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jewish-privilege · 4 years

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...We reached out to black Jews (...) to understand their feelings at this wrenching moment and what their message is for the broader Jewish community. Here’s what they told us.

...April Baskin is a diversity consultant and racial justice director of the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable.

Personally in terms of my energy right now, I’m just exhausted. Just seeing all the suffering particularly in light of the people going out into the streets without a plan or adequate protections in place (friends, march marshalls, legal aid contact info, etc.), the poignancy of people whose politics otherwise have them mostly sheltering in place during the worst pandemic we’ve seen in over a hundred years, that they are compelled to take action — at their and our own peril. But it seems their thought is, “How can we not stand up?” As a Jewish social justice leader, I have a visceral, fundamental concern for people’s well-being in this moment — that people are very triggered and that this is all in the context of pre-existing heightened anxiety and stress because of the pandemic. And for black folks, whether it’s conscious or not, the sense of terror we feel for when is the shoe going to drop for someone we know, someone in our town, for us?

I am experiencing more white Jews sending me private messages. A lot of them are saying “What can we do?” and in time I hope we can advance our collective knowledge and education enough so it can become more of “I’ve been proactively learning from people of color and here is what I am doing,” or “These are the things I’m considering. I’m mostly leaning towards this one, does that sound like it’s in alignment with your vision?”

That said, it’s a step forward and it’s good, but it’s asking more of us as Jews of color to not only figure out how to maintain our jobs and do additional leadership and activism in this moment, but then also being asked to support and manage white Jews’ work during a time in which many of us are traumatized and heartbroken. But this is progress, and I would rather people reach out, however they best know how, than apathy and not doing anything or paralysis from fear.

...Yitz Jordan is the founder of

TribeHerald

, a publication for Jews of color, and a hip hop artist also known as Y-Love.

What am I feeling? Anxiety. That’s what I’m feeling. I had an anxiety attack on Friday. I live in the ‘hood, I live in Bushwick, so I’m not really geographically in the Jewish community, but I know that somebody on Friday for instance was shot not too far from me and I was terrified as to what the response to that was going to be, were cops going to respond and was rioting going to happen in my neighborhood?

And in the Jewish community, this is the kind of fight that I’m having: “This didn’t happen after the Holocaust, why are black people acting like this?” It’s that role of explaining over and over again to people who quite often don’t want to listen.

I feel like there’s the same split that’s going through America in ideological lines, is going through the Jewish community … whatever percent of Orthodox Jews that support Trump, you see it more from these people. When we say the Jewish community in general that also consists of people like JFREJ [Jews for Racial and Economic Justice] and Jewish Voice for Peace and these other organizations, but in the Orthodox world, the pro-Trump wing is where I’m hearing these types of conversations. And I’m seeing this, ranging from lack of knowledge to callousness regarding people of color. There are some people who genuinely don’t know, and to whom a lot of these issues are very new. Especially Hasidish people, for instance, this just isn’t part of the Shabbos-table conversation — police brutality, inequality, systemic racism. But you have some people who just show callousness.

Gulienne Rishon is a diversity expert and chief revenue officer for TribeHerald Media.

I am thankful for true allies, who understand that this is not the time to center their own experiences. I am thankful for true allies, who understand that the experiences they and their ancestors have had are to be used in this moment as empathy, and that no one is denying them their experiences in asking them to listen and learn.

But mostly, if one more white-presenting Jew tries to tell me today that they don’t have white privilege (not that they aren’t White, but that they don’t have white privilege) because they’re Jewish/the Holocaust/Jews got kicked out of schools, I might lose my mind. I should not have to deal with people telling me that my story (the Black part) doesn’t exist because my story (the Ashkenazi experience) exists. But I do. And I am confident that part of why G-d put me in the skin of a biracial Jewish woman descended from a kindertransport survivor, a WWII veteran who was kicked out of his Hamburg Gymnasium for being Jewish, and two Southern Black Virginians, is to help us as a people face our sinat chinam and take responsibility for being the light unto the nations by helping, not closing our ranks and denying the pain others feel because of the freshness of ours.

Facilitating difficult conversations about race is literally my profession. Yet, some days, I’m just a person behind a keyboard on Facebook who came out of our day of rest hearing that the world erupted in flames, and I look at the beautiful brown skin of my daughter and her parents, and I’m angry and afraid. I’ve worked so hard to have these conversations with grace when you’re caught up in your feelings about the complexity. On a day when it’s not about the complexity, but processing and mourning actual death, can you please give the same grace to mine?

...Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell is

a musician

who blends traditional Yiddish and African-American music.

Let’s get real here, American Jews: You are living in an Old Country, whether you choose to recognize it or not. The state-sanctioned violence visited upon Black communities happens in ghettos you can easily pronounce, in towns you visit without the aid of a tour guide and cities you reside in without a granted law of return.

So, who are you in this narrative, this country from which there is no real option of flight, this century which is your own, your heartless ruler, hands slick with the blood of children and refugees, the cavalries, maintaining “order” on your behalf over a people whose mere existence for centuries has been deemed disorderly?

Solidarity with Black people doesn’t require a radical act of historical imagination. You are here. We are here. You know what to do. Do it. Now.

Tema Smith is a writer and the director of professional development at 18Doors, an organization for interfaith families.

I’m deeply upset about George Floyd and also that he is not the first and not the last, and that it’s taken a murder so egregious to really get people out into the streets in this way, and get a lot of people to wake up to what happens unfortunately too frequently.

I also have deep gratitude for the moment that we’re in, for so many people who hadn’t previously spoken out are speaking out.

As far as the Jewish community, the number of people who either have spoken out publicly or who have reached out privately as people who just care and want to make sure that me and other Jews of color are feeling OK right now — and I think most of my friends who are Jews of color are experiencing similar things from their friends — is huge. Frankly, I’ve gotten messages from people who I’ve never corresponded with beyond public tweets, just reaching out saying ‘Are you OK?’ and a recognition that is in many ways at a new level.

This isn’t the first time that something like this has happened. This is the first time I’ve received messages from so many people and that makes me hopeful for that grassroots community level being there to support each other, and that is huge. And the fact that there is a growing chorus of voices in the Jewish community speaking up, that’s huge, and that people are showing up at protests, I can’t say enough of how meaningful it is to see that...

#black lives matter #Black Jews #African American Jews #anti black racism

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regular-things · 4 years

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Here are some of the bail funds and other organizations fighting against police injustice:

National

LGBTQ Fund: Bail fund providing relief to jailed LGBTQ people in 15 states and counting. Mission: “Each day, tens of thousands of LGBTQ people are held in jail or immigration detention because they cannot afford bail — for immigration status or charges like sleeping in public. With your help, the Freedom Fund posts bail to secure their release and safety.”

Campaign Zero: Organization that utilizes research-based policy solutions to end police brutality in the U.S. Mission: “Over 1,000 people are killed by police every year in America. We are calling on local, state, and federal lawmakers to take immediate action to adopt data-driven policy solutions to end this violence and hold police accountable.”

Unicorn Riot: Nonprofit media collective dedicated to exposing the root causes of social, economic, and environmental issues. Mission: “Our work is dedicated to exposing root causes of dynamic social and environmental issues through amplifying stories and exploring sustainable alternatives in today’s globalized world.”

Minnesota

George Floyd Memorial Fund: The official GoFundMe to support the Floyd family. Mission: “This fund is established to cover funeral and burial expenses, mental and grief counseling, lodging and travel for all court proceedings, and to assist our family in the days to come as we continue to seek justice for George. A portion of these funds will also go to the Estate of George Floyd for the benefit and care of his children and their educational fund.”

Minnesota Freedom Fund: Community-based fund set up to pay criminal bail and immigration bonds for individuals who have been arrested while protesting police brutality. This has become one of the most prominent bail funds, providing relief to protesters in Minneapolis seeking justice for George Floyd. Mission: “We stand against cash bail as unjust and identify wealth-based discrimination as a vehicle for the criminal justice system to target populations for structural violence.”

Black Visions Collective: Minnesota-based black, trans, and queer-led organization committed to dismantling systems of oppression and violence. Mission: “We aim to center our work in healing and transformative justice principles, intentionally develop our organizations core ‘DNA’ to ensure sustainability, and develop Minnesota’s emerging black leadership to lead powerful campaigns. By building movements from the ground up with an integrated model, we are creating the conditions for long-term success and transformation.”

Reclaim the Block: Coalition that advocates for and invests in community-led safety initiatives in Minneapolis neighborhoods. Mission: “We believe health, safety, and resiliency exist without police of any kind. We organize around policies that strengthen community-led safety initiatives and reduce reliance on police departments.”

California

Peoples City Council Freedom Fund: Los Angeles-based fund helping to pay for legal support, bail, fines, and court fees for arrested protesters in the city, as well as medical bills and transportation for injured protesters, supplies for field medics, and direct support to L.A.’s Black Lives Matter chapter. Mission: “As the mayor and city council have sought to increase the LAPD’s budget during a pandemic, and as police around the country continue to kill innocent people of color, we have taken to the street to protest the funding of state sanctioned murder.”

