walking up the steps, three, four floors to watch movies in the balcony of that movie theater, and you never saw anything nastier.” Refusing to disperse, about 30 girls were arrested and transferred an hour away to be locked in the Leesburg Stockade. Sleeping on cement floors, with only an intermittent dripping shower, the girls were threatened and even had a snake thrown into their cells.

Ms. Sabbs cannot remember whether she was there for four or five days, but some of the girls were jailed for as long as 45 days. Not until a local dogcatcher spread the word did their parents even know where their children were — and not until the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee got a photographer to record their plight did pressure mount for their release.

Ms. Sabbs does not dwell on that time, but she evoked it briefly in a voting pep talk at a barbershop across from the parking lot where the theater once stood.

“When you sit home and you don’t do what is your privilege but also your responsibility — a whole lot of folks did a lot of suffering to get you to that point,” she said.

She understands that shaming tactics can backfire, and invoking the past alone is not enough to prod people — especially younger voters — to the polls. Turnout efforts fell short in 2016. They clearly could in 2018 as well.

“There’s a ton of pressure on black-led, women-led organizations,” said Nse Ufot, executive director of the New Georgia Project, founded by Ms. Abrams to register a newly diverse electorate. “If for some reason we don’t pull off this blue wave in November, people will say these organizations failed.”

Whatever the outcome, Ms. Sabbs traces a profound shift in the way many black women see themselves.

“Black women have tried to balance over the years the sensitivity in the black community that black men are not respected or that we have to somehow hide our light under a bushel in order not to offend,’ she said. “And you know what, we’re just over it.”

Read More | https://ift.tt/2O5eeBK |

Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future, in 2018-10-04 10:41:14

[algarithmblognumber]

Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future

Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future http://www.nature-business.com/nature-driven-by-souths-past-black-women-seek-votes-and-a-new-future/

Nature

AMERICUS, Ga. — Lorena Barnum Sabbs thought the past really was past. Born 67 years ago in a segregated hospital, she was arrested when she was 11 for trying to integrate the local movie theater and locked in a stockade for several days without beds, working toilets or running water. Later, as one of the first black girls to attend the formerly whites-only high school, she ventured to the bathroom only in groups for fear of attacks.

“I was the recipient of that hate and disrespect, and I thought, I have finally outlived it,” she said. “I was wrong.”

Nearly two years after Donald J. Trump’s election, with racial divisions increasingly in public view and voting rights under regular attack, Ms. Sabbs is one of a small army of African-American women across the South using networks originally forged in segregation to muster turnout for Democratic candidates in the November elections. They are mobilizing in conservative states and districts, hoping to pull off upsets like Doug Jones’s stunning Senate victory last year in Alabama, where 98 percent of black women voted for him and proved a critical base of support.

In Columbus, Ga., women sit in the fellowship hall of the Emmanuel Christian Community Church, clipboards at the ready to register voters. In Panama City, Fla., sorority sisters park themselves at a street corner across from an imperiled elementary school, holding signs reminding people to vote. And in Greenville, Miss., the mayor of a nearby town founded by sharecroppers says she will not give up on coaxing young people to the polls, even as they complain their votes don’t matter.

As both political parties prepare for what many see as the most consequential midterm elections in memory, black women’s votes will be critical. Exit polls consistently indicate they are the single most loyal Democratic voting bloc.

It was Mr. Jones’s longshot victory in Alabama that brought national attention to the tremendous political influence these women can wield through the bedrock institutions of black life, from churches to historically black universities, sororities and beauty parlors. Once relegated to supporting roles, many are now major players, both in getting out the vote and in running for office in record numbers.

“When you invest in a black woman, she brings her house, her block, her church and her story,” said Glynda C. Carr, co-founder of Higher Heights, one of the many organizations that have sprung up to foster black women’s political leadership. “I use my mother as an example — until the day she died, she organized our little micro-precinct. She drove me to city hall to register when I was 18. Black women have been doing this since Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.”

