#trans Nina supremacy

[mothmanssweetsucculentass]

Nina The Killer Headcanons

Psycho Barbie’s turn in the spotlight!!!!

I’ve always thought Nina in concept was so fucking cool, like, an obsessed fangirl becoming a copycat killer always scratched a good niche in my brain, so I never hated her like most of the fandom did when I was younger, I just never really interacted with anything about her cause. The fandom hated her, lmao.

Expect canon typical violence/topics beyond this point pookies <3

TGIRL SWAG!!!!!!!!! Nina is trans I’m making it canon right now and you can’t do shit about it

Roughly about 25, two years younger than Jeff

Ann ain’t the only zombie adjacent character in the mansion

Nina actually has zero fucking clue why she keeps coming back every time Jeff murders her, but she’s having fun with it so ig it’s fine right?

Some of the more supernaturally intelligent members of the mansion also have no fucking idea what her deal is. By all accounts she should be dead and rotting a thousand times over

Eyeless Jack has done four vivisections on her and all yielded the same result, human

Except humans don’t bounce back after having their heart cut out????

Seconds after losing organs they just???? Reappear??? Inside her body???? What the fuck????

Out of everyone she’s a massive enigma. No one can figure it out but everyone loves using her as a guinea pig for murder purposes

Ya girl is such a masochist she actually gets disappointed when people don’t like testing new stabbing methods on her

She’s so unapologetically a freak, she’s cringe, but she’s free

Out of everyone in the mansion she’s the easiest to get along with

Sometimes to her detriment, her hyper extroverted personality off puts some of the more quiet and reserved inhabitants

No one truly hates her, you can’t exactly hate someone who doesn’t have a combative bone against you in their body, but not everyone likes to stick around her

It bothers her only a little bit when she’s noticed she’s pushed people away with her intense personality (it bothers her A LOT-)

She loves collecting and gifting trinkets and jewelry to people. The amount of Kandi bracelets she’s made Jeff and Ben, good lord-

The most persistent determined bitch in the world. You would have to nuke her entire existence to get her to stop focusing/going after something

Of course it ends up making her stubborn

Buuuuuuut she’s also an honorary favorite dog of Slenderman

The household often has monthly contests to see who can have the highest body count. You’ll never guess who’s almost always in the top 3

So she’s out on missions a lot. She comes back and gossips talks about what’s happened when she comes back two days later

Surprisingly doesn’t have a sweet tooth? You’d think with how manic she acts she injects sugar and caffeine into her bloodstream, but nope, she doesn’t. She hates fruit candies and can only stomach dark chocolate

Always comes back from hits and supply runs with tons of candy anyways to share with everyone

Is a SLUT for spicy foods

Ann had to cut her tongue off one time because she fucked it up so bad eating stuff that was borderline radioactive with how spicy it was

Everyone is convinced she would eat actual nuclear waste if given the chance just to feel the burn

The biggest foodie in general too. She’s not the best at cooking but everyone loves her pancakes

Ben made a joke one time about her putting crack in the batter. Two weeks later she had to apologize to mansion parents Masky and Hoody about why half the house was suffering withdrawal symptoms. Someone has to monitor her while she cooks now. Bummer.

She’s a total junkie but she is responsible about it at least dammit!

Like yeah she gets stoned out of her goddamn mind with Ben every other weekend, but that shit doesn’t leave her or his room

She has to set a good example for Sally!!!!!

The kid fucking adores Nina like a big sister

Nina is always bringing her goodies and toys

In return Sally does her makeup for the day

Does it look like a 5 year old scribbled all over her face? Yes and she doesn’t care!!!! She wears that shit with pride

Helen made fun of it once and he has since learned not to piss off the hyperactive pink glitter mayhem lady who knows how to wield a chainsaw

Oh yeah fuck knives. Nina got tired of knives pretty quick. Ya girl USES A CHAINSAW

It’s totally not the same kind of chainsaw Jeff used when he was a scare actor in college shut up no way

She’s really good with the thing too. It’s so heavy and she totes it around like it weighs nothing

She’s got such a sleeper build it’s insane. She’s 5”2 and 160 pounds of pure whoop ass

AND SHE DOES IT ALL IN PLATFORMS AND ACRYLIC NAILS??????

She’s just constantly full of energy and needs to be doing something at every second or she thinks she’ll explode

Besides her signature chainsaw covered in stickers and glitter, she’s also pretty handy with handguns, axes, and baseball bats

She’s got a small collection of weapons under her bed

Three guns (all customized with stickers and paint), a large axe (with a heart in the middle of the blade), and two baseball bats (one covered in nails)

Her room is a fucking mess but she knows where anything and everything is

Girl can’t even see her floor and she’s somehow able to find what she needs in there

Bead curtains, a disco ball, leopard print carpet on the ceiling, lava lamps, it looks like scene mixed with the 70’s threw up in there

Not exactly the most fashionable but has the biggest wardrobe and most flashy way of dressing

Like. I don’t even think she owns anything solid. Definitely not solid black

Has given herself many tattoos and piercings

To the point she’s so good at it that the others start coming to her asking for her to do the same to them

Her hair never stays one color for long, but often goes between red and purple

Is best friends/close with: Ben, Kagekao, Jason, LJ, Sally, the Puppeteer, Clockwork, and Jane

Has a tolerable relationship/is neutral about: Masky, Hoody, Liu, Eyeless Jack, Ann, Helen, and Slenderman

Hates no one

Has a… questionable relationship with Jeff

When first starting off he fucking hated her, but she was so goddamn persistent and just kept getting back up despite the multiple times he was certain he’d killed her, to the point she’s grown on him like a parasite

She sees him as her ultimate best friend, her ride or die, and he’s flattered…but he definitely doesn’t feel intensely as she does

Like he obviously doesn’t hate her anymore and actually quite enjoys her company. But she also annoys the shit out of him and he often finds himself needing a break from her constant state of “on”. Girl has no off switch

The two of them are often found lounging together and talking random shit, or sparring

She believes that somehow the first time he killed her, it gave her her weird zombie regeneration abilities

And of course she thinks that’s cool as fuck and nearly worshipped the ground he walks on because of it

The more time has passed the more she’s grown to stop feeling like she needs him to function

She went from making herself Jeff’s biggest fan her whole personality to becoming an actual decent person outside of her unhealthy obsession with him

Surprisingly never had any romantic feelings for the man

Like yeah she was obsessed but not like that

She just thinks he’s waaaaay cooler than other people see him as

Jane and Clockwork are her girl solidarity bffs

Jane was practically the girl’s mentor in how to be girl 101 when Nina was beginning to realize she was trans

Whereas Clockwork was her combat mentor who taught Nina everything she knows about kicking someone’s ass

They went from her cool lesbian moms to her cool lesbian besties

She’s one of the only few who can tolerate LJ’s nonsense

And by nonsense I mean his usual mad hatter ramblings and personality. Nina thinks it’s hilarious and loves that he’s just as down to clown (SORRY) as she is

Her, him, and Sally are the prank trio

The two would do anything to hear that little girl erupt into giggles

Her and Ben bond over scene fashion and old internet stuff

Ben is also her weed dealer. He’s everyone’s weed dealer but she gets special treatment and doesn’t have to pay him shit cause they’re besties

She’s a pretty positive person overall but cannot fucking stand/HATES anyone outside the mansion

She views everyone there like family

The outside world not so much. Bullying has really left her bitter

Hates blackmail but definitely holds grudges!!! It’s hard to get on her bad side though, so no one’s worried about it

Loves breakcore, kpop, jpop, any kind of hyper and electronic music, extra points if it’s pop

[boxwinebaddie]

hi nina!! can we plz see some of the char sheet youre doing?

AWWWW!!!! this is so sweet, omg. ;-; <3

i fucking LOVE character sheets sm; it is a relic from when i first broke into writing online and used to tumblr rpg ( cringe ). i just feel like they really help you see and understand your characters and figure out what they look like, how they act, what their motivations are, etc.

but yes!!!! i spend a lot of time on them and i haven't had a lot of time...recently, so i haven't been able to work on the ones i have for The Nasty Nina Boys From ( Fine As ) Hell, but you can have this little section i started on appearance in the ravenstan one ( he has been on my mind a lot lately, i srsly love him so much, he's my baby )

i'll drop it under the cut for you <3

-uncle nina, tumblr rpg survivor, char sheet queena

[thebestpartofwakingup]

I think trans readings of Dankovsky make one of my favorite themes in Pathologic stronger but it’s also one I see overlooked especially in regards to such readings, that being Dankovsky as a Midsommar-esq cautionary tale about cults, hate groups, and indoctrinations

Because anybody — anybody can be targeted to be recruited into this type of shit there is not an identity on earth that will make you fully immune. Groups change targets all the time and the media will hot potato issues and scapegoats all day long. Even if you aren’t being targeted as a foot soldier—but as a recruitment tool yourself to add legitimacy to a group.

In the end Daniil gets nothing from the Kains. They do not help him, but they make him feel special for a few days, validate his feelings within a framework that gives his experiences more value and legitimacy than others, excuses him of his biases and responsibility, and offers him easy excuses.

I’ve had people push back on my claims that the Kains are fascist, as their focus is way more built on ideology and individual supremacy. In my defense fascism is one of if not the most studied forms of authoritarianism in English in the context of individual and group psychology. cults tend to be studied case-by-case or as a broader phenomena, and I would argue that while the Kains operate similarly to many real world cults I think there is little value in applying analysis as though they are a 1:1 metaphor for one specific group or emblematic of cults as a whole — and that the kind of cult they do represent in the western world is often studied alongside fascism due to their similar psychological effects and recruitment strategies

Because the Kains don’t care if you’re queer, autistic, trans, a woman, mentally ill , disabled, or native, they just care that you embrace an ideology that places Simon, Nina, and Maria at the top as all-powerful, and all those who reject such ideology below yourselves.

Daniil’s ending is about deciding that it is more important to have people tell you are right and assert status over people who tell you you are wrong through a hoarding of influence and resources — than thousands of human lives

Because Daniil’s ending kills the most people. The town is destroyed and only those willing to live under Kain rule are spared, and those who did not have the resources to avoid catching the plague (outside of Daniil’s special circle) are condemned to deaths

Because Daniil getting the resources to save either healer’s bound? Letting them decide instead? It saves lives.

[chthonic-cassandra]

Recent books, fiction -

Laura Lippman, What the Dead Know - crime/mystery novel. Following a car accident, the woman responsible discloses that she is one of two sisters who went missing the area thirty years prior; the local police department attempts to discover whether her claims are true. This is really not my genre, and this novel, though tightly written and probably a good exemplar of its type, showed me why. I guessed most of the main twists pretty early on, and was made uncomfortable by the novel's relationship to survivorship, and what I felt was a pitting of types of violence seen as more 'sensational' against those seen as more quotidian; I found this alienating. (One of the male pov characters also spends a lot of time thinking about female characters' weights, which was not great.) Nonetheless, not bad, had some interesting things to say about loss.

Nina Varela, Crier's War - YA fantasy, set in a world where automata have taken over and humans are an underclass, centering around a romance between an automaton princess and a human servant. This had some nice imagery, and the central romance was appealing, but overall the characters didn't have enough depth for me and it was a little too generically paint-by-numbers (it would be nice if we could do a little more holistic cultural processing of colonialism and white supremacy so that we can move past the million 'two different groups that are different in fundamental ways and one is an underclass!' type of YA fantasy).

Lila Bowen, Wake of Vultures - YA western with monsters. This at least had an original setting, and some cool use of Native American mythology, but it was made almost unreadable by its attempts at poetic imitations of western movies in dialogue and prose. It also had a lot of darker narrative elements (including multiple incidents of attempted sexual violence) that didn't get the emotional weight they needed. Didn't work for me.