Silicon Valley Democratic Socialists of America Bail Fund: The Oakland/San Jose chapter of DSA is currently allocating donations to a temporary bail fund, as well as a COVID-19 aid fund. Mission: “Money in the fund may be used at the discretion of the committee for the following purposes: to pay bail, fines, or legal fees; to provide jail support; to pay for closely related expenses.”

Colorado

Colorado Freedom Fund: Providing bail relief to protesters and other individuals across the state of Colorado. CFF has also been providing protest updates on its webpage. Mission: “Founded in 2018, Colorado Freedom Fund (CFF) is a revolving fund that pays ransom (posts money bond, pays cash bail) for people unable to afford the cost of buying their own freedom.”

Florida

Free Them All: Fund organized by the group Fempower to post bond in Miami.

Georgia

Atlanta Solidarity Fund: Action Network fund set up to support the George Floyd protesters with both bail and necessary legal relief. Mission: “This fundraiser is for bail expenses for those arrested. Any surplus funds will go toward their legal defense, and to support arrestees at other protests.”

Buy Black Atlanta: Community group fund to support and repair black-owned businesses in Atlanta that were damaged during the protests.

Illinois

Chicago Community Bond Fund: Organization committed to posting bail for individuals in Cook County, Illinois, who are unable to post bail themselves. Mission: Through a revolving fund, CCBF supports individuals whose communities cannot afford to pay the bonds themselves and who have been impacted by structural violence.

Kentucky

Louisville Community Bail Fund: Bail, legal, and support fund for activists in Louisville. Mission: “The Louisville Community Bail Fund exists to not only bail out folks, but provide post-release support to get them from jail, fed, and to a situation of safety. LCBF also maintains a focus on preventative measures for those targeted by law enforcement and threatened with incarceration.”

Louisiana

New Orleans Safety and Freedom Fund: Community fund for bail, jail fees, fines, and drug testing fees in New Orleans. Mission: “Together, we will make New Orleans a safer, more equitable place to live, by redesigning the role money plays in the criminal justice system.”

Maryland

Baltimore Action Legal Team: Bail fund and legal relief for the city of Baltimore, with a focus on black activists. Mission: “BALT is committed to building the power of the local Movement for Black Lives. We take our direction from community-organizing groups who are on the ground, and we respect the leadership of local activists. BALT is committed to anti-racist practices and to black leadership. BALT is dedicated to politically-conscious lawyering and to using creative, collective solutions to support the Movement for Black Lives in Baltimore.”

Massachusetts

Massachusetts Bail Fund: Working to post bails up to $2,000 in Essex and Suffolk Counties in Massachusetts. Mission: “The Massachusetts Bail Fund pays up to $2,000 bail so that low-income people can stay free while they work towards resolving their case, allowing individuals, families, and communities to stay productive, together, and stable.”

Michigan

Detroit Bail Fund: Bail fund launched by a local activist to provide relief to the city’s protesters. Mission: “Funds donated will support BailProject.org and others who assist detained individuals in the release from jail. Your dollar will be contributed to supporting the protests, as well as getting people out of jail who were detained.”

Missouri

Kansas City Community Bail Fund: Committed to posting bail for those arrested to Kansas City. Mission: “Our mission is to give those who cannot afford bail a fighting chance at getting a positive outcome in their case rather than be persuaded to plead out through the use of a revolving fund. We want those detained pretrial to be given a chance to keep their jobs, their spot in school, their housing, and provide care for their children, while maintaining their presumed innocence, rather than sitting in local or county jail costing the taxpayers and themselves money. By doing so, we will be advocating for bail reform and ending mass incarceration by example.”

Nebraska

Neighbors for Common Good: Organization providing bail to protesters in Omaha, Nebraska.

New York

Brooklyn Bail Fund: Community bail fund for Brooklyn’s incarcerated individuals. The nonprofit recently pivoted its focus to bail reform, but organizers have committed to helping those arrested in this week’s protests and are providing support to other bail funds across the country – read their full statement on the George Floyd protests here. Mission: “We are committed to challenging the criminalization of race, poverty, and immigration status, the practice of putting a price on fundamental rights, and the persistent myth that bail is a necessary element of the justice system.”

May 2020 Buffalo Bail Fund: Fundraiser set up to provide bail for those protesting in Buffalo, New York. Mission: “In mourning and in solidarity, many people in Buffalo and other cities across the country have taken to the streets to demand justice for George Floyd and other black and brown people killed by police. This fund supports bail requirements for demonstrators arrested while doing this work here in Buffalo.”