But whether black women can replicate their success in Mr. Jones’s Senate race is far from certain. No Republican candidate this fall is as vulnerable as his opponent in Alabama, Roy Moore, the conservative former judge who was accused of preying on teenage girls. And the South still remains solidly Republican: Mr. Trump easily won every state in 2016 except Virginia, and Republicans overwhelmingly control most levers of power throughout the region.

There are other hurdles. African Americans make up a third at most of the electorate in much of the region. Candidates vying to make history as the first black woman governor in the nation (Stacey Abrams of Georgia), Florida’s first black governor (Andrew Gillum) and Mississippi’s first black senator since Reconstruction (Mike Espy) still need white votes to win.

There is the sense of futility and alienation that has depressed black turnout. Organizers hear from reluctant voters about black men being killed by police, health insurance out of reach, school budgets cut and local economic development thwarted, even after the election of a black president. While black women’s turnout is consistently among the highest of all demographic groups, higher than black men’s, it dropped in 2016.

And there is the daunting and sometimes confusing landscape of voting restrictions — picture IDs, shorter voting hours, voter purges, attempts to close polling places and criminal prosecutions of ineligible voters that have erased some blacks from the voting rolls, raised barriers to voting that could depress black turnout and soured others from voting at all.

Interviews with more than 50 black women, encountered during a recent voter mobilization bus tour across Georgia, Florida and Mississippi, offered echoes of the South’s past and glimpses of its future. These are some of their stories.

Image

LaTosha Brown at the offices of the New Georgia Project in Atlanta.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Greenville, Miss./The Organizer

LaTosha Brown lifted her voice and sang: “I woke up this morning with my mind set on freedom.”

In the Mississippi Delta, home to some of the country’s poorest concentrations of rural black communities, Ms. Brown asked a room of women what local issues could help convince people that their votes would bring change. Eulah Peterson, mayor of nearby Mound Bayou, told of losing a battle to save a storied black high school — decades after Fannie Lou Hamer, the civil rights leader, helped to found the rural development organization in Greenville where they met.

That history and this place resonated for her, Ms. Brown told them, her braids cascading down her back. She grew up in Selma, Ala., but visited her grandmother over the summers in Summit, Miss. “Every Sunday she made sure her grandbaby came to church and sang,” she said. “I am so moved. I know where I am.”

As the bus crisscrossed the South, similar gatherings began with a spiritual and ended with a prayer, the rhythms echoing the call and response of church services.

From Cuthbert, Ga., where a spirited meeting at the Stone House restaurant drew activists who beat back an attempt to close polling places, to Gifford, Fla., where people at a barbecue sported “I Voted” stickers on Primary Day, Ms. Brown worked to rouse crowds of volunteers — mostly women, but with men among them.

In Panama City, Fla., black drivers honked upon seeing the bus, which was plastered with pictures of black fists raised in the power salute. Some white drivers looked stonily ahead. And then there was Montgomery, Ala., where the bus’s front window was shattered. Ms. Brown believes something was hurled at the glass.

Many of the women are motivated by what they see as President Trump’s attempt to turn back the clock. But Ms. Brown says that alone will not drive people to the polls; they also want action on issues that touch their lives.

Image

Women steped off the “South Is Rising” tour bus in Cleveland, Miss., in August.CreditAndrea Morales for The New York Times

She is a co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, which aims both to motivate black voters and help them wield local power. Her work has convinced her that delivering on issues and building local relationships not only persuades black voters to cast ballots, but also to become regular voters.

“Folks have been so used to what I call ‘round the Negroes up,’” Ms. Brown said. “Wait until the last minute, drop a couple of dollars and throw some ads on the TV or radio and say, ‘It’s a Democrat.’ That’s not been working for us. We’re trying to stir up the spirits of the folks who’ve been turned off this damn process.”

In 45 Congressional districts, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is spending what it described as a record midterm sum of $25 million specifically earmarked for nonwhite voters, with black women a major target of focus groups, digital, radio and mail advertising, and customized social media posts and text messages, officials said.