Leah Franqui, Mother Land - an American woman moves to Mumbai with her Indian husband, and doesn't know what to do when her mother-in-law abruptly leaves her father-in-law and moves in with them. This was fluffy and somewhat orientalist (definitely what Naben Ruthnum calls a "curry book" - seriously, everyone, read Ruthnum's Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race), but there was a lot of warmth and nuance in the central relationship between the protagonist and her mother-in-law, which ultimately carried the book and made it peculiarly compelling, despite its shortcomings.

Lilliam Rivera, Never Look Back - YA retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice with teenagers in the Bronx. This was extremely sweet, with believable, lovable characters (particularly liked Pheus' underestimated father, Apolo), and a notably thoughtful and compassionate handling of experiences labeled as mental illness. I wish it had been a little bolder in its ending, which I don't want to spoil here - it went a gentler route than it could have, and I think it weakened the book as a whole.

Jo Walton, Or What You Will - Okay. So. This is a metafictional novel whose frame is an aging SFF Canadian writer whose muse is trying to give her immorality; within that we have the novel she is writing about a magical Florence inhabited by Miranda and Orsino (Shakespeare's, sort of), who have been granted immortality in a perpetual Renaissance by the heroic sacrifice of Pico della Mirandola. It was essentially Walton going off the deep end into her own preoccupations. I admire her lack of self-consciousness her, and have a certain fondness for the book for this reason, but it was nearly incomprehensible (certainly would have been without reading her other work), and didn't hold together as a novel.

Riku Onda, The Aosawa Murders (trans. Alison Watts) - Japanese crime novel about the mysterious poisoning of a family, told in multiple voices. I really should not read crime novels; I didn't much like this one either. Also guessed the twist early; the multiple voices were an interesting conceit but took me out of it too much.

Dalia Sofer, Man of My Time - an Iranian man visits NYC and his estranged family for the first time after breaking with them due to his participation in the 1979 revolution and subsequent work as an interrogator. I appreciated this book's slow, thoughtful pace and its willingness to let its protagonist be unsympathetic, but he was so very unsympathetic that sometimes I felt at sea in the text, without anything to hold onto. I'm glad I read it, but I wouldn't want to reread it.

Jo Spurrier, Winter Be My Shield - quite dark fantasy, largely about torture. A young woman with forbidden, powerful magic, escapes from the torturer-sorcerer who has been trying to train her as his apprentice and bands together with the nation's exiled, torture-survivor princes. I frankly appreciated how much this book is about bluntly about torture, and torture and magic, and torture and telepathy, but its plotting was frequently a mess; its circuitous and not totally thought-through plot twists reminded me of some of the more memorable and involved forum-based RPGs I have done in my life. Also, for a book about torture, it doesn't quite get how it works psychologically, which threw me in several places. It triggered the hell out of me. I will read the sequels.

[action]

Photo Credit: Naima Green

Pictured/Pronouns: Van (he, they) Chino (he, him) Nina (she, her) Ryann (they/them)

Not pictured/pronouns: Mo (she, they)

Pride Spotlight: bklyn boihood

Hey Tumblr! During the entire month for Pride 2019, we’ll be highlighting some amazing groups and individuals who are creating dope spaces for the LGBTQIA+ community. First up @bklynboihood​, bklyn boihood is a collective that seeks to create spaces for queer and trans bois* of color in nyc. Let’s jump right in.

Your mission is to create spaces for Black and brown queer and trans bois* to cultivate stories, dreams and creative work. Why are these spaces so important? Why aren’t we seeing them more often?

Our mission is centered on black and queer bois*. At a time, there were very few spaces that celebrated boihood in all of the manifestations we witnessed on a day-to-day basis. As we continue to understand how lack of visual representation impacts mental health, we know it’s critical to celebrate black and queer bois because mainstream media has failed to do so. Mainstream media is a part of a larger institution, and any institution as we know has deep ties to white supremacy. We don’t see more dynamic platforms for black queer bois simply because white supremacy is a tool for eraser and that pervasive violence exists in all institutions.

Black and brown queer and trans folks created the LGBTQIA+ culture that we know today. That is #BlackExcellence365. Unfortunately we’re not seeing the right representation. How can we change that?

Power must be shifted. Do you have black queer and trans bois within your organization? Are they decision makers? If you’re a funder, are you using your platform to funnel fiscal support to organizations that center queer and trans black bois? Representation comes at a cost, often emotional labor, that in which we do not have the capacity to hold. So, are you leveraging power to hold the multiple and complex identities in which you wish to include? Inclusivity is never enough. Liberation is beyond inclusion. In order for us to to be free we must dismantle and center those are most at risk of being erased.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. People forget that it was Black and brown queer homeless youths who started this movement. How can we continue to honor them?

Honor them with your platforms, honor them with your funding, honor them by including them in the decision-making regarding their own representation, honor them beyond mere symbolism and move in solidarity by dismantling systems that wish to keep them out.

Thank you bklyn boihood for all the work you do work for the community. Tumblr, how are you supporting organizations during Pride 2019? Use the #tumblrpride to share.

This interview has been condensed for clarity

[onestowatch]

Amanda Brown on the Artists’ Role in Society, COVID-19, and Advice to Young Women [Q&A]

Amanda Brown has had a hell of a career, but she wants you to know she is just getting started. Born and raised in the Bronx, the Puerto Rican/Jamaican vocalist and songwriter got her start as a fan-favorite on NBC’s The Voice and has made a name for herself backing up Adele, Stevie Wonder, and Alicia Keys… just to name a few.

With a resume apt to make just about any musician jealous, Brown is one of the most in-demand session and touring vocalists in the biz, but parallel to this work, she has been crafting her own artist career, writing mature, alt-pop tracks like “From Here.” Begging questions about self-acceptance and the uncertainty of the road ahead, “From Here,” released in October, became the perfect quarantine companion just before the presidential election as the nation stood at a crossroads. Though she originally expected to spend her year on tour busses and backstage, working with the industry’s A-listers, COVID-19 allowed her a once-in-a-lifetime chance to stay in and tell the stories of the year through her own artist project.  

For Brown, her success as a songwriter and vocalist stems from more than sheer talent (though she could easily find success on her innate gift alone). It is her regimented soul-searching and her living by Nina Simone’s mantra “an artists’ duty is to reflect the times” that sets Brown apart from the pack as she builds her profile as not just a vocalist for others but as her own artist.

Ones to Watch spoke with Amanda Brown to recap her unexpected 2020, her advice to young women, and her plans for the new year.  

Ones to Watch: You've been working in various roles as a vocalist/musician for years. How do you approach your own music as an artist differently than the work you do with other acts?

Amanda Brown: When it comes to my work as a solo artist, I don’t hold back. What I mean by that is, when it’s my show and my recording session, I can do, say and sing whatever I want the way that I want! There’s a certain amount of freedom that comes with being a solo artist, accompanied by more responsibility. Whereas, when I am working with other acts, I am subject to the will and vision of those creatives. Not to say that I don’t enjoy those experiences and get lost in the music when I’m on stage. Performing with other acts carries it’s wonder as does my work as a solo artist and I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to experience both.

You've been on the road a lot in the last few years, but COVID-19 this year has forced you to stay home. Have there been any positives to this tough situation?

I definitely miss traveling, meeting new people and playing live shows (while being in the same room as the audience); however, this year has allowed me the opportunity to create music for the sync and licensing world, which I’m enjoying. This year has also allowed me time to myself to think, learn and do things I’ve always wanted to do but never had the time, like gardening for example. I most definitely had a black thumb prior to the start of this year. I believe I’ve grown as an individual, for the better. I’m strong and resilient - those aren’t qualities I would have necessarily attributed to myself in the past, not because they weren’t true but more so because I’d be too shy to say them out loud. Also, witnessing the resiliency and strength of so many others around me has left me inspired and hopeful for the future. Yes, there are many downsides to covid-19, the main one being the loss of life (I lost family and friends this year). With that said, I’m hopeful that we will make it through the rest of this difficult year with the support and love of each other. Community is important and this year has driven that point home for me.

We've seen a lot of people lean on music to get them through such a tough year. What do you think an artists' role is in our society today?

Nina Simone said, “an artists’ duty is to reflect the times” and I believe that to be true. Some artists are called to make social commentary, others are called to reflect upon their personal experiences and the experiences of those in their close circles. Either way, I believe art is a reflection of how an artist may be feeling, what they are experiencing and/or what they see others experiencing. Sometimes art is created to help people forget difficult things that are happening in the world - I believe that to be a reflection of sorts. Regarding myself and my art, I’m am learning to honor my feelings - not to silence myself in order to make others feel comfortable but to dig deep, be vulnerable and honest.

You've used your platform this year to speak on important social/cultural issues, especially in your collaboration with LACES for the single 'they say.' Has using your platform in this way always been a fundamental goal of your career?

I want to be myself and in order to accomplish that, I have to be honest at every turn. I may not share everything but when I do share, I want it to be the truth. Life experience has taught me that certain things should not be tolerated. Sexism, misogyny, white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, ageism, classism, and any other type of prejudice and discrimination is fucked up and should not be tolerated! We need to stand up to that shit and anyone that seeks to perpetuate those toxic behaviors and systems - I believe that should be the goal of everyone, regardless of whether you’re an artist or not. These social and cultural issues are human issues, and they should matter to everyone.

There are many people who grow up, dreaming of a career like yours. What do you think it took to set yourself apart as a vocalist and artist?

Sometimes I think I know the answer to this question and other times, I have no idea. There are things I could list off like me being hard-working, detail-oriented and studious but I don’t think those attributes alone are responsible for the career I’ve been fortunate to have thus far. I have not made it to this place in my career on my own. There have been so many people that believed in me throughout my journey, encouraged me, recommended me for work and supported my music and artistry. I think it may be a combination of qualities I possess, music training, live music experiences and the individuals that helped create opportunities for me. Regarding my success as a vocalist and artist, I think I’m equally indebted to some of those individuals that helped me as I am to my innate propensity for creating music and art and being disciplined within my craft.

What was a turning point in your career that really changed your life?

I’d say being a contestant on The Voice changed the trajectory of my career. It allowed me to perform in front of a national audience weekly. As a result of being on that show, I’ve had a number of beautiful music experiences playing all over the world and meeting fans of the show and myself. I’m grateful for the platform The Voice allowed me and to those that continue to listen to and support my music after watching my performances on the show.

Do you have any advice for a young woman hoping to create a career in music?

Don’t be afraid to experiment in order to figure out what you like. You will fail. Failure is a part of life and helps us grow. No one can tell you what’s going to work for you and your artistry. Only you can decide what is right for your music and art and the way that you’d like to create and communicate that art. Trust your gut. No one should make you feel uncomfortable or unsafe EVER! Surround yourself with people that inspire you to be the best version of yourself. A career in music is not easy. Educate yourself as much as possible. Make a list of all of your goals, figure out how to accomplish them and then execute them. You will often be the only person advocating for your vision (until you find your team) -  don’t give up! If you don’t believe in yourself, your gifts and your art, no one else will.

Looking ahead to 2021, what are some of your plans?

I’m ready to release more music and I can’t wait to perform in front of an audience. My next live show, I may try to hug every single person as they enter the venue, once it’s safe to do so of course. I’d want to collaborate with more female producers and songwriters. I’ve had lovely experiences working with women over the past three years and I want to create more of those opportunities for myself and others. I’m going to continue to build upon the good habits I’ve developed this year and pay more attention to my mental health. More gardening with homegrown fruits and veggies. I want a puppy friend next year, so I’ll be on the hunt for that little guy or gal. Also, people! I can’t wait to see people face-to-face...in-person and without masks or fear of getting sick because it’s no longer a big threat. I understand that all of the precautions we’re taking are necessary but I’m looking forward to the day when we can all hug and hang out together again.