Ohio

Columbus Freedom Fund: Bail fund committed to helping those arrested for protesting in Columbus.

Oregon

PDX Protest Bail Fund: GoFundMe established by the General Defense Committee Local 1 to bail protesters out in Portland. Mission: “The Portland General Defense Committee (https://pdxgdc.com/) has provided ongoing legal support to workers and protesters in Oregon since 2017, relying on over a century of national experience. The GDC works in connection with the National Lawyers Guild and other Portland-based organizations.”

Pennsylvania

Philadelphia Bail Fund: Bail fund providing relief to protesters in the city of Philadelphia, with the long-term goal of bringing an end to cash bail. Mission: “We are committed to providing direct bail assistance to Philadelphia protesters participating in actions to ensure their safe return home.”

Bukit Bail Fund of Pittsburgh: Organization founded after the preventable death of Frank “Bukit” Smart Jr., in Allegheny County Jail, working to bail out individuals currently incarcerated in ACJ. Mission: “The Bukit Bail Fund of Pittsburgh is a coalition of individuals and organizations striving to provide support for those incarcerated at Allegheny County Jail, located in Pittsburgh. We hope to not just provide bail, but also to increase our capacity for supporting people after they have been released.”

Tennessee

Nashville Bail Fund: Nonprofit committed to freeing low-income individuals from jail in the city of Nashville. Mission: “The Nashville Community Bail Fund frees low-income persons from jail, connects with their loved ones, and works to end wealth-based detention through community partnerships.”

Texas

Restoring Justice Community Bail Fund: A partnership between Restoring Justice, the Bail Project and Pure Justice to provide bail relief in Houston, initially set up as a response to COVID-19. Mission: “Restoring Justice is partnering with the Bail Project and Pure Justice to use donations to pay bail for people in need during the Covid-19 pandemic at no cost to them or their loved ones.”

Luke 4:18 Bail Fund: Bail fund overseen by Faith in Texas committed to posting bail for individuals in Dallas. Mission: “The Luke 4:18 Bail Fund is partnering with faith communities, currently and formerly incarcerated people, families impacted by the legal justice system, and funders to drastically reduce the jail population in Dallas County.”

400+1 Bail Fund: Bail fund originally created to assist a black man arrested in Austin who feared he could catch COVID-19 in jail. The fund is now being directed toward protesters in the city. Mission: “This bail fund was originally created to crowdfund resources for one black man too poor to make bail while fearing for his life due to the COVID outbreak. As demonstrations erupt around the nation, we are increasing our ask and reach. Additional funds will be used as a general bail fund to support the legal needs of comrades on the ground.”

Project Roar: Community fund dedicated to providing resources and outreach programs to Texas’ rural areas. They’ve expanded their services to include emergency jail and bail. Mission: “Some of the most marginalized and neglected communities are in your city, but also lie in the county areas outside the city limits. The need for services in rural areas is often overlooked. Engaging the community will include canvassing and blockwalking, phonebanking and word of mouth, public service announcements and community service announcements, etc.”

San Antonio Freedom Fund: Community fund set up to directly go towards arrested demonstrators in the city. Mission: “Every year countless unarmed black and brown men are humiliated, beaten, and murdered by militarized police. On May 30th, San Antonio will seek justice. The threat of arrest is real. We need your support. Please consider donating to our bail fund. All proceeds will go directly to the arrested demonstrators.”

Virginia

Richmond Community Bail Fund: Community group dedicated to freeing jailed individuals in Richmond who can’t make bail. Mission: “The Richmond Community Bail Fund exists to restore the presumption of innocence to defendants so they don’t lose their jobs, families, and critical services while also reducing the financial burden on our community of detaining citizens prior to their day in court.”

Washington

Northwest Community Bail Fund: Providing cash bail to arrested individuals in the Seattle metropolitan area. Mission: “The Northwest Community Bail Fund (NCBF) provides cash bail for marginalized people charged with crimes who are unable to afford bail and find themselves incarcerated while awaiting routine court appearances in King and Snohomish Counties in Washington State.”

Wisconsin

Milwaukee Freedom Fund: Bail fund for black and brown organizers in Milwaukee. Donations are currently on pause so as to administer the funds they’ve already received, but the webpage includes a list of similar local organizations to donate to instead. Mission: “The Milwaukee Freedom Fund was started by Black and Brown Milwaukee organizers who want to see residents supported as they assert their right to protest for justice. We are raising money and gathering resources for bail, court-related costs, rides, food, water, and other needs, as the community struggles for liberation.”