But the work remains grueling, and sometimes halting. Ms. Brown’s co-founder, Cliff Albright, struck out with two young men in Florida who said they had no intention of voting. At Edward Waters College in Jacksonville and in front of a small house in Titusville, he tried to make a connection, asking one what kinds of local changes he wanted to see, another if he was worried about getting shot. But they offered him only polite smiles and no commitments.

Image

Kewyata Dice at her home in DeSoto, Ga.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Americus, Ga./ The Voter

Kewyata Dice kept meaning to vote again, but life got in the way. She cast her ballot for President Barack Obama in 2012, but sat out the 2014 and 2016 elections, much to her father’s dismay. Ms. Dice, a soft-spoken 29-year-old nursing assistant living in rural DeSoto, Ga., had to support two children, now 11 and 5, while working at a series of nursing homes and hospitals.

Her address changed, and under Georgia’s strict voting laws, she had to re-register and figure out where her new polling place was. In Georgia, polls close at 7 p.m., often a challenge for parents who need child care or struggle to pick children up after work.

“It really always looked as if my vote didn’t matter, being a single mom of two kids, struggling most of my life, losing a parent at a young age,” she said, explaining that her mother died when she was 14. “My state is really a Republican state, and I felt like the Democratic vote didn’t matter.” While she backed Hillary Clinton for president, when it came to voting, she said, “I just didn’t even make time to do it.”

But her father, a truck driver who is also active in the local NAACP, kept pushing her. Americus, where she works at a hospital, has a long history of civil rights protests, and Dr. King was jailed there. Her father is considering running for the county’s school board — one that was sued for drawing district boundaries that prevented blacks from gaining a board majority.

“Now I’ll be able to vote for Miss Stacey,” she said of the Democratic candidate for governor. “Some of the dream is coming alive that Dr. Martin Luther King had. I really would love to see a powerful black woman in Georgia.’’

She heard that a voting group was going to visit Americus and ventured out on a day off. The black-wrapped bus carrying Ms. Brown and the other organizers in the parking lot caught her eye, along with a small cluster of young men and women who gaped at its vivid, black empowerment design. She brought a friend who would be voting for the first time.

It turned out to be easy to register. Shy but smiling as she handed in her completed form, Ms. Dice had to rush back home so she could meet her children at the school bus stop, fix them dinner, read to them, and put them to bed.

She says she intends to vote in November — and she’s promised to reach out to five more of her friends to try to coax them to the polls.

“I feel like I should get out and make my vote matter,” she said. “Make myself matter.”

Image

Kayla and Kiana Blaine on the campus of Florida A&M University in Tallahassee.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Tallahassee, Fla./The Students

The eternal flame was burning brightly on the campus of Florida A & M University. A DJ was spinning “Fight the Power.” Students line danced in fluid formation on the lawn. The night before Mr. Gillum’s come-from-behind primary victory in late August, Kayla and Kiana Blaine put on their bright blue Gillum T shirts. They cheered him on when he spoke to his alma mater, recalling his days of leading student marches and urging them to honor a tradition of political activism at this historically black university.

FAMU, as everyone calls it, is a Blaine family tradition: the sisters’ parents and grandparents are graduates, and Kayla, a freshman, followed Kiana, a junior, from their home in Tampa to the campus in Tallahassee. Campuses like these have long nurtured black leaders, but there is less of a track record for instilling students with a desire to vote.

Yet in the era of Black Lives Matter, there’s a new motivation to cast a ballot. Fueling the Blaine sisters’ determination to bring classmates to the polls and elect Mr. Gillum is a protectiveness and fear about the fate of black men. The Democratic primary allowed the sisters to choose between two firsts for governor — the first woman in Gwen Graham, or the first black man. For Kayla and Kiana, it was no contest.

“I stand behind Andrew Gillum when he’s on the job to stand behind our black men,” Kayla said, applauding his opposition to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law allowing shootings in self-defense, a flash point after George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin in 2012.

There are other urgent reasons to turn out. Both sisters back (as Mr. Gillum does) Amendment 4 to the state’s constitution, which would restore voting rights to most felons who serve their terms. Florida is one of four states that permanently bans felons from voting. “They’ve served their time,” Kiana said. “Their voices could make a huge difference.”