Black Lives Matter! Trans Lives Matter! Stop Policing Women’s Bodies!

[cxhnow]

Chloe x Halle Talk Police Brutality and Postponing Their Album

“The way our music has evolved is exactly how we're evolving as young women.”

Four days before the release of their sophomore album, Ungodly Hour, Chloe x Halle addressed their fans to let them know they’re postponing it. In a video posted across their social channels, sisters Chloe, 21, and Halle Bailey, 20, sat shoulder to shoulder at their home in Los Angeles, surrounded by hovering green trees, and tried to sum up their range of emotions after witnessing a global uprising against police brutality.“In honor of all of the lives lost in police brutality, we felt like it was right to postpone, and fully shine our attention and our work on them,” Chloe said, with both a shake and clarity in her voice, in the video to the duo's 2.7 million followers. Halle added, “Music has been used for a long time to bring us joy and healing in difficult times like this.” Just weeks before, George Perry Floyd, a Black man living in Minneapolis, died in police custody while a white officer’s knee was pressed on his neck. As video of his killing spread, and after the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, protests sparked around the world demanding accountability and allyship with the Black Lives Matter movement. On the day Chloe, Halle, and I spoke by phone, Tony McDade, a Black trans man in Tallahassee, Florida, was fatally shot by an officer. In Los Angeles, where the sisters live, protesters strung their bodies together to temporarily shut down the 101 freeway. In Atlanta, where they were born, six police officers were charged after being accused of using excessive force on two Black college students who were tased and pulled out of their cars days earlier.During a time when fans are more critical of how celebrities engage in civil rights activism, Grammy-nominated musicians and actors Chloe and Halle Bailey don’t tiptoe. They urge fans to sign petitions, donate, vote, and recognize Black life, early and often. They celebrate Black joy year-round. This is what their followers have grown to expect from them. Chloe and Halle have always had something to say, and it just so happens to be an important time to speak up.

It’s hard to wrap your head around the unbreakable confidence it takes to be a female pop artist if you aren’t one. Thankfully, Chloe and Halle have each other. For decades, the bond among members of Black singing girl groups has given audiences soulful and fun music. In the '90s, groups like SWV, En Vogue, and Zhané made upbeat R&B music that made you want to dance with your homegirls. Now, contemporary duos like KING, Van Jess, and Ibeyi stand out for their rapturous vocals enveloped in dramatic production. Chloe x Halle add to this legacy by singing, writing, and producing ethereal music that resonates with the girl next door.Yet there are distinct differences in the duo’s vocal style; they don’t try to match each other’s voices to create some sort of uniformity. Rather, they play off of rhythm and song pacing to meld their voices. When they do sing choruses and bridges together, their voices, albeit distinct, create layered, otherworldly melodies.The duo’s sound is often described as angelic, giving leeway for some to describe them as two women without sin. Chloe and Halle want to shatter this idea because it’s not realistic. “For Ungodly Hour we were so excited to just flip the narrative of being the perfect angel and show the other side[s] of us.…," says Halle. "The dark side, the naughty side, the things that happen that you don't see behind the scenes.” 

The majority of the 13 songs on the album are about navigating messy situations — sometimes ones that you have caused. In the midst of trying to be a better friend or romantic partner, you know that you’ll always be imperfect, and decide to love yourself anyway.“I've always been a jazz head," Halle says. “I don't know why, but there's something about the pain and the love and the heartbreak that you can truly feel through the essence of those songs that are sung by Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald.” As of late, Chloe’s “really, really been inspired by '90s music and early 2000s production,” a vibe you can hear and see in “Do It,” the second single off of Ungodly Hour.“We wanted to show our sensual side because we are growing as young women, but we still kept it classy and cute,” Chloe says. “It was just really fun for us to do that. We also wanted to start dancing this era, and just something really simple. And it makes us so happy to see everyone doing that dance on TikTok.”Chloe expands on how the name of the album and title track came about after working with the U.K. duo Disclosure: “We wrote this song [the title track “Ungodly Hour”] with Disclosure, and we had the best time,” she recalls. “I forgot what I was watching, but I heard the phrase ‘ungodly hour’ and wrote it in my notes. [It] kind of stuck out to all of us, and we were like, ‘What can you say with this?’ We all came up with this sentence: ‘Love me at the ungodly hour,’ which means love me when I'm at my worst; love me when I'm not all dolled up and made up. Love me when all my insecurities are out on the table.”’

“We started writing about when you're in a situationship with a guy and the chemistry is there, and you know the love is there and your connection is so deep, but he's not going all in," she continues. "For some reason he doesn't want to commit. He's entertaining other options, and it's just saying, ‘You know what? I love myself enough to walk away and put the brakes on this and to pause this. So when you decide you like yourself, when you decide you need someone, when you don't have to think about it — love me at the ungodly hour.’”Other emotionally complex tracks on the album include “Forgive Me,” a haunting song inspired by Chloe’s own life, after she discovered a guy she was involved with was going back and forth between her and another young woman. “I Wonder What She Thinks of Me” is a song that tells the story of the new love, the one a man gets with after he’s broken up with his ex.The vocalists are eager to make music that grows with them and becomes more layered as they do. “The way our music has evolved is exactly how we're evolving as young women,” Chloe says. The chromelike wings they turn around and show on their album cover, worn with black, latex dresses, are symbolic of their strength and power.When I ask what they hope for in the future, the Bailey sisters seem at ease. Chloe would love to work with BTS: “They're performing — it's top-notch. I'll sit at my computer and watch all of their music videos and all of their performances.”“Awards would be nice," she adds. "Being at the top of these Hot 100 lists would be beautiful and amazing, but as long as I'm growing and I'm a better version of myself tomorrow than I was today, I am content.”

The duo is used to releasing music during times of political duress. Two years ago, when Chloe x Halle were part of our music issue for the release of their debut album The Kids Are Alright, the world was grappling with an immigration travel ban enacted by President Donald Trump, the #MeToo movement, and pressing climate change legislation. That album was an intonation from the sisters to young activists approaching human rights issues head-on: “Do it while you young. Don't let them turn you numb. Don't let them get you strung. Ooh, let me put you on,” they sing on their first album's title song.“I was 15 through 17, and Chloe was 17 through 19 during the making of the album,” Halle says of their debut project. “We were still very young. We were still trying to figure out what we wanted, and I think that showed in the music.”As artists, the singers say their first album was about proving they could play an active, hands-on role in the production of their own music in an industry dominated by men. As two teenage women, it was about showing the world that, although they didn't have all the answers and weren’t sure what was lurking around every corner, they had the guts to find out. At that point in their careers they had been signed to Beyoncé’s Parkwood for five years and had released one other project, the Sugar Symphony EP, in 2016. But aside from opening tour performances and high-profile appearances, they hadn't become household names.

Now, amid a health pandemic and a country in unrest because of its history of white supremacy, Chloe and Halle are navigating being famous and also having a distinct voice. While finding ways to take care of themselves, the sisters are also promoting an album from their home, in the rooms where they first honed their craft as writers, instrumentalists, and producers. “We've kind of gotten back to our roots and started doing what originally got us started," Halle says, "which is doing YouTube covers, interacting on social media, and connecting with our beautiful fans through there.” A lot has changed in their personal lives as well. They're private about the details, but say they’re learning more about guys and finding themselves in relationships and situationships. They’re experiencing more love, heartbreak, and the misguided antics of boys. "We have to take our power back as women and not allow ourselves to be played,” Chloe riffs.In January, the third season of their Freeform show, grown-ish, dropped. In the college-centered comedy, led by Yara Shahidi, Chloe plays Jazz and Halle plays Sky, ambitious twin sisters who attend the fictional state school Cal U. Jazz is balancing being in love with her boyfriend Doug (played by Diggy Simmons) and schoolwork; Sky is focused on being a track star while navigating her interracial relationship. Like the sisters in real life, their characters are witty, impeccably stylish, and proud of their Blackness. But unlike Chloe and Halle, they’re far more overt about their love lives — often kissing in hallways and openly discussing their sex lives — and unfiltered opinions.Before stay-at-home orders went into place, Chloe and Halle had been expanding farther into Hollywood, and pursuing separate film projects.In July 2019, it was announced that Halle is set to play Ariel in the live-action The Little Mermaid. Many saw Halle’s breakout feature-film role as a huge win for inclusion, but, like clockwork, people on social media found an issue with the revamped iteration of Ariel being played by a Black woman. Halle spoke out on the discourse, telling Variety at the time, “I feel like I’m dreaming, and I’m just grateful. I don’t pay attention to the negativity. I just feel like this role is something bigger than me. It’s going to be beautiful.”

Halle remains grateful, but says of the negative criticism, “We've always learned to just keep our heads up no matter the situation. No matter what anybody has to say about you...just keep pushing.”

Like Halle, Chloe is also expanding her acting chops in feature projects. In December, Chloe wrapped filming for her role in the horror film The Georgetown Project, starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Simpkins. “I'm really protective of my energy, I'm very spiritual, and I love God,” she says about the thriller. “So I was constantly praying when I was on set. But surprisingly, the energy on set was so positive. And I learned so much by being around all of these Oscar-winning actors.”

Humility is a running trait between the sisters. They don’t hide their confidence, but are also God-fearing and incredibly gracious. They’re media-trained and polite, but also find a way to be frank. They say this album is a “whole different world” for them as they reveal more of their personalities, while exploring what it means to be grown women.

“We are learning to embrace who we truly are,” Chloe says about their music evolution. “Our insecurities, our sexuality, owning our power. I'm grateful that we are given a space where we can do that comfortably. And I'm grateful for our parents, because they instilled in us that we need to be strong and independent young women.”

[epochryphal]

abolition work

hm i haven’t been posting here much because 1. Work Busy and 2. local movement spaces being largely on facebook, plus 3. disclosing local geographic location on here is still a bit Hhhh

but yeah i’m fairly open about being california bay area, and am working on plugging into local orgs and have been doing some rad captioning gigs for various places on both coasts, and getting to witness really rad conversations around defunding, dismantling, abolition, alternative structures, and communal healing

big plug for Kindred Collective and healing justice, their work on the medical industrial complex, and the National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network doing the deprogramming state collusion and relearning community care for social workers & healing practitioners

on surveillance, Hacking//Hustling is doing awesome work and talking about histories of police collaboration to criminalize public health surveillance, as is Red Canary Song,

highly recommend the Just Practice Collaborative’s mixtape on transformative justice coming out at the beginning of august

some great discussion by Mia Mingus and Mimi Kim along with Cat Brooks of Anti Police-Terror Project/APTP about the conflation of transformative justice, which seeks to transform systems that allowed/enabled harm to occur, with restorative justice, which seeks to restore the status quo that existed before the harm, and which the state is picking up on as a veneer of reparative work

and always always love for Critical Resistance and their amazing resources, and to the Abolition Journal Study Guide

for concrete steps to police abolition and things to call for from leaders, i recommend:

APTP’s & Justice Teams Network’s Black New Deal (here, there, and also here)

8toAbolition

MPD150 (who have a huge resource page!)