Outside the U.S.

Toronto Protestor Bail Fund: Toronto activists are holding their own Black Lives Matter protests over the death of Regis Korchinski and have set up this bail fund for those arrested. Mission: “In light of today’s protest we are looking to generate funding to release and support protesters who end up incarcerated. This bail fund includes any legal fees that may be incurred.”

#BLM

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cathkaesque · 4 years

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It rained all Tuesday night in Minsk, but people still came out the next morning to support striking factory workers. They weren’t alone: President Alexander Lukashenko’s most loyal and most brutal police force was out in full force, too, seeking to intimidate and arrest — or worse — the strikers and their supporters.

But the wave of strikes in Belarus, which began last week to protest our stolen election and the police brutality that followed, has continued. In support we Belarusians sing folk songs, hand out food, raise funds and stand in solidarity with factory workers doing what was unthinkable months ago: standing up to the man who has been our country’s president since 1994.

Belarus never had the wild privatization of the other post-Soviet counties, and the government maintains control over many industries. Mr. Lukashenko uses that control to repress dissent and whip up displays of political support when he needs them. But that has changed now. Despite the risk of losing their jobs, employees of state-controlled institutions across the country, from the main TV station to fertilizer companies, are on strike, demanding that Mr. Lukashenko step down.

Of course, strikers are afraid — afraid of losing their jobs, afraid of being abandoned, afraid of reprisals. But for now, the fear of more years under Mr. Lukashenko is stronger.

Fear was what first brought Mr. Lukashenko into office 26 years ago. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent economic collapse, Belarusians were in a state of shock and wanted a return to stability. That’s what Mr. Lukashenko, a former collective farm manager with a populist touch, promised — and after being elected he proceeded to oversee a sort of return to the Soviet Union, complete with a state-dominated economy and brutal political repression.

For those who have sought to change Belarus, repression has long been a fact of life. Your phones are tapped, you are stopped and held at the border, and you never know when a dubious accusation may see you detained and beaten, possibly never to return.

But if those practices were once confined to a relatively small group of people, they have now been laid bare for all to see. It is now a ritual on social media for those released from police detention — close to 7,000 people have been arrested so far — to lift their shirts and show bodies covered with black and blue from police beatings. At least two protesters have been killed, hundreds have been injured and many are missing. Mr. Lukashenko continues to claim that he is protecting the country.

Workers across the country have taken a stand against such violence and injustice. But the workers’ movement in Belarus is not a monolith. The Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions, of which I am the vice chair, is part of the International Trade Union Confederation and brings together the country’s independent trade unions. All these independent unions, with a membership of about 10,000 people, are on strike.

Then there’s the “official” Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus, which claims to represent 96 percent of workers, about 4.5 million people. (The figure is grossly inflated.) This entity is not internationally recognized and its head is also the head of Mr. Lukashenko’s presidential campaign. Still, there are good people in the organization, even if those at the top still support Mr. Lukashenko. Dissent is emerging here, too; in large factories, workers are leaving the “official” union and joining our ranks.

The loyalists believe that Mr. Lukashenko will be able to wait until the strikers grow tired and international attention moves on. But I see no sign of the strikers tiring. In my role, I provide support to strike committees and worker collectives — my phone is ringing constantly. The strikes, I believe, will continue to grow. Support is flooding in from labor movements around the world. Trade unions in Canada, Hong Kong, Britain, Poland, the United States and other countries have expressed support and solidarity.

As I stood with the hundreds of thousands of Belarusian protesters on Sunday, I was filled with tremendous pride in my people. In this country, whose security service that is still called the K.G.B. (it never bothered to change the name after the fall of the Soviet Union), people came out on an unprecedented scale. I and others have long struggled to win that kind of political engagement. But with so much of the economy and society still directly controlled by the state, fear has long outweighed hope. No longer.

Today, when I leave my apartment in Minsk, I can join a protest immediately — marchers pass my door. Before, this was impossible, even unthinkable. Change is happening in Belarus that has been delayed for decades.

#belarus #socialism #trade unions #strikes

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butterfly-winx · 4 years

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Eraklyon

Eraklyon is known for its riches, political intrigue and peculiar standing in the magical society. The lavish lifestyle of its inhabitants is supported by the ores and minerals hidden in the crust beneath the country, that has caused many an envious eye to be thrown at it.