The very issue that has alienated many young black people — a belief that the criminal justice system is stacked against black men — can also be used to persuade them to vote, said DeJuana Thompson, a veteran of the Alabama Senate effort who founded the advocacy group Woke Vote to reach black millennials. She said she tells them, “You can do something to change what is happening to you and your friends. Part of that is voting, part of that is protest.”

So the Blaines plastered the dorms with posters listing Mr. Gillum’s policies, and say they will continue to be active on social media to recruit their fellow students. They posted pictures of themselves voting — Kayla’s ballot for Mr. Gillum was the first she has cast.

Still, sometimes getting out each vote can feel like a personal challenge. “Two of the boys I’m really close with, we got them to go vote,” Kayla said. “They didn’t much care, they just cared that I wanted them to vote. If you don’t care, at least do it for me.”

Image

Lorena Barnum Sabbs at her home in Americus, Ga.CreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

Americus, Ga./The Fighter

For Ms. Sabbs, the activist who grew up in segregated Americus, marshaling the vote is a family legacy. It’s something she remembers most vividly being taught by her grandmother, who took her to civil rights protests when she was eight years old. The fifth-generation family funeral home Ms. Sabbs now runs in Americus has offered rides to the polls for decades.

Ms. Sabbs added a voter registration station to the funeral home, and describes her approach when people walk in: “Baby, have you registered to vote? It’s really easy; we can do it right here.” She hands out absentee ballot forms and offers free notary services — often crucial if people have to justify why they can’t vote in person or prove their address given Georgia’s strict voter registration laws.

Her college sorority is another basis for political action: She belongs to Delta Sigma Theta, one of the “Divine Nine” black sororities known for social activism (Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan were among many famous alumnae). She attends their monthly meetings, where sorority sisters are urged to work on voter education and persuasion.

When she was 11, Ms. Sabbs joined another band of women, girls protesting segregated seating in 1963 at the Martin Theater. She remembers “walking up the steps, three, four floors to watch movies in the balcony of that movie theater, and you never saw anything nastier.” Refusing to disperse, about 30 girls were arrested and transferred an hour away to be locked in the Leesburg Stockade. Sleeping on cement floors, with only an intermittent dripping shower, the girls were threatened and even had a snake thrown into their cells.

Ms. Sabbs cannot remember whether she was there for four or five days, but some of the girls were jailed for as long as 45 days. Not until a local dogcatcher spread the word did their parents even know where their children were — and not until the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee got a photographer to record their plight did pressure mount for their release.

Ms. Sabbs does not dwell on that time, but she evoked it briefly in a voting pep talk at a barbershop across from the parking lot where the theater once stood.

“When you sit home and you don’t do what is your privilege but also your responsibility — a whole lot of folks did a lot of suffering to get you to that point,” she said.

She understands that shaming tactics can backfire, and invoking the past alone is not enough to prod people — especially younger voters — to the polls. Turnout efforts fell short in 2016. They clearly could in 2018 as well.

“There’s a ton of pressure on black-led, women-led organizations,” said Nse Ufot, executive director of the New Georgia Project, founded by Ms. Abrams to register a newly diverse electorate. “If for some reason we don’t pull off this blue wave in November, people will say these organizations failed.”

Whatever the outcome, Ms. Sabbs traces a profound shift in the way many black women see themselves.

“Black women have tried to balance over the years the sensitivity in the black community that black men are not respected or that we have to somehow hide our light under a bushel in order not to offend,’ she said. “And you know what, we’re just over it.”

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/us/politics/black-women-voters-south.html |

Nature Driven by South’s Past, Black Women Seek Votes and a New Future, in 2018-10-04 10:41:14

[purepartybus]

Birthday Party Bus Atlanta Ga

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[heyitsbucky]

Atlanta Analysis

Tim Bucknam

WRT 105

Atlanta

Spike Lee once said, “Fight the power that be. Fight the power.” As simple as this quote may seem, Donald Glover has displayed this idea on the grandest scale in every facet of his work. In 2016, before the release of his latest album: Forgive me my love, Glover decided to display that Spike Lee quote to the fullest by creating the abstract comedy show: Atlanta. In this show, a homeless airport attendant named Earn learns that his cousin Alfred has become a famous rapper named “Paperboy”. Upon learning this, Earn convinces his cousin to let him become his manager and together they take the Atlanta Hip Hop industry by storm. Through subliminal imagery and racially influenced writing, Donald Glover directly portrays the racial divide and cultural flaws of contemporary society.