Critical Resistance’s demands

Movement for Black Lives/M4BL’s Interrupting Criminalization Toolkit

Repeal 50 (New York police misconduct protection laws)

other rad groups with resources include Survived & Punished, Community Justice Exchange, DecrimNow, FreeThemAll4PublicHealth, local Decarcerate ___ groups, Black Youth Project 100, INCITE!

other important names include Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mariame Kaba, Kristina Agbebiyi, Kelly Hayes, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Kimberle Crenshaw, Mari Matsuda, Anoop Naya, Audre Lorde, Assata Shakur, Cornel West, Angela Davis, bell hooks, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Charlene Carruthers, Rachel Cargle

my favorite demands right now are:

freeze police hiring, at minimum

decriminalize public existence (loitering, disorderly conduct, being in a park after dark, eating or drinking in public/on transit, riding a bike on the sidewalk, sleeping in public, littering, urinating in public, etc)

- these shouldn’t be misdemeanors!  there can be general public conduct agreements without criminalization, and with competent handling of homelessness

refuse to criminalize COVID-19 and decriminalize HIV/AIDS and end all health care information sharing with police

refuse to use facial recognition tech and end usage of “predictive” tech, license plate readers, etc (saves money too!)

fund public bathrooms and showers, including making existent facilities (eg YMCA, pools) available, and fund COVID sanitation staff

move duties out of the police:

- youth engagement

- community engagement

- re-entry from incarceration assistance

- parking enforcement

- traffic law enforcement

- health crisis response

- mental health crisis response

- homelessness response and services

- neighbor disputes

- trespassing enforcement

- domestic violence response

- transit fares and rules enforcement

 --> create new divisions that are unarmed, are not trained&licensed to use force or institutionalize/incarcerate, and are non-coercive

 --> start by creating a transition team to start doing this with a five-year plan, for example

*** in the meantime, disarm police responses to these!! ***

--> see CareNotCops.org

articles i’ve found valuable:

Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop on Medium

Who Should Pay for Police Misconduct on a legal blog

Domestic Violence & Defunding Police on Huffington Post

Tired Bad Cops First Look to Their Labor Unions on Washington Post

Who’s Afraid of Defunding the Police? on Salon

Defunding the Police: What Would It Mean for the U.S.? on NPR

Abolishing Policing Also Means Abolishing Family Regulation by Dorothy Roberts

The Color of Surveillance by Alvaro Bedeta (see also the conference’s materials)

article i need to take a moment to find a way around a paywall for lmao:  On Trans Dissemblance: Or, Why Trans Studies Needs Black Feminism

documentaries/videos i recommend:

Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise on PBS

books i’ve learned about and super want to read include:

Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation from Colonial Times to the Present

How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective

Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements (by Charlene Carruthers with BYP100)

The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, Surveillance, and the Decades-Long Government Plan to Imprison “Promiscuous” Women

Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code

Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (by Simone Brown)

Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, from the Afronet to Black Lives Matter

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Decarcerating Disability

No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies

Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex

Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law (by Dean Spade)

Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

additional books i’m considering and have seen recommended:

Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond 

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America

When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in 20th Century America

Me and White Supremacy

So You Want to Talk About Race

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

Being White, Being Good: White Complicity, White Moral Responsibility, and Social Justice Pedagogy

The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

A People’s History of the United States

Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (by Patricia Hill Collins)

Eloquent Rage (by Brittney Cooper)

Bad Feminist (by Roxane Gay)

Thick: And Other Essays

Real Life: A Novel

No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America

Since I Laid My Burden Down

The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir

The Summer We Got Free

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (by Trevor Noah)

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

yeah!!

what/who are y’all reading/watching/listening to and finding helpful, or meaning to get around to?

[michaeljfaris]

CCCC Queer Caucus Solidarity Statement

The members of the CCCC Queer Caucus mourn the Black people murdered by police. We stand with Black communities and their allies in protesting the material technologies, political systems, and social conditions that perpetuate white supremacy. We join the fight for justice across this country and the world. We call attention to the important leadership of Black queer and trans communities in this fight. We see you, we believe you, we are with you.

The Compton’s Cafeteria riot in 1966 and the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969 remind us that modern LGBTQIA2+ activism entered the mainstream with bold and direct action against state violence. We remember this history and find in it strength to follow those who lead the way. We say their names. We remember Black and brown trans and queer leadership at Stonewall: Marsha P. Johnson, Stormé DeLarverie, Miss Major, and Sylvia Rivera. We grieve for Nina Pop, Tony McDade, and all the Black trans people murdered because of white supremacy, transphobia, and other discriminatory ideologies. We assert that Black Lives Matter. We affirm that intersectional, coalitional politics and alliances are necessary to end systemic oppression. We encourage white allies to listen to and amplify the voices of Black people fighting for justice.

We embrace the many ways different bodies enact the activism needed to win this fight for justice, and we encourage everyone to use their power in supporting radical change, from joining rallies, to supporting organizations that provide aid to Black communities, to amplifying organizations and voices that speak truth to power, to carrying out the daily organizational work that dismantles white supremacy.

http://www.ccccqueercaucus.org/blm/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CA_TMxAhDYv/?igshid=pj83phuexoid

[aion-rsa]

How Y: The Last Man Updates Its Story for the Modern Era

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

It’s no secret that Y: The Last Man took its sweet time in getting adapted. The story, first told in comic format from 2002 through 2008 by writer Brian K. Vaughan and illustrator Pia Guerra, was optioned to become a film as far back as 2007 with David Goyer producing.

The film project eventually developed into a TV pilot at FX in 2015. The show then ran into behind the scenes issues cycling through several producers and lead actors before settling upon Eliza Clark as showrunner and Ben Schnetzer as protagonist Yorick Brown. Now the sci-fi story about a virus that wipes out every man on Earth save for Yorick and his capuchin monkey Ampersand is finally seeing the light of day via FX on Hulu…amid a pandemic, no less! 

Given that the comic series (of which 60 issues were published) debuted nearly 20 years ago, it’s reasonable to wonder if its premise can even hold up to modern expectations. That was the question that Clark, Schnauzer, executive producer Nina Jacobson, and the cast endeavored to answer during the show’s appearance at the Television Critics Association summer 2021 press tour. 

“I read this comic book 10 years ago and fell in love with it,” Clark told reporters via Zoom. “I think it’s a beautiful story about survival. It examines characters in a landscape that is constantly pressing on really interesting ideas on power and systematic oppression. The comic book is also 20 years old. One of the things I was most interested in doing with this adaptation was taking all the things I loved about this comic and updating it.”

While the book’s central conceit of “What if…women?” was fairly progressive for its post 9/11 era, many other stories have charted similar socio-political waters effectively since. The comic’s depiction of sex and gender wasn’t always as sophisiticated as modern interpreations either. Though Vaughan’s story does feature a handful of trans male background characters, it doesn’t fully reckon with the implications of a virus that wipes out every mammal with a Y chromosome.

“There’s so much more that can be explored within that. Gender is diverse,” Clark said. “Chromosomes are not equal to gender. Every living mammal with a Y chromosome dies. That includes many women. It includes nonbinary people. Intersex people. That is central to my understanding of the show. We are making a show that affirms trans women are women. Trans men are men. That is part of the richness of the world we get to play with. The show asks ‘What makes a man? What makes a woman?’”

Actress Diana Bang steps into the role of Harvard geneticist Dr. Allison Mann and discussed how her character is crucial to the show’s updating of its sex and gender perspectives. 

“There’s this one scene that I really love between Yorick and Allison. She tries to make it clear to him that her sole interest isn’t about bringing back cisgendered men. It’s about bringing all diversity back into the world. That includes transgender women, non-binary people, and people with intersex traits. In that scene she really tries to communicate the depth of loss and it sets up the journey for the rest of the show.”

Elliot Fletcher plays Sam Jordan, a new character to the story. Sam is a trans man who is connected to Yorick’s sister Hero’s storyline. According to the actor, the show’s modern understanding of gender had equal parts social and practical advantages.

“One of the hilarious things about this show is that (after the virus), Yorick can walk around without a mask on because he’s assumed to be trans, rather than (before the virus) people are assumed to be cisgender. I just think it flips the traditional idea of gender completely on its head, and so I was very comfortable joining a project that knew that ahead of time and committed to it fully.”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

One area that Y: The Last Man doesn’t deviate from its source material, however, is its depiction that a world run by “the fairer sex” isn’t any less complicated or violent. 

“What was exciting about the book was the idea that a world that was filled with mostly women that it’s not necessarily a paradise. Women uphold systems of oppression like patriarchy and white supremacy and capitalism,” Clark said. 

It’s also notable that not everything about Y: The Last Man‘s gender politics needed updating. The first issue of Vaughan and Guerra’s book begins with a series of statistics about men and which professions they dominate like commercial pilots, truck drivers, and ship captains. According to Clark, not much has changed on that front.

“Basically what I learned is that our entire economy runs on trucks. And I think 5% of truck drivers are women,” Clark said. “And so, this is definitely a world that has been decimated because cisgender men make up the vast majority of most industries, including our own. And so, I think in that way the world does look pretty similar to the book.”

Perhaps 2002 wasn’t that long ago after all.

Y: The Last Man premieres Sept. 13, 2021 on FX on Hulu.

The post How Y: The Last Man Updates Its Story for the Modern Era appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3iKHIT3

[unda-dittaboot]

More Than A Number: The Urgent Need to Reform Media Reports

Layleen Polanco

Layleen Polanco was 27 years old. She is remembered as “a sweet, amazing [..] and generous human being.” Her family home was located in Yonkers, New York. She was very involved in New York City’s ballroom scene and was a member of the House of Xtravaganza. Layleen was remembered by her sister as a bubbly person. She is also a good friend of Pose star Indya Moore. Not a lot of information of her life has been released but members of her family, extended family, and friends have fought for her justice and have protested against the justice system trying to sweep her murder under the rug.

Nina Pop

Nina Pop was 28 years old. She was “deeply loved by her family, friends, and community.” She was very involved in her homelife and was close to her family. According to the Human Rights Campaign, weeks before her death she shared photos of her and her siblings. Her family, friends, and community are largely mourning her loss as many posts remembering Nina states that “everyone loved” her. Nina “worked at a fast-food restaurant in Sikeston and was well-known in the area,” according to KFVS, a TV station in nearby Cape Girardeau. Her friend Emory McCauley remembers her as a woman who “was always happy.”

Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells

Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells was 27 years old. She is remembered by a friend as a “unique and beautiful soul.” According to the Human Rights Campaign, friends of Dominique are mourning her death online. One of her friends posted that she was “a unique and beautiful soul who I am lucky to have known personally.” Dominique’s friend states that “we need to fight. We need to do more. We will get justice.” According to her friend Kendall Stephens, Dominique was originally from New York and was a “social butterfly who was very close to her mother.” He states that “she lived her truth so loud that you could hear her a mile away.” She had plans to go back to school and had dreams of being a fashion designer.

Aja Raquell Rhone-Spears

Aja Raquell Rhone-Spears was 32 years old. She was beloved by her family and remembered as a “vibrant personality.” According to the Human Rights Campaign she sometimes used the name Rocky Rhone. She studied at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and was the owner/founder of International Barbie, a Portland based clothing brand. According to her Facebook she was very close to her family and constantly would post photos with them. She was very outspoken when it came to call out racial injustice, especially police brutality and “advocated for a world free from white supremacy.” Her family states that “she was nonetheless a source of joy to her loved ones who always helped others in need.”

Aerrion Burnett

Aerrion Burnett was 37 years old. She lived nearby Kansas City. Her friends and family remember her as a “person you wanted by your side.” Korea Kelly, who was friends with Aerrion states that “Aerrion was a Barbie, she was a goddess.” Family members and the local community have held vigils calling for justice, and Burnett’s friends honored her at a memorial service. At the vigil, loved ones released balloons in her honor.

Mia Green

Mia Green was 29 years old. According to the Human Rights Campaign, her friends and family shared how “her smile was so perfect and so contagious. She made me laugh.” Deja Lynn Alvarez, a transgender community activist, states that she remembers Mia as a person that “was very well loved and respected and from all accounts from everyone in the community, she was an amazing, beautiful person." Tori Cooper, HCR’s director of community engagement for the transgender justice initiative, states that “Mia was a person who mattered, and she did not deserve to have her life stolen from her.