Eraklyon is located on Manubra 47, a mid sized planet they share with 27 other countries spread over the continents divided from each other by unique freshwater oceans. Two of their most prominent neighbours are Nishii and the island country Callisto.

Eraklyon, like Magics has the means to supply basic amenities to its inhabitants free of charge, though on Eraklyon they do mean the barest necessities: shelter and water. Nevertheless those two taken care of the general stress level about self-sustenance among the low economical classes is staggeringly low compared to other countries of the Magical Universe.

Just like on Solaria, the favourite trade products are gems and minerals that they gladly share with their more famous business partner. A lot of jewellery is is made on Solaria, but mined in Eraklyon. Though semi- and precious stones may be what they are most know for, their other mining products such as oil and carbon gases is what gets them into tension with their neighbouring countries.

As nice as a life in such a well-off stable society sounds like, Eraklyon has never been the object of envy for most people who know what lies beyond the exterior. The country is almost always locked in war with one or the other bordering region in a never ending conflict over territories and mining rights on ground and on the colony planetoids. Borders have shifted considerably over the centuries, the people being displaced adopting a bi-lingual and bi-cultural lifestyle fluent in both Rak (the language of Eraklyon) and the other language of their residence. The instability this introduces had many people flee overseas to Callisto, or straight up just as far away as possible, onto another planet.

The war at current times is tame. It has morphed, and had to because of the massive causalities it has reaped in the past. Neither Eraklyon, nor Nishii, the two main perpetrators in the fight, are technologically underdeveloped. They had the means to employ weapons of mass destruction against each other and not too long, only two centuries ago they did, nuking most of the people and inhabitable zones of the planet. Magic may not be able to solve all problems, but with the use of the nature core most life was salvaged, the only evidence of it ever happening a scar on the surface that is slowly being filled by the seas. It was a grim reminder to the ruling class, that at the end of they are nothing without the people they are sworn to lead, serve and protect. The very ways of warfare had to be rewritten.

At this point, no one on Manubra 47 is allowed to hold an army at steady whose sole purpose is to lead wars. Military and its deployment are only permitted when the purpose serves the well-being of all people of the country, say an outside invasion or criminal activity, but never for the personal interest of the ruling classes. They are permitted personal protection units, but even those are limited in size. So the tension moved, the stress of being a casualty moved from the people’s shoulders with the war being solely confined to the royals and rulers themselves.

What began there is known as the Bello Sicarii, the personal war of assassinations, hits and extortion among the members of the royalty. This experience is what shaped Sky’s life growing up and necessitated employing Brandon as a body double for most of his life. It is not rare that it happens, because of the specific rules that further define the Bello Sicarii. In the first years, hits had an extremely high success rate, neither party really used to the new rules and the implemented security measures were lacking, leading to a much too frequent change of regents. That left countries destabilised and at the brink of another civil crisis that neither party on Manubra could afford.

The new postulations drafted specified, that in order to retain a ruler for as long as possible, adults would be largely spared but their progeny would not. Children before reaching adulthood were fair game, as interrupting the succession line of a ruler carried almost as much weight as an assassination itself. After an heir has reached adulthood, matters would get much more complicated with the young royal being able to sign contracts, make diplomatic agreements and get entangled in business relations, as to such that their “removal” would have significant consequences for the planetary peace and economy. This is something frankly normal to Sky, but he is sweating up a storm thinking if he had to ever explain that to Bloom in the event that they got married and were thinking of having children. (This is also the reason why Bloom’s impersonation of Princess Varanda of Callisto passed for so long, since Varanda has truly never left the protective hideout she had been brought up in and no one off planet has ever seen her.)

Religion on Eraklyon is a double edged sword. Their main belief is a strong doctrine that aims to lead people down a very predestined, rigid path of moral righteousness. In doing so, painting one lifestyle as supremely right, it has the tendency to demonise anything else that deviates from it. Especially magic.

Eraklyon, like Earth, operates a split society where non-magic people and magic users and creatures live in almost separate societies with a hierarchy of their own. While non-magic Eraklyonites know of the existence of magic and do use it in certain amounts, they fear it more than they appreciate it. Especially witchcraft, which has become a notorious example of why magic is bad in the eyes of religious people. In ancient times witch covens liberally offered trade and magical problem solving to those who were willing to pay a certain price for it. It snowballed into a sort of worship that angered the rising power of religious folk, who protested this kind of exchange because of the missing toil in the magical solutions. In their eyes there was no moral lesson, no growth in allowing oneself to rely on spells and magic alone, so they despised the the craft so much that witches entirely left the planet at some point.