What the show does best in terms of subliminal imagery and dialogue, is conveying racial commentary. For example, in the one of the first episodes of the season, Earn meets up with one of his white friends who works at a radio station that tells him a story of a bad DJ that he met at a party. After the man talks about how the DJ played Flo Rida four times, he then mentions that he told said DJ, “Nigga, really?” The interesting part is that later on in that same episode, Earn is sitting in the car with Alfred and his friend Darius at a gas station and they meet the white man again. This time, Earn is in “his territory” amongst “his people.” So when Earn makes Matt retell the story, he says “Dude, really?” instead of “Nigga, Really?” What that means in the context of racial commentary is that white people will steal black culture to look cool in front of their own kind, but as soon as they experience true black culture and become surrounded by other black people then that’s when they start to act more respectful. In that same episode after Earn and the white radio station DJ talk, a black janitor walks by and Earn asks him what he would do in response to a white man saying the word “Nigga,” to which the janitor responded by saying he’d “break his foot off” in the white man’s backside. Again, this is going off of the similar theme which is cultural appropriation. If white people feel as if the people around them are weak, they’ll walk all over black people and say whatever racist phrases they want. But as soon as a black man begins to stand up and say something, then the white man goes quiet. Finally, in the second episode of the first season, Paperboy (Alfred) gets bailed out of jail and a police officer tries to take a picture with him. During that encounter, the officer says “You know Gucci Mane? I locked that nigga up!” While this line can definitely be written off as commentary about Police Brutality against black people, this part could have also been placed in the script to convey how black police officers have become Uncle Tom-ish figures in the black community so-to-speak. Meaning that black police officers are brutalizing and abusing black people.

Another aspect of commentary that this show presents is its commentary on love and human interaction. Throughout the whole series, Earn and his ex-wife Vanessa have an incredibly complex relationship that varies in intimacy throughout the show. For example, there’s one scene where Earn and Vanessa are sleeping next to each other, which causes the audience to think that they’re together. That is, until Vanessa and Earn are on the verge of having sex and Vanessa says “Tell me you love me,” and then Earn stops and Vanessa starts to get out of bed and mention that she has a date that night with another man. Earn then picks up their daughter and says, “You hear that? Mom’s going out with a corny dude! What? Oh this is a perfect environment for you!” This line is commentary on love because it shows the tug of war that parents go through with their kids every day. As much as they want to bring consistency into their children’s lives, they also are too egotistical and selfish to push the past behind. Another example of not leaving the past behind is when Earn finds Paperboy for the first time and tries to become his manager. At the end of their conversation, Paperboy tells Earn “I haven’t seen or heard you since my mother’s funeral. And now you wanna say, ‘Let’s get rich.’” What Paperboy points out in this line is that Earn never cared about Paperboy’s well being and has become very distant. But once Paperboy started getting fame and fortune, Earn immediately started acting nice to him again. This line is a commentary on successful people in general and how family members will try to use that success to their own benefit, even if they haven’t been in that successful person’s life at all. Finally, one last commentary on love is during the beginning of Paperboy and Earn’s first encounter when Paperboy asks, “When was the last time you were nice to a girl you weren’t trying to smash?” Obviously, this line was placed in the script to call out the shallow mentality that men possess when it comes to romance. Meaning that most of the time, they’re only kind to women with the hope of them giving sexual favors in return. And then at the end of the line Earn says “I was friendly to my daughter.” To which Paperboy responds with, “That’s your daughter man, that’s gross.” This line may not have been added for this intention, but it can be inferred that the gross line may be referring to how hip hop/black culture is shamed and exposed for having a higher percentage of absent fathers. Because what Paperboy is basically saying is that you should pay attention to attractive women in return for sexual favors but at the same time they shouldn’t pay attention to their own daughters because they’re “gross.”