Brooklyn Deshuna

Brooklyn Deshuna was 20 years old. According to the Human Rights Campaign, other reports have also identified her as Brooklyn DeShauna Smith. She attended Bossier Parish Community College and studied cosmetology. “Brooklyn was just 20 years old, at the beginning of her life. HRC Director of Community Engagement for the Transgender Justice Initiative, Tori Cooper, states “Brooklyn was just 20 years old, at the beginning of her life. She did not deserve to have that life taken from her. Not one of the trans and gender non-conforming people who have been killed this year deserved to have their lives taken from them.” Her friends remember her as “genuinely a good person.” Her friends and family are also demanding justice for her death.

***

As we look back to previous blog posts the idea that because the deaths of these women occurred a year or two ago that trans violence is not a current issue occurring in our society because of how “progressive” we’ve become. That could not be more incorrect! I want it to be clear that trans violence, especially for Black trans women, is very current and ongoing. This is an issue that has been occurring for far too long and because it is swept under the rug, as well as rarely reported upon in the media, this issue is made smaller than what it actually is. That fact alone is extremely dangerous to the trans community who during this time requires the most coverage but in the correct way. Awareness must be spread or the idea that trans violence has “disappeared” will disseminate. In fact the Human Rights Campaign states that “this epidemic of violence disproportionately targets transgender people of color.” Although more coverage for this community needs to increase many changes must occur. One being holding the media and police reports accountable in correctly reporting information about the trans community. Deadnaming, misnaming, and misgendering must cease. So many women, in fact far too many trans women, on this list but as well as past blog lists have sadly faced this injustice. Their family and friends protest and speak up for their lost loved ones who have experienced this but the mistake has be constantly made time and time again. Enough is enough. 

These murders are very real. Some may believe that trans violence has ceased, but to believe that is very ignorant.  In fact the murders of three of the women on this list: Aerrion Burnett, Mia Green, and Brooklyn Deshuna, occurred in the last three months. As More Than A Number is coming to a close we must remember to continue advocating for this community. As it is a known fact that the media holds an extreme amount of power over our society I want to hone in on the fact that the incorrect reporting of trans women, especially Black trans women, in the media actually creates a more dangerous environment for their community. I want to continue researching how deadnaming, misnaming, and misgendering in the media actually incites more violence in this community and is extremely damaging. The fight is not yet over or even close to being done.   

[miranda-postgrad]

(Unreleased) STATEMENT IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE BLACK COMMUNITY

When the [organization I work for] developed the content for our recent virtual engagement with [politician I work for] on [Asian American history], we debated placing the LA Riots slide in the Present Day section or the 1980-2000s section. The LA Riots (6-day riot of burning and looting businesses and violence after all 4 police officers were acquitted of using excessive force against Rodney King during his arrest in 1991) took place in 1992, but issues of racial tensions, police brutality disproportionately against Black and Brown people, and racially charged violence toward communities of color are still just as relevant and unaddressed today as they were ever.

As allies in the fight to challenge injustice and hold corporate and political leaders accountable, the AAPI community must support the Black community and reflect on our own experiences of Anti-Asian violence and discrimination as separate but related to the Black struggle. We also must confront anti-Blackness in the Asian community and address anti-Asian judgements in the Black community in order to unite in cross-racial solidarity. We cannot let this pattern of injustice continue by staying complicit in systemic institutionalized racism inherent in our nation since its founding on White supremacy. The AAPI community cannot fully thrive if the Black community and any other marginalized community continue to suffer racial and discriminatory injustices.

We, the [organization I work for], stand in solidarity with the family and community of George Floyd, strangled to death by 4 police officers for a mere petty crime of using a counterfeit bill. Not only are we outraged and saddened about his tragic death and the deaths of countless other Black people -- most recently Ahmaud Arbery, shot to death by police while jogging; Breonna Taylor, shot to death in police custody; Tony McDade, trans man shot to death by police for false presumption he was carrying a firearm; Sean Reed, shot to death by the police for speeding; Nina Pop, trans woman stabbed to death for her identity -- we demand reparations in the form of apologies, federal prosecution of the murderers, re-education on racial and cultural bias, and fair funding of marginalized communities.  We demand the end of police brutality and an overhaul to reform and rethink how to best address the needs of communities of color. 

We support protest as a means of expression and enacting change. We also support uplifting our minority communities through means of economic empowerment and reformation of sociopolitical institutions. Anti-violence and anti-discrimination remain core values of the [organization I work for], and we will continue to speak out against past and present injustices through education and community engagement. 

Signed, just me, Miranda C.

Donate / Volunteer for these Philadelphia Initiatives:

Black Lives Matter Philadelphia. Donate here.

Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity provides free legal advice and representation for low-income Philadelphians with criminal records. Donate here.

Amistad Law Project represents low-income incarcerated Philadelphians. Donate here. 

YEAH, Inc., West Philadelphia youth community space. Donate here.

SEAMAAC hunger relief & COVID testing in South Philly. Donate here.

Philadelphia Community Bail Fund bailing out protesters. Donate here.

Support Minority-Owned Small Business Looted/Damaged in Philadelphia:

The Enterprise Center fund to aid West Philadelphia 52nd St. Corridor small businesses in rebuilding and regrouping. Donate here.

Black-Owned Businesses that were damaged and looted. Links here.

Black-Owned Businesses & Restaurants to patron. Map here.

Korean American Chamber of Commerce business fund. Donate here. 

King’s Men & Women store owners Helen & Steve Woo, fund organized by Cherry Hill Presbyterian Church. Donate here.

Asian-owned business fund, organized by Asian American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia Foundation. Donate here.

[oscar-isaacs-number-one-bitch]

a blank black picture without action is just a blank black picture. it is not enough. it does not absolve us of the responsibility we have to combat white supremacy, police brutality, and systemic racism. we are meant to use this to #amplifymelanatedvoices. from today until June 8, this profile will exclusively promote and amplify Black stories, authors, directors, and leaders.

@mspackyetti is a great person to follow for clarity on the whole situation. there is also a link to the Nina Pop Mental Health Recovery Fund in by bio (let’s not forget that it’s pride month, which wouldn’t exist without Black trans women). please donate if you are able. if you are unable, spread it to those who are.

last note: do NOT hashtag these posts with “blacklivesmatter” or “blm.” it makes critical information on protests, police updates, and the Black voices that speak on both very difficult to find. stay safe. stay vigilant. amplify Black voices. because Black Lives Matter. going dark. #blackouttuesday https://www.instagram.com/p/CA83tV4DQ3A/?igshid=1j0ryxaom8v35

[newagesispage]

                                                                        JULY              2020

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Tammy Duckworth or Stacey Abrams for VP PLEASE!!!!! Thus is one of the most important Vice Presidential picks ever. Since Biden was not the first choice for a lot of people, I think many want to see if at least he will make good choices for the slots he must fill around him.** Shut up Klobuchar, nobody was going to make you VP, why do U need more spotlight?

*****

Hooray for the LBGTQ community! The Supreme Court has ruled that a human can’t be fired because of sexual orientation or gender identity.** On the down side, the Trump administration overturned protections for transgender people against sex discrimination in health care. It now defines gender as a person’s biological sex.**Also, Single sex homeless shelters can turn away our trans friends. ** The Supreme Court also ruled that Trump is blocked from ending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival.** Another court ruling struck down the Louisiana law that had never really went into effect.  The rule was to make Dr.’s register with hospitals. Next up: The Court is taking on the issue of Trump’s tax returns.

*****

You have to check out Kubrick.life. It is fab!!

*****

The reason there’s never been a Rolling Stones musical is that it’s so hard to find a casting director without sin. –Gary Delaney

*****

Native Americans are set to protest Trump’s visit to Mt. Rushmore for the 4th.

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AP Bio is moving to Peacock.

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Great to see Search Party back for season 3 now on HBO max.

*****

The Brockmire jacket is on display now at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

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Hooray for Pete Davidson and his basement living. Times have changed and families are living together again, often because financially, they have no choice. ** Pete and Colin Jost will star in worst man.** Jost also has a memoir, A very Punchable Face, on the way. He will also star in a live action/animated Tom and Jerry.

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Days alert: I think Brady is beyond redemption. ** I am always so glad when Lucas or Wilhelm come back!!!!!** Jack and Jen need a story! **I hope Sarah gets over her shit and runs to Xander before he starts acting like a thug again.** Marci Miller is on the way back. ** The Daytime Emmy’s were held on June 26. There were wins for Ellen, The View, Heather Tom and Sesame Street.  Days did not fare too well this year but did honor Olivia Rose Keegan. ** So glad to some returns for Eli’s wedding!!!

*****

Can’t wait for the film, Never too late. The Michael Lembeck directed project stars Ellen Burstyn, James Caan, Ann-Margret, Jane Curtin, Loretta Devine, Christopher Lloyd and French Stewart.

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Other Countries are starting to ban us from travel in theirs because of our rampant covid-19.** The WH wants to end Federal funding for testing and research in parts of the country.** 1.4 billion in taxpayer $ went to aid dead people since the Government did not check death records.** Kid Rock’s bar had their liquor license revoked for covid-19 violations.** There are so many spoiled rotten Americans who seem to care nothing for the safety of others and only their own “rights.” People are dying, how long do we ignore the crazy people?? Can we stop harassing law abiding minorities and protestors and start arresting those that refuse to wear a mask? Thank you to the Governors, like JB Pritzker who have been level headed and kept us safe

*****

I am so looking forward to I’ll be gone in the dark. We miss you Michelle McNamara..

*****

Ozark will come back for a 4th and final season!!!!!

*****

“Shaming doesn’t lead to learning.” –Willow Smith

*****

I wanna see a buddy movie with Amy Sedaris and Amber Ruffin!!! Wouldn’t that be delightful?? They could be besties running a shop or estranged sisters or long lost cousins. I just think they would have great chemistry.** At least we can look forward to the Amber Ruffin show which has been in the works for a year, coming to Peacock!

*****

The RNC had not updated its platform since 2016. Their site said “the current administration has abandoned American friends and rewarded its enemies.”** The much touted Oklahoma rally was a complete dud. Word is that campaign manager Brad Parscale and Jared are getting most of the blame. They and the secret service are reportedly in quarantine now. Next, Mr. Brilliant was off to the equally intelligent Dream City Church in Arizona. The mega church said that they had installed an air filtration system that kills 99,9 % of the Corona virus in 10 minutes.  Their FB page soon took that statement down. **  “Still the most believable thing that’s ever been said in a mega church.” –Stephen Colbert. The administration uses the lag time between exposure and test results. By the time these crowds of people may start to test positive, Trump will have moved on and take no blame. ** It seems all that has been accomplished since Scary Clown 45 took office is angst. From reporters to Doctors to politicians to the public there have been disagreements and turmoil. Behind the scenes, however, the agendas being pushed thru are trampling all over our rights.

*****

The Government has purged 174 thousand fake accounts that originated in China.

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Studies show that cop shows make us believe that police are mostly good and mostly break the rules only for really bad perps. 21% of the public interact with police on a regular basis. Can we not separate fact from fiction?

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Paul McCartney is pretty pissed at the Italian government after they gave no refunds to fans for a cancelled concert. ** A story that turned out to be a non-story is Penny Lane. Someone wrote ‘racist’ above the famous Penny Lane sign because they thought the street was named for slave trader James Penny. It turns out that this had been researched before and this is not a true story .  The street was originally Pennies street and had no connection.

*****

Jimmy Kimmel is taking a couple of months off.  Guest hosts will pop up in July. He has had some backlash from old blackface controversy and some questionable interviews.

*****

What we’ve seen now is how fragile a democracy is. –Sherilyn Ifill

*****

70% of companies have cancelled internships. The rich have gotten a lot richer.

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Hooray for the young! Many are volunteering for the Corona virus trials in which they will have to be given the virus.** What a wonderful world it would be if we could all get along and play fair and help each other. Why do some so hate that idea?