The religious doctrine permeates almost everything concerning social life. The rigidity of it demands clearly defined social classes that are largely kept separate, like castes. Elevating oneself is of course possible, so the spiritual leaders say, if only one behaves according to the path of the right. Otherwise every misfortune that happens to one is justly brought upon punishment. This idea is by the way remarkably at odds with the motto of the country that states, Imbalance is paramount for progress, as it keeps social mobility at stagnation.

Imbalance and asymmetry are also beloved design elements that set Eraklyonites apart from other cultures off planet. They are not as avant-garde as people from Zenith, but favouring rich hand-woven fabric, brocades, taffeta and silhouettes that remind of 19th century Earth fashion. No two sides of a building, dress, or haircut are the same but the overall picture is never off kilter, both sides of the design packing incredibly high detail density. For this reason clothing is still hand-crafted and is not a mass market product like in other countries or planets.

One happy thing though that everyone will be able to tell you about Eraklyon, is that they celebrate a lot. They have 18 religious and commemorative days that are bank holidays, but on top of that they also value birthdays very much. Every person automatically receives the day off on their day of birth and may request other ones off for those of their immediate family - meaning spouse, sibling, children, parents, even up to grandparents. Job applications in Eraklyon typically start with a big wall of birth dates requested to give the employer an idea of when one might not be available to work. For seasonal work, people are preferred whose family doesn’t have predominantly summer birthdays, just to make sure harvesting is done on time without Celebration Delays, as they call that.

Eraklyon is a core member of the Company of Light. Being constantly at war gave them the advantage of having armies at the ready to be deployed to protect people from the Ancestresses attacks, plus their experience in battle strategies has come handy more than once, latest in the fight against Tritannus. The people of Eraklyon are a proud people, infused with blind love and trust in their homeland despite its shortcomings. However, they offer the same fierce love and loyalty to all the people close to their hearts.

#butterfly fic #eraklyon #eraklion #worldbuilding #I think I am going to make a separate post on the magic community on eraklyon -and diaspro by extension- on a separate post

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things2mustdo · 3 years

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“White people are terrible,” “I have white privilege,” and “most of the world’s problems are caused by white people” are three general statements countless social justice warriors and their enablers agree with. Yet they are all based on the severest distortion of reality. You or I should no more apologize for being white than an African-American should for being black.

Just as many blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities are made more pliable by the media and the establishment by being told they are eternal victims, white people are made more pliable by agreeing that they need to always feel guilty. Using an SJW “anti-racism” that feels awfully like the leftist version of a Nazi book about hereditary, white people supposedly inherit the evil deeds of dead dudes who owned slaves prior to the Civil War or arrived on a foreign continent in a year like 1492 or 1788.

The establishment-enforced guilt is even greater for those directly descended from such people, but even culturally and genetically unrelated individuals like Polish- and Italian-Americans, whose ancestors pretty much all arrived after periods like the slavery era, are held accountable, too. Why? Even if we ridiculously assumed we can find descendants “guilty” of their ancestry, the white guilt thesis is like putting all of Harlem’s young black men in 2016 under house arrest because 20 of them were involved in a vicious street brawl… in 1937.

Provided you adhere to our creed, neomasculinity and the Return Of Kings community form the broadest functional church you will find. We do not care where you come from, so long as you support our goal of a return to masculine societies that emphasize community-building and do not apologize for taking pride in their own cultures. ROK readers who are black, white, Asian or something else are all equal in this regard.

Here are just three of many reasons why I will not hate or feel guilty about my skin tone.

1. I’m the descendant of victims myself because many of my ancestors were from oppressed ethnic and religious groups

Look at those privileged starving Irish!

Are you heavily Irish-blooded, like me? Italian? Polish? Ukrainian? Were your ancestors Catholics living in heavily Protestant areas, or perhaps Huguenots who had to flee persecutory France?

It’s funny how SJWs prance on about white privilege when over half of all whites who emigrated to America, Canada or Australia, from the Puritans to Yugoslavian Civil War refugees, came because the civilian government or monarchy representing another ethnicity or religion essentially chased them out, had killed their family members, or wanted them dead, too. Many of the white groups who did take the journey, particularly the Italians or Irish, were then subjected to quotas and mistreatment in places like New York for years.

A great deal of my ancestors were Catholics in Prussia and other Protestant parts of northern Germany. This section of my family tree is replete with persecutions, including one great-great-great-great grandfather who lost sight in one eye and movement in his arm after being brutally assaulted by a Prussian policeman. His crime? Being an ethnic German leaving a Catholic church on Sunday in the 1800s. Catholic churches were only for “subhuman” Poles. Catholic Prussians were seen as traitors who belonged in Bavaria, prison, or dead. He ended up eking out an existence as a tailor with one good arm, after both he and his brother were repeatedly refused admission to the civil service for their faith.