The final aspect that Atlanta covers is the flaws with modern society. For example, there’s the first scene of the show where Earn is in bed with Vanessa and he tells her about this dream he had. He explains, “I had a dream where I was swimming and there were these hands trying to grab me and pull me down and so I had to swim above the hands.” What Earn is getting at is that as one navigates through society, they must be careful of ignorant people that will try to pull you down to their level. Earn even mentions, “I think this dream had something to do with society.” The second example would be in that same episode where Earn tries talking to Paperboy and their friend Darius mentions as the topic shifts to rats, “Using a rat as a phone would be great because in New York City there’s five rats for every one person. Everyone would have an affordable phone.” Again, the subtlety of this line makes it hard to tell whether or not it was placed intentionally, but the line could be interpreted as saying as many good people as there are in the world, there’s five more bad ones that will continue to plague society, The last instance of societal commentary would be during the third episode when Earn is on a bus ride home with his daughter and he meets a mysterious man that tells him, “Resistance is a symptom of the way things are, not the way things should be. Actual victory belongs to people that simply do not see failure.” What this means is that in life and in society there will always be flaws but at the same time there will always be people that resist it. And for the people who can see past that struggle, true victory is theirs.

What truly makes this show great is its subtlety. However, out of every subtle hint in this show, these moments were the most prominent and significant of them all. Donald Glover is a creative genius for conveying these message as creatively as he did and this show is an important show not only to black culture, but American culture as a whole.

Works Cited

Glover, Donald, director. Atlanta. Www.hulu.com/Atlanta, FX, 2016.

[mredwinsmith]

Moments, Movement, and Momentum

The concept of equity is having a moment in the ultimate community.

Maybe you’ve seen that equality vs. equity image of three people trying to watch a baseball game from behind a fence. Maybe you’ve had a conversation about saying person instead of man defense; or seen a shift in ultimate game coverage and broadcast trends; or watched Hana Kawai’s speech challenging USAU and its constituents to prioritize anti-racist, anti-classist action in intersection with gender equity projects.

It’s tough to think about the push for gender, race, and class equity as having “a moment.” Systemic oppression has existed, inside and outside of ultimate, enduringly. Movement towards equity has been most indispensable outside the world of ultimate because out there, it impacts people more urgently. It’s all-encompassing. It’s life and death.

Movement towards equity in ultimate is vital too. But if you’re wondering why the movement has felt a bit like a trend – like it’s not so all-encompassing – it’s because things come to a head in a very different way in ultimate. Folks dealing with issues of access or inclusivity often aren’t in the conversation, because many aren’t even in the community.

In the trailer for our film, Opi Payne says, “If you grow up thinking the sky is blue, and everything around you confirms to you that the sky is blue and that’s your experience, but all of a sudden, this whole population says, ‘Actually, the sky is red!’…that’s a jarring experience. Everything you know is being challenged.”

Since we dropped this trailer, people have been writing to share moments in which they had a realization about systems of power in their lives. Some were about facing oppression; others were about understanding their own privilege. We started calling these Sky Is Red moments. We started, to ourselves, redefining moment as a positive. With moments come awareness, understanding, and momentum.

We decided to share some of our own Sky Is Red moments and a bit about why we’re making this film. While it isn’t anyone’s responsibility to share anything of their personal experiences, we hope those who want to will continue to do so. It’s important to us because the more distinct voices we listen to, the more we understand what’s at stake, and why combating inequities in our community is so vital. After all, you can’t fight what you can’t see.

We have two weeks to go to meet our crowdfunding goal. If any of this speaks to you, please help us make this film happen by sharing and supporting our Kickstarter if you can. Thank you!