*****

Army for Trump.com???? Did he get this idea from Gene Simmons????** People are starving, there is unrest in the streets, protesters beaten, racial inequality, over 110thousand dead to a virus and Trump wants a military parade for the 4th of July??? WTF?? The people of Washington are not too happy as they ponder the weight of tanks ruining their streets.

*****

Why does Trump talk of his love of Police and yet in Dallas he did not have the Police Chief, the Sheriff or the DA at his event?

*****

The Senate armed services committee has adopted an amendment to remove the names of confederate General from military assets within 3 years. ** Traitors statues are being removed. Will the faces of slave owners on currency be next???** Princeton is taking Woodrow Wilson’s name off of the school. ** Why do we even have to take flags, statues and imagery from Naval ships and the halls of our Government buildings?? They should have been removed long ago.** We do not live in a country to which Braxton Bragg, Henry L. Benning or Robert E. Lee can serve as an inspiration. –Gen. David Patraeus**Perhaps Scary Clown could just be President of the Confederacy since they seem to want it miss it. Is it time to secede and this time, just let them go??** Free speech is very important in this country and those who want confederate flags on personal property should be able to. It is good to know who the traitors are. Things do not change, from parading the possible communists to Japanese internment to Native Americans to the Irish, the Jewish, to Black lives matter. The uninformed, the bully’s and the haters just seem to need someone to blame for their problems.

*****

Dolly Parton and Nina West will sell products which declare, “Kindness is Queen.”  The sales will fund Imagination Library and Nina West foundation.

*****

This month in “alleged” creep news : Actor Danny Masterson has been charged with 3 counts of rape.** Chris D’Elia is accused of sexual harassment and grooming under aged women. **Justin Beiber is accused of sexual assault from 2014.** Ron Jeremy has been charged with the rape of 3 women and sexually assaulting another. His bail is 6.6 mil.** Mythbuster’s host Adam Savage has had a lawsuit filed against him by his sister, Miranda Pacchiana for sexual abuse.** The Weinstein global settlement is 46.7 mil.

*****

There is word that they may replace Tennessee’s statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest with Dolly Parton. That is pretty good thinking!!

*****

Don’t worry about those confederate statues being torn down. They’re getting what they always wanted: Out of America.** I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down.  They are a form of white supremacy. –Shaun King

*****

Slavery is still legal by way of the industrial prison complex and privatized prison systems. –Wolfe the Chef

*****

Trump has a half billion in loans coming due. –Mother Jones

*****

Perhaps Trump thinks between, the protests, the Covid and the cop killings, many of those against him will just die off. Moscow Mitch and the boys are right there with him. Bill Maher would call it the red wall of silence. Next up to kill us off: the draft?

*****

The Senate armed services committee has adopted an amendment to remove the names of Confederate Generals from military assets within 3 years.

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Trump signs executive order renaming the Pearl Harbor memorial, ‘Fort Yamamto.’ –Danny Zuker

*****

Asst. Secretary of State for legislative affairs, Mary Elizabeth Taylor is out.

*****

Let us never forget the name Darnella Frasier, the 17 year old girl who took video of George Floyd’s murder.

*****

Hollywood never told us that 1 in 3 cowboys back in the day were black. Legend has it that the Lone Ranger was based on one of those very cowboys by the name of Bass Reeves.

*****

Nascar has banned the confederate flag from events thanks to Bubba Wallace, the first black driver in 50 years to win one of the top 3 National touring series.  He has introduced his new #43 Chevy which  states Black Lives Matter with  black and white fists clasped with the caption, “Compassion, love and understanding.” Fans were asked in 2015 to stop with the flag but many ignored the request. Driver Ray Ciccarelli says that he will leave at the end of the season.  Kyle Larson was suspended from Nascar and fired by his team for a racial slur during a streaming event. Kyle Weatherman unveiled a blue lives matter flag car with the slogan “Back the Blue.”** Why was taking a knee so bad? The NFL says they made a mistake. This country is so slow to change which is why we must keep the pressure on.  To focus on punishment after and not prevention of these crimes is a huge mistake.** The June 21 race was delayed for rain but it will be remembered for the plane that flew overhead with a confederate flag that declared ‘Defund Nascar’ and a noose that was found in the garage stall of Bubba Wallace. The next day at the postponed race, the other drivers walked Wallace to the front. It was something to see.  Mike Skinner’s son, Dustin wrote, “My hat is off to who put the noose at his car. I wish they would of tied it to him and drug him around the pits.” **The next day the FBI declared that the noose was just a garage pull that had been there for months. WTF???? The right has gone crazy with clever turns of phrase like, ‘fake noose.’ Was it an honest mistake?  I suppose these things can happen when everybody gets jumpy . The crew member that found it asked others what they thought so it wasn’t lie they jumped to conclusions. It was Talladega that should have known. Mike Skinner’s son,

*****

Trump began his term promising to build a wall to protect America from the world. He ends it building a wall to protect himself from Americans. – Nick Confessore

*****

The Dems are happy to let Biden stay safe at home. Journalist Jonathon Lemore mentioned that with all the polls, mishandlings and faux pas from Trump, he may want to change the nickname he has given from sleepy Joe to President –elect Joe. Not so fast, we know the die-hards will not give up even in this ‘Trump fatigue’ slide, but voting is happening in record numbers.

*****

A judge has ruled that children must be released from the detention centers after 20 days.

*****

It has been reported that Scary Clown found out in March that Russia offered Afgan militants bounties to kill US troops. Once a traitor, always a traitor. Of course he supports confederate traitors.

*****

The Georgia Secretary of State spent $400thousand on a commercial. He wanted to pat himself on the back for buying new voting machines.**The Republican party is reportedly spending $20 million to hire people to intimidate voters that they call ‘pollwatchers.’

*****

Blue Apron will close facilities on Election day and give employees a paid day off. Anybody else wanna step up?

*****

Raven Symone married Miranda Maday.

*****

Michelle Williams and hubby Thomas Kail had a baby.

*****

There are no good cops as long as there are bad cops.** With all the insanity, Marianne Williamson sounds pretty good right now.

*****

If you have not seen this Trump coloring book that sells for $20, it is something to see. He looks like a super hero which seems like just one more step to dictator.

*****

AG Barr told the US attorney for the Southern District of NY, Richard Berman that he was stepping down but he refused.  Barr then said that Trump was removing him. Trump says he has nothing to do with it. Have we ever heard of a bigger coward?

*****

I suppose it is too much to ask but I hope the people who still don’t get what is going on in this country will pay attention and at least try to understand. There are such intelligent points being made and we need to listen. I will share many of those with you. U may have seen a lot of these for yourself but I wanted to highlight some wonderful words.  Slavery, minimum wage, payday loans, can you blame the few looters? Some may be protesters but most are profiteers . Corporate America does not keep a lot of their promises so many feel they have no deal with these people. Most of the protests are peaceful so leave them alone. When the police go after innocent people who assemble, they prove the point that the force is out of control.  It is time to demilitarize and defund the police. Changing policy is nice and all but there are still many cases and those officers remain on the job. ** The protests are about a lot more than George Floyd.** Is this true that some police are covering their badge numbers and names?? Why wouldn’t a person want to serve and protect instead of being so covert? They are proving the point of the protests.

*****

It’s Boogaloo, not Antifa.

*****

James Bodenstedt, CEO of Muy who has stake in many Wendy’s, Taco Bell and Pizza Huts has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Trump campaign. ** Defund Tucker Carlson, let’s keep an eye on all who advertise on FOX and boycott those. Disney and T mobile have pulled out. I cannot believe Disney was showing ads on there anyway but they claim that it was some 3rd party ad buyer and they did not know. In return, Tucker is telling his listeners about the nasty companies that support Black Lives Matter. ** Why have so many of the Fox employees and their frequent guests been arrested?** I suppose many republicans are quite happy that the Federal government is doing next to nothing to help its citizens. They often scream that they do not want the government involved and we should all be on our own.

*****

Oh Joy, to wake up and see that The Politician S2 was up! Woo Hoo!! I saw a review in the Reporter that stated , ”Nor does it have anything vaguely insightful to say.”  Well I enjoyed it , mostly due to the wonderful Bette Midler, Judith Light, Joe Morton and the fashion!! Not everything needs a message. There is some outright preaching and a few clever lessons here though.  The last episode could have been better but the line about the older generation and game theory really hit home. Not only do older generations think different, we were taught different. Computers can confound them, gaming can confuse them. Of course, this does not include everyone. But it does seem that the logic we use is just different.  As far as season 2 though, sometimes you just want to watch something delicious and ornery FUN!!

*****

Givers beware: Many have been finding out that when they donate to the Black Lives Matter Foundation, it is not the Black Lives Matter movement. Do your research!

*****

I saw a point from a talking head that answered the question of why do blacks keep killing each other? She wondered if people have seen the ID channel which is whites killing each other every day. There seems much plotting and hiding on these shows and somehow they get away with it for so long. I myself have seen much violence in my own family.

*****

North Carolina would not let the RNC hold its big night there because of restrictions. West Virginia Gov. Justice welcomed Trump to have it the convention there and in fact invited any President there but not Obama. Scary Clown went with Florida.** A white hate group opened a FB page to pose as ANTIFA.

*****

Scary clown 45 can’t legally employ army against citizens. He declared a dictatorship. –John Cusack** Never forget: Posse Camatatis: The President can’t use the military as his own posse. The insurrection act is the exception if there is an ongoing problem and the Governor has to invite them in.** It is confusing in D.C. for there are secret service, local and Federal all vying for jurisdiction. There is also the ‘correctional police force.’ The AG is combining multiple forces like the DEA, military police, prison and National Guard. Huh? It is time to make D.C. a state. ** After his big show of force for his Bible day, he sent most military leaders back to their home bases.** General Milley has apologized for being a part of the photo op.

*****

Intel reports show that Russia is so happy with their plan to destroy us from within. It has worked like a charm!** Many in China are saying that Trump is a godsend because he is ruining the rep of the U.S.** It is quite sad to hear leaders and journalists from around the world reporting that America’s time has passed and is no longer a super power.

*****

He desecrates the Bible. He desecrates a Christian church and he desecrates the Presidency. Shame. –James J. Zogby** The Episcopal Bishop of DC who oversees the DC church that the President stopped at to hold up his book, was outraged. Neither she nor the rector was asked or told that they would be clearing peaceful protesters with force and smoke bombs or that one of their churches would be used as a prop. ** A truly sacrilegious use of the Bible to bless a brutal stunt. –Michael Gerson, GW Bush speechwriter

*****

Trump has asked CNN to apologize for a poll that claimed that Biden was winning. Fox had a similar poll so WTF?

*****

Oh no, I see that Loews gave 25 mil to help minority owned business’s while Home Depot gave 7 mil to Trump. I have my own issues with service at Loews in the past and good things to say about the Depot. Thus does make one think.

*****

White supremacists and racist terrorists pose a greater risk of violence. –FBI

*****

Judge Jed S. Rakoff has declared ICE’s policy of courthouse arrests to be illegal.

*****

He who is reluctant to recognize me opposes me. –Frantz Fanon

*****

ABC senior executive Barbara Fedida is on administrative leave after allegations of racial remarks and insensitive comments.

*****

Kristen Wiig and Ari Rothman had twins.

*****

The Hollywood walk of fame is adding Kelly Clarkson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dom McLean, Zac Efron, Shia LaBeouf, Missy Elliott, Luciano Pavarotti and August Wilson.

*****

Holland Taylor and PBS have brought us Ann. The Tony nominated play is about Governor Ann Richards.

*****

North Korea has recently added enough material for 20 more nukes. While we are distracted, Kim Yo-Jung, Un’s sister had come front and center. She has said, it’s time “to break ties with South Korea.”

*****

Employees had told me that Costco samples were a thing of the past but it looks like they are coming back.