—

Brittany, Director/Editor

Living in New York City, I experience Sky Is Red moments every day. It’s a fast-paced city with every possible demographic interacting constantly in the tiniest spaces. Some feel routine, like the catcalls when I bike to work. Or the homeless person on my block sitting in the same spot daily asking for money – class inequity is visibly apparent in the streets of New York, and it is easy to become desensitized to it. I am a white, female, middle class, college-educated frisbee athlete and documentary filmmaker, living in a gentrifying neighborhood in one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world, the same city that has a police force larger than some countries’ militaries. Living in this city gives me daily doses of perspective.

Every day I move from comfortable space to comfortable space, passing by people confronting barriers I have never experienced. Sometimes the moments force me to pause and reflect on my understanding of the world, my sky compared to others. Just last week in the subway, I passed a blind man yelling out, “Somebody help me,” but no one was stopping. I asked him where he was going and gave him verbal directions.  It was only after he told me he’d never find it that way that I took him by the arm and walked him to his destination. This man’s daily routine is being vulnerable in front of strangers, which takes an immense amount of strength. His sky is red. Another time I called 911 and said I had been robbed by a teenager and was asked, “Was he black or Latino?” I felt safe and guilty, hiding behind my whiteness, protected by law enforcement. I knew this was a Sky Is Red moment, but didn’t yet have to tools to process it.

There are also the moments that make me burn inside, the loss of control I feel when someone makes assumptions about me because of my gender. Like the time I edited a commercial in an office full of men, and the client called my work “B-Level.” But when he saw the new version I had edited but was told a man had made the changes, he called it “amazing.” My identity was hidden to please a client. Or the time the executive producer asked if I wanted to babysit his kids for extra money. This was a man who, I found out later, was paying me half as much as the male editors to edit his show. Or the time I was getting field space for my women’s ultimate team and the man in charge laughed and asked, “Girls throw frisbees too?” Sometimes I’m able to take control to change the narrative. Like the night I stayed extra hours working on a Red Bull pilot, to find images of women in extreme sports, a needle in a haystack so that the audience would understand that women can do backflips on snowboards too.

I’ve experienced Sky Is Red moments from many angles, but what next? I have begun to use the lenses of privilege, whiteness, heteronormativity, gender bias, anti-racism, ableism, and intersectionality to better process each moment, thanks to countless individuals working hard to build frameworks of understanding, to push for social change and equity. I am making this film to push you to use these tools to see the sky in a new way. I am making this film for my mom, who dreamed of being a film director and secretly got into film school in the ‘60s, but did not attend because there were no female directors at the time. I am making this film for anyone who has not seen themselves represented in sports media. I am making this film for Tiina, Rhonda, Glo, Suzanne, Kathy, and all the women who were there from the beginning of ultimate. I am making this film for Zara, Chip, Bella Donna, the BU Women’s Team, the YULA girls, Pop, Jenna, Lucy, Lily, and anyone who has chosen to speak up. I am making this film for those who have not yet had the opportunity to access the sport of ultimate. I want this film to make you uncomfortable because those are the moments where the colors in the sky shift. This film is a question, not an answer. What color is your sky?

—

Julia, Producer

Knowing the sky is not blue, and integrating that perspective and empathy into my life, has been really hard. I do not think it is red for me as it is for others – I am sitting at a burnt orange right now.

When I was less than a year old, my parents traveled to China to bring me back to the States. Two years later, my brother was adopted from Vietnam, and we were raised in a loving, supportive home in Atlanta, GA. I was and am very fortunate. One of the first lessons I learned and experienced: never judge a book by its cover. Two Asian kids, two white parents – despite Atlanta being a large metropolitan city, do not be mistaken; the roots of true Southern culture still remain. Though I did not identify remotely as Asian, or even Asian American, that’s what I looked like.

Moving out to Los Angeles for college, I was in for a culture shock. Asian people were everywhere, especially on campus. The more Asian-identifying friends I made, the more I was supposed to recognize references and appreciate inside jokes as an Asian-looking person. The sky began to change colors. How people perceive me versus how I identify has been something I have shaken off my whole life, but my integration into the ultimate community changed that. People are for the most part open, warm, and welcoming, and they do not care what you look like or where you come from. In the past couple years, I’ve started to take a step back. Do people not care what I look like because I don’t act “fobby,” or because I am athletic or whitewashed? There are a large number of Asian Americans who play ultimate frisbee; what does that mean? Do the systemic imbalances that I grew up with also plague the ultimate community? How hidden are they?

I have also, of course, experienced bias towards me because I am a woman. I work in entertainment – by the numbers and stories, an industry in which there is no shortage of sexists and gender bias. I have played a variety of sports my entire life – by the stats on media coverage and paychecks, a setting in which there is no shortage of sexists and gender bias. Some of my strongest early memories are of being the only girl at baseball camp. In that case, I was celebrated, but why was I the only one there?

Until high school, every year, I had two birthday parties – one to go play football in the park with the boys, and the second to have a sleepover with the girls. My parents’ support my entire life created this bubble in which I grew up encouraged and comfortable in my day-to-day life and in the pursuit of my dreams. Not everyone has that. Inequitable treatment happened to me occasionally, but I brushed it off. In my home growing up, it seemed my gender never mattered, my race never mattered, and our finances never mattered. I was and am privileged. My sky was blue my entire childhood, and it is still not red. There is a lot in between.

I feel lucky to now be a part of the ultimate community, as someone who is actively speaking out and working towards all forms of equity. That being said, we can all do better – much, much better – and it takes a village. I hope with this film to not only further my own perception, education, and empathy, but to provide a consumable source of information for others as well. Let’s all make this film; let’s all take ownership and accountability; let’s all create safe spaces for speaking and listening, for learning and for change. Understand that everyone is in the process of learning and bettering themselves. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. The sky is not red for me and it is okay if it is not for you either, but we can work towards that. Let’s make the sky red together.

—

Lili, Writer/Director

I’m sitting down to write about my Sky Is Red moment and I am paralyzed by writer’s block. Not because I can’t recall a moment in which I realized something big about equity or power or privilege in my life, but because each moment I come up with seems to leave something out of the whole picture.

Maybe I’ll write about the time a drunk frisbee friend pinned me down on a couch in his home and tried to kiss me. Or the time another pushed me up against a wall and did the same, then forced me to sleep in his bed with him. He passed out; I lay awake scared all night. Both these men are nice, warmly energetic, well-intentioned people in the ultimate community. I eventually confronted both of them. I had to describe, from vivid memory, incidents that they only recalled hazily. They’ve moved on. I haven’t. The sky is red.

Or maybe I’ll write about when a month or so after the 2016 US presidential election, amid reports of emboldened racial violence, I exited an Asian nightclub with my team co-captains. As we stepped onto the street, the sound of gunshots rang out at the corner. We ran into a nearby convenience store and hid in the back, then quietly made our way out on backstreets. Some kids ran by us and yelled, “Someone’s face got blown off!” We’d built a team and played frisbee together for a whole season, but now, wondering if the someone whose face got blown off was Asian, was the first time I’d really thought of us as having a shared Asian-American identity. The sky is red.

I will say that in brainstorming, memories of moments surrounding my female-ness or Asian-American-ness have come far more swiftly than memories of moments in which I recognized and named my own privilege. Of the latter, many feel too raw to share — painful and still a bit unprocessed. One example: watching the video of the chokehold killing of Eric Garner by a New York police officer and crying for days afterwards. Then, a few weeks later, hearing the news of the shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer and sobbing again.

I cried the first time because I watched it happen; I watched Eric Garner say “I can’t breathe” and I watched Daniel Pantaleo murder him. When Darren Wilson murdered Michael Brown several weeks later, I cried because I had forgotten all about Eric Garner already. I had the privilege — it made me sick to think that it should be called privilege — of resuming my day-to-day life without fearing that my brother or dad could be killed without recourse because of the color of their skin. I had a summer league game the day of Eric Garner’s murder and a summer league tournament the day of Michael Brown’s, and I played in both. The sky is red.

I am making this film because one story is so far from the whole picture. For those who are willing to share, I want to make space for you to speak. I am making this film to listen.

The post Moments, Movement, and Momentum appeared first on Skyd Magazine.

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