*****

A new book about Melania, which she calls fiction is here. There are many stories inside like how Ivanka calls her step mother, The portrait because she never smiles. ** A Trump niece, Mary L. Trump has also written a tell all. The courts have it held up at the moment. ** A judge denied an injunction to block Bolton’s book. Did he think he would be a savior because he says he is telling the truth NOW?

*****

A judge had to order Mnuchin to give $679 mil in emergency covid-19 relief funds to Native tribes.** Be aware- Covid tests are free but they sometimes test for flus first and they are not always covered. This happened to Katie Porter.

*****

“There isn’t a coronavirus second wave.”- Mike Pence. This is also a man who once wrote ,”smoking doesn’t kill.”

*****

Save the Merit System Protection Bureau!!  The backlog gets bigger and bigger and will cost the taxpayers more and more.

*****

The U.S. now faces allegations of human rights abuse because of treatment of protesters.** Private jet companies got $300 million in bailout $. What about small business?** Bullfighters in Spain have asked for Government help since they can’t kill their bulls.

*****

It is such a shame that George P. Bush (who I once thought could steer the Republican Party back) is solidly in the Trump camp. Yikes!!

*****

Doug Mills won the WH correspondents Association photo of the year for the Pelosi clap pic from the State of the Union.

*****

The ACLU has filed suit against Minnesota police for ‘targeting’ journalists.

*****

How can the black community dismantle a problem they did not create? – James Corden

*****

Mississippi voted to remove the confederate emblem from the state flag.

*****

I swear if I ever hear Stephen Colbert talk about his hair again, I will scream!! The rest of us need haircuts too.  I wish he would stop whining about it before he turns to the “dark times” of the day. But hugs for Colbert though for his Bolton interview. It is pretty sad when a comic minded talk show host digs deeper in an interview than the news pundits. The jack ass needs to be called out cuz his arguments are ridiculous.  ** Oh no, Since I wrote this, Seth Meyers has now bitched twice about his hair.** They are teaching the thoughts of Trevor Noah in classes now. And BTW when will we have more diverse late night hosts?

*****

Hooray for John Cusack, Elizabeth Warren, Madonna, Tammy Duckworth, Dick Durbin,  J.B. Pritzker and Mitt Romney for coming out to march. More of that!!

*****

There is word that an old sketch from David Cross and Bob Odenkirk is being pulled. I am not sure that what they were doing was understood. There are many shows taking out the blackface scenes such as Scrubs and 30 Rock.

*****

I just keep seeing the scene in my head from The Wall: “UP against the wall.”** It is simple, I always think, half of this country just has a completely different idea of what America is or should be than the other half.** And what kind of number did Trump’s parents and Roy Cohn do on him? He really has this thing about weakness.** Why was Trump allowed to visit a swab production plant without a mask? They had to throw away the days production. President does not mean ruler.** Trumpism is that state of having insane racist moron candidates running for offices that they’re completely unqualified for is alive and well. – Molly Jong-Fast

*****

Hurry up Fall so we can see The Trial of the Chicago 7 with Eddie Redmayne, Sasha Baron Cohen, Joseph Gordon- Levitt, Frank Langella, Jeremy Strong, John Carroll Lynch, Yahya Abdul- Mateen II, Mark Rylance and Michael Keaton.

*****

HBO Max has pulled Gone with the Wind and sales skyrocketed. Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar but was seated separately at the event. It is now back with a discussion.

*****

How many broken or new machines or outlets that don’t work do we have to put up with before we strictly go to PAPER ballots?? I get so tired of writing this. I am all for states running their elections but this is ridiculous. In the elections that I have worked, the only real problems were with machines!!!!!!!!!!

*****

Planet of the Humans was banned for a time it now it is back. Don’t they get that it only makes people want to see it more?

*****

The DOJ filed a civil action against Bolton to stop his book but it did not work,  It is chock full of info that would have come in handy months ago.** This whole administration is one big reality show, move in, move on and make $ out of it. They have no shame!

*****

No one is ever a victim, although your conquerors would have you believe in your own victimhood. How else could they conquer you? –Barbara Marciniak

*****

R.I.P. more Covid victims, Bonnie Pointer, Christo, Joanne Lara, Robert Fuller, Michael Daly, Rayshard Brooks, Victoria Sims, Oluwatoyin Salau, Sirlan Holm, Jean Kennedy Smith, Dame Vera Lynn,  Keith Blocker, Mary J. Wilson, Joel Schumacher, Steve Bing, Mexico city earthquake victims,  covid victims, Stuart Cornfeld, Lucius J. Barker and Carl Reiner.

[entergamingxp]

Pokmon Go will donate $5m minimum from Go Fest 2020 ticket sales • Eurogamer.net

To new Black gaming projects and charities.

Pokémon Go maker Niantic is being praised by fans for its response to the Black Lives Matter movement, which will include an eye-opening $5m minimum donation from this year’s Pokémon Go Fest ticket sales.

Niantic boss John Hanke also committed to a number of employee schemes: allyship training, apprenticeships leading to permanent positions, scholarship support and employee volunteer days.

“We’ll be donating Niantic proceeds from Pokémon Go 2020 Fest ticket sales, committing a minimum of $5m,” Hanke wrote in a lenghty statement posted to Twitter last night.

“Half of the proceeds donated will be used to fund new projects from Black gaming and AR creators that can live on the Niantic platform, with the ultimate goal of increasing content that represents a more diverse view on the world. The other half will go to US nonprofit organisations that are helping local communities rebuild.”

Niantic will separately donate a further $100k and match employee contributions to the Marsha P. Johnson Institute to support Black trans people.

“We are committed to this cause,” Hanke wrote. “These initiatives don’t end with an announcement. The work to follow through will require years of effort to yield the impact we seek.

“The heart of Niantic is our community of players. It is imperative that we stand up to support our Black Trainers, Agents and Wizards. We aim to be a force of change committed to the long road ahead of rebuilding a more just and fair system where all are welcomed, valued and have a fair chance at success.”

We stand with the Black community & against white supremacy, racism, & police brutality & condemn the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Nina Pop & countless others. Here’s how we?re committing to change #BlackLivesMatter https://t.co/jfYGinhl2e pic.twitter.com/Y0P3f1E2PQ

— Niantic, Inc. (@NianticLabs) June 3, 2020

To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Manage cookie settings

The statement, donations and commitments are being held up by the company’s legion of players, as well as many throughout the games industry, as one of the most extensive responses to the movement anywhere in video games.

This year’s Pokémon Go Fest will be an entirely virtual event in July, in place of the usual meetups which attract hundreds of thousands of players to specific cities around the world.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/pokmon-go-will-donate-5m-minimum-from-go-fest-2020-ticket-sales-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=pokmon-go-will-donate-5m-minimum-from-go-fest-2020-ticket-sales-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[jimdeco458]

-58°

Why is it so difficult these past 14 years, to reach the people with the authority to do something that might serve the public-good. I have tried to reach professors, scientists, governors, senators, reporters and weathermen without any success to speak of. I’m talking about Irma, Wilma and Andrew, hurricanes that is–to name a few. Call me 🐷 headed but I don’t know why the government and the scientific community isn’t doing something to mitigate or attenuate the force of these storms. Like they say, we all talk about the weather but we don’t do anything about it. The problem is that anyone who thinks he can change the weather is going to be viewed with a certain amount of suspicion. Well here I am.

The title of this blog is -58, i.e. the minus 58 meridian of the North Atlantic. This is arguably the region of one thousand square miles where a given hurricane eye would be spoiled as to weaken it’s strength. Five destroyer class ships, each covering a manageable 200 miles would pump 💧 from the thermocline to reduce the 💧 temperature and in so doing spoil the system that is producing the storm. I would like to think that many people could come up with other crazy schemes such as this. Would it work? Could it? What with the death and destruction that these storms bring, you would expect a greater effort to study remediation. Governments and universities spend a half a billion dollars a year on various unrelated  research. Could this hypothesis be simulated in a lab?

What do you think?

=============================================================

How did you become an illustrator? How did you start your blog?

I have always 💛 making comics, but I started to really feel inspired to become an illustrator through the support of close friends and family. My parents aren’t/weren’t very supportive growing up, and only after leaving my home was I able to really explore the field. I originally started the blog to archive my ideas and little doodles, and soon started to get a bit of a following!

How has Tumblr allowed you to explore your identity?

Through Tumblr, I was able to connect with people who expressed their gender and identity in a way I had never seen in person. I was able to 👀 myself and my identity more clearly, and felt more comfortable experimenting with labels and pronouns. I came out online before I came out in real life, and I think the boost I got from the community helped me build the courage to come out. My parents do not support my identity, and I have had a lot of difficulty in being kicked out of my home. But, with some folks I connected with through Tumblr and trans siblings in real life, I felt more supported and could start my life again from the ground up.

What has been your biggest accomplishment as an artist?

I’m not very far in my career as an artist, as I’m still pretty young and just starting out. But, I think getting into college to study art was a big step. My previous plan for my future was to be an engineer, which I would have hated. After I left home, I learned that I didn’t get accepted into the college I was planning on going to for many years. After many months, I was able to find a college with a good art program in my area. It was a big leap for me, because my parents never supported art careers for any of their kids. To be able to change my career path to something I really enjoy, and to go to college for it is an amazing feeling.

How can we continue to support trans artists?

Reblog their art! While likes are appreciated, reblogs spread their art across the platform, and help them gain some popularity and more opportunities. I also enjoy getting nice comments on my art through my asks and in the replies! If the artists have merchandise or do commissions, consider supporting them by taking part in them (or at least boost their posts about things that can help them make 💰).

With this being the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion, what does Pride mean to you?

The 💛 that I have seen in the LGBTQ+ community is unparalleled. In most spaces, I feel like my existence is mostly just tolerated or tokenized. It’s only been within the community that I not only feel like my identity is tolerated or noticed, but celebrated! I recently have been able to surround myself with members of the community, and I’ve never felt more respected and 💛 in my life. Pride keeps this community alive and thriving, and that means so much to me.

You have such great resileince, Elliot. You’re going to be a great illustrator and comic artist. We’re 🙌 for you. Tumblr, who are some other LGBTQIA+ artists we should know about? Use the #tumblrpride to share.

This interview has been condensed for clarity.

Photo Credit: Naima Green

Pictured/Pronouns: Van (he, they) Chino (he, him) Nina (she, her) Ryann (they/them)

Not pictured/pronouns: Mo (she, they)

Pride Spotlight: bklyn boihood

Hey Tumblr! During the entire month for Pride 2019, we’ll be highlighting some amazing groups and individuals who are creating dope spaces for the LGBTQIA+ community. First up @bklynboihood​, bklyn boihood is a collective that seeks to create spaces for queer and trans bois* of color in 🗽. Let’s jump right in.

Your mission is to create spaces for Black and brown queer and trans bois* to cultivate stories, dreams and creative work. Why are these spaces so important? Why aren’t we 👀 them more often?

Our mission is centered on black and queer bois*. At a time, there were very few spaces that celebrated boihood in all of the manifestations we witnessed on a day-to-day basis. As we continue to understand how lack of visual representation impacts mental health, we know it’s critical to 🙌 black and queer bois because mainstream media has failed to do so. Mainstream media is a part of a larger institution, and any institution as we know has deep ties to white supremacy. We don’t 👀 more dynamic platforms for black queer bois simply because white supremacy is a tool for eraser and that pervasive violence exists in all institutions.

Black and brown queer and trans folks created the LGBTQIA+ culture that we know today. That is #BlackExcellence365. Unfortunately we’re not 👀 the right representation. How can we change that?

Power must be shifted. Do you have black queer and trans bois within your organization? Are they decision makers? If you’re a funder, are you using your platform to funnel fiscal support to organizations that center queer and trans black bois? Representation comes at a cost, often emotional labor, that in which we do not have the capacity to hold. So, are you leveraging power to hold the multiple and complex identities in which you wish to include? Inclusivity is never enough. Liberation is beyond inclusion. In order for us to to be free we must dismantle and center those are most at risk of being erased.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. People forget that it was Black and brown queer homeless youths who started this movement. How can we continue to honor them?

Honor them with your platforms, honor them with your funding, honor them by including them in the decision-making regarding their own representation, honor them beyond mere symbolism and move in solidarity by dismantling systems that wish to keep them out.

Thank you bklyn boihood for all the work you do work for the community. Tumblr, how are you supporting organizations during Pride 2019? Use the #tumblrpride to share.

This interview has been condensed for clarity

Happy Pride 2019, Tumblr!

There are so many ways to 🙌 this beautiful month! Pride parades and festivals and marches will take place all over the U.S. to elevate our LGBTQIA+ selves, friends, and family. Your Tumblr dashboards deserve to feel just as commemorative, so all month long we’re going to be highlighting amazing LGBTQIA+ Tumblrs for you to follow.

As we 🙌, we also want to remember the serious event from which Pride has evolved. This month marks the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Stonewall Riots, a series of political protests that began at The Stonewall Inn in 🗽. Young Black and brown LGBTQIA+ people—particularly trans POC—were the first to stand up and protest against the police brutality and inhumane treatment of people within their community. They deserve to be remembered, respected, and honored.

And so, this year, our theme is “Educate. Advocate. 🙌.” We’re sharing resources and information about the LGBTQIA+ community to help educate those who are not as knowledgeable about the history of the community. We’re advocating for the community by providing links to helpful resources, small businesses owned by LGBTQIA+ folks, and non-profits to support. And, of course, we want you to 🙌 who you are. Through that, we’ll be spotlighting non-profit organizations, LGBTQIA+ artists on Tumblr, and more throughout the month right here on @action. There are so many wonderful LGBTQIA+ Tumblrs out there, and we want to continue to support and uplift them.

There’s also a little bit of fun added across the platform. 👀 the Tumblr “T” up at the top on the left on desktop web? Hover your 🐁 and 👀 it cycle through different LGBTQIA+ flag colors, including the traditional LGBTQ+ 🌈 flag, trans flag, non-binary flag, genderqueer flag, lesbian flag, POC LGBTQ+ flag and more. Using the app? Open up the sticker drawer and find some of those Pride flag in sticker form to use however you 👀 fit.

We want to know how and who you’re educating, advocating, and 🥂 this month. Is it you? Your parents? Your best friend? Is there a small business owner we should know about? Make a post about ‘em! Make sure to tag your post with #Tumblr Pride so the whole community can find it.

Stay safe and stay kind, Tumblr. ❤️

As the San Francisco rock scene grew in the 1960s, posters were commissioned by the concert promoter Bill Graham for shows at popular venues such as the Fillmore Auditorium. David Singer produced more posters for Graham than any other artist, designing 75 posters from 1969 to 1990.[1] Although he had an unusual background for a psychedelic poster artist—a childhood spent in rural Pennsylvania, a stint in the Navy, and marketing work for companies in the Financial District of San Francisco—he went on to take his place alongside giants of the genre such as Wes Wilson and Victor Moscoso.

Singer’s most formative influences came from his family, particularly his adoptive mother, Dorothy, who went to art school and hung her paintings around the 🏠. Another important influence was his great aunt Flossy, who kept scrapbooks that left a strong impression on Singer, who remembers flipping through pages of pictures arranged thematically, including double-page spreads of cats and dogs. Singer soon became a “magazine freak,” frantically cutting pictures from magazines and creating collages that he later referred to as “visual poems.”[2] After showing a portfolio containing his best collage work to Graham in 1969, he was immediately commissioned for a series of concert posters.

Although this poster for the Fillmore West’s closing week in 1971 was actually printed after the week of shows ended, it is considered one of Singer’s masterpieces. A strange scene appears in 🆒 blue and black in the center of the composition—a 🐈 dancing on a 💤 🐶 below a grainy photograph of Saturn, with a haunting pair of feline eyes in the background. ✋-lettered, curvilinear text appears above and below the central collage, providing details about the week, including the names of 17 different bands. At left and right, swirling, bird-like shapes appear, mirroring the curving forms in the elaborate bedspread design underneath the 🐶 and the white streak down the center of the slumbering canine’s face.

Although lacking the bright, intense colors and intertwining of text and image typically found in other psychedelic posters, Singer’s design is similarly liberated from the traditional restrictions of advertising and induces a reflective process. The viewer is encouraged to spend time deciphering the fluid, dynamic letters and comprehending the bizarre imagery. Although the poster evokes the hallucinatory experience that often accompanied psychedelic light shows and rock 🎶, the experience becomes part of a larger philosophical questioning about the universe and the nature of reality. The 🐈—a familiar, domestic creature—takes on a spiritual, cosmic dimension, arousing slight laughter but also becoming an enduring and poetic symbol of the ineffable.

Carey Gibbons is a Cataloguer in the Drawings, Prints & Graphic Design Department at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

[1] “About David Singer,” accessed April 15, 2019, http://bit.ly/2ICUuBg.

[2] Ben Marks, “How a Small-Town Navy Vet Created Rock’s Most Iconic Surrealist Posters,” Collectors Weekly, March 28, 2019, http://bit.ly/2GwOEjH.

“I 👀 that addiction generally has 2 state of minds and neither is better than the other. I wanted to indicate the possibility of escaping this mind of maze. It may be a difficult path, but to face the problems and be in ✌️ with them is a good start.” Yagmur Altan (@yagmur-altan), artist

Hey Tumblr,

As we near the end of Mental Health Month, we���d like to share one last post. As you know, we’ve been sharing stories, resources, and facts over on @postitforward to help dissolve the stigma surrounding mental health struggles. Our last post for MHM is all about addiction. If you’re interested in reading it, check it out over here.

Wanna share your story, too? Use the tag #postitforward to share how you cope with addiction. You might just help someone who needs to hear it

“Living with anxiety isn’t just a psychological strain, it affects us physically too. The sense of being on edge all the time weighed on me and gave me the impression that things were never letting up or improving“— Adrian Smith (@adrian3d), artist

Hey Tumblr,

As you know, the month of May doubles as Mental Health Month. All month long, we’ve been sharing stories, resources, and facts over on @postitforward to help dissolve the stigma surrounding mental health struggles. One of our most recent posts for MHM is all about anxiety. If you’re interested in reading it, check it out over here.

Wanna share your story,  too? Use the tag #postitforward to share how you cope with anxiety. You might just help someone who needs to hear it.

The murals of Dimitris Taxis recall his experience in both comics and cinematography. 👀 more of his recent creations here.

Dear Cecilia Chung,

You have spent decades fighting for rights and protections for transgender people and people living with HIV/AIDS. You are an inspiration for younger generations of trans activists. You are tough as nails and a tireless advocate for marginalized communities. This 💌 is dedicated to you, Cecilia, in gratitude for all of your work.

As a young Asian American trans person, I struggled to find role models. So often in mainstream media, trans women and trans women of color, in particular, are portrayed as victims, jokes, or evil doers. I was hungry for positive representations of who trans people could be: leaders, survivors, unapologetically out and proud advocates.

I just wanted proof that Asian American trans people have been here. That we’ve been here the whole time. That we’ve been killing the game and shaping history. I’m grateful that, in you, I have found this magnificent representation.

After coming out as trans, you experienced job discrimination, violence, and homelessness. As an Asian immigrant trans woman with HIV, you have witnessed first-✋ how transphobia and HIV stigma keep people at the margins. You’ve taken these dehumanizing experiences and transformed them into fuel for human and civil rights work.

Keep reading

Endormie (😴) Samuel Melton Fisher, 1902

Pictured: Students protesting. Photography courtesy of the Asian American Federation

APAHM Spotlight: Asian American Federation

As part of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we’re highlighting some amazing organizations that are positively impacting the community. Asian American Federation is a pan-Asian nonprofit leadership organization that represents and supports a network of 70 Asian American community service organizations in 🗽. They’re focusing on mental health needs in the Asian American community, as a whole, as it’s been affecting a lot of people in the community. We sat down with Deputy Director Joo Han.

The Asian/Pacific Islander community is not monolithic. What are some common misconceptions about this ethnic group?

The Asian American community comprises 16 ethnic groups (including the Arab community who are included in our research) — that speak over 36 Asian languages.

The model minority myth really obscures the diversity and need in the community. For example, Asians are the poorest racial group in 🗽, with 25 percent living in poverty (a rate that grew by 44 percent from 2000 to 2016). The majority, or 70 percent, are immigrants, with 70 percent also having limited English proficiency. If you disaggregate the data, you’ll also 👀 that some Asian groups, like Cambodian, Laotian, and Hmong, have higher status dropout rates (the percent of 16-24 year olds who aren’t enrolled in school and don’t have a high school diploma) than non-Hispanic Whites.

Mental Health is a journey that many of us go through. Unfortunately, many people of color do not have the accessibility for mental health/resources. How is the stigma towards mental health hurtful in the Asian/Pacific Islander community?

Deep cultural stigma is one of the greatest barriers to accessing mental health services in the Asian American community.

A study found that even though a higher percentage of Asian American high school and college students reported experiencing depressive symptoms compared to their White counterparts, Asian Americans are the least likely group to report, seek, and receive medical help for depressive symptoms due to cultural stigma. This stigma stems from the belief that mental healthcare is “only for crazy people” — or the seriously ill — and comes from honor/shame cultures that suppress negative experiences in order to “save face” or not be a burden to others.

Also, Asian Americans, who bear the additional burdens of the model minority myth and imposter syndrome, can further feel they are “weak” or “inadequate” when they struggle with stress, anxiety, depression, and so forth, which may deter them from reaching out for help.

How can we de-stigmatize mental health needs?

One of the best ways that we can de-stigmatize mental health needs is to develop and spread mental health literacy. Part of spreading mental health literacy also comes from sharing our own stories about how mental illness has touched our lives, whether personally or through a family member or friend, so that we can normalize mental healthcare as we would physical healthcare.

Pictured: AAF’s Executive Director Jo-Ann Yoo & 🗽 Council members. Photography courtesy of the Asian American Federation

How can people continue to support the Asian/Pacific Islander community?

🔌 into Asian-led, Asian-serving community-based organizations where you live. There is tremendous need for Asian Americans who can commit their time, expertise, and resources to serving the fastest-growing population in the U.S. And really commit—by volunteering to teach a class in something you’re skilled at, joining a board, or offering to hold a fundraiser. By serving the community, you’re actually investing in resources that will uplift you, your family, and the community as a whole.

Thank you for your time, Joo Han. We appreciate all your work with the Asian American Federation. Tumblr, how do you handle your mental health as a person of color? Use the hashtag #APAHM to share your story.

For nearly 30 years, GAPIMNY (formerly Gay Asian Pacific Islander Men of NY) has been creating events and programs, documenting queer and trans AAPI history, and advocating for rights and visibility.

Founded in 1990, GAPIMNY offered critical support and community to AAPIs experiencing racism and homophobia in the midst of an HIV/AIDS crisis.

In 1991, GAPIMNY, Asian Lesbians on the East Coast, and other groups protested the racist musical Miss Saigon on Broadway. GAPIMNY played a major role in educating white LGBTQ people about yellowface and racist stereotypes.

Miss Saigon protest photo credit: Bino Realuyo

Since then, GAPIMNY has organized many educational campaigns and actions like co-organizing the first queer contingent in 🗽 Chinatown’s Lunar New Year Parade and fighting for same-sex marriage and #BlackLivesMatter.

(vía Conmemoran Día Mundial de la Bicicleta)

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