In addition, I had Irish immigrant forebears whose fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters died as a result of the Potato Famine. One of these ancestors, the eldest child in his family, was working in Dublin to make money for the family when, in the space of three months, he received news that his parents, all his sisters, and all but one of his brothers had died from starvation, malnutrition, or diseases related to them.

When my aunt did the genealogy over three years, she counted 37 family members in one corner of an Irish county who died from starvation or starvation-related illness in 13 months. The famine was predicted and even aggravated by the British. Considering the squalor into which the occupiers had driven the Irish Catholics, the whole ordeal was fundamentally caused by them, too. With only an extra mouth to feed, this great-great-great grandfather of mine took his barely school-aged brother with him to Australia two months later. What role did these two have in oppressing others, white or non-white, that I should feel shame about today?

Look further back into my family tree and you find German, Dutch and Swiss Jews, many of whom were shunted around various locations within Europe, depending on what limited patience local authorities had for yarmulke-wearers at the time.

With this lineage, what exactly do I have to apologize for, aside from my supposedly very, very privileged, at best lower middle-class English forebears from drab West London and grim Yorkshire? Most of them never saw a dark person, let alone mistreated one. To boot, the vast majority lived poor, thankless lives without clean sanitation, abundant food, or anything close to job security. And these are the stations in life, through no fault of their own, that 95% of your ancestors reached as well.

2. Minorities and other non-whites frequently treated and still treat each other far worse than white people did

Rwandan genocide, anyone?

From the pre-Columbian Central and South American peoples to the Rwandan genocide, non-whites have very often treated one another even more abysmally than whites have treated them. European technology may have amplified the number of indigenous and other deaths in places like the Americas, but raw hatred, aggression, and the continuity of violence can be found in even greater quantities in non-white historical squabbles.

Europeans have also been incorrectly blamed for things like infectious diseases, despite the scientific work of antiseptic procedure pioneer Ignaz Semmelweiss being years, sometimes even centuries away. Meanwhile, non-whites have been allowed to kill non-whites without serious condemnation from SJWs.

For example, critics of the Iraq War and the attempted rebuilding of post-Saddam Iraq have said that the whole country is based on a fiction that dates back to the European post-World War I mandate systems. In other words, if Kurds, Shia Arabs, and Sunni Arabs inhabit the same country, they kill each other! Whilst it is appetizing for SJWs to blame the big, bad British and French for this, it is far from the truth. Kurds and Arabs have been butchering each other for countless centuries. The greatest Muslim figure of all the Crusades, Saladin, was consistently mistrusted because of his Kurdish origins. Similarly, intra-Arab or Arab-Iranian Sunni-Shia violence is age-old and has little if anything to do with Europeans.

Last year, Rock Thompson wrote a superb piece about the hypocrisy of attacking Columbus Day in the Americas. His work exposed the double standards of many Native American and also Central and South American tribes, who pretend their ancestors were routinely peaceful when, in fact, they regularly engaged in deplorable acts of gratuitous violence, including human sacrifices and the sadistic mutilation of enemies who were not so ethnically different. The conquistadors and Puritans are falsely seen as the harbingers of cultural and racial genocide in the Americas. Local indigenous tribes, however, were already hunting each other down for sport well before the tall ships arrived.

3. White-majority countries make the humanitarian world go round

A tent city the Saudis refused to make available for fellow Arab Syrian refugees.

Whenever you find an aid program for starving Africans, war-torn Arabs, or other suffering people, chances are that a number of white Westerners are behind it. Even if they’re not all white, they invariably come from white-majority and/or white-founded Western countries, or are funded by them. All to assuage the guilt of white people living in 2016 who feel the need to apologize for a European colonial regime that replaced almost always far more brutal indigenous ones.

Western countries also welcome non-whites in droves, both as immigrants and as “refugees.” The recent Syrian crisis is a testament to this (over-)generosity. While Saudi Arabia refused to accommodate fellow Arab Syrians in their already-constructed tent city, used normally for the Haj Priligrimage, Germany and other European states bore the brunt of those fleeing, including through the open door policies of leaders like Angela Merkel.

In general terms, white people care more about the developmental outcomes of non-whites. Wealthy non-white countries like Japan and Korea have perfected a system of meticulously keeping their populations pure and rejecting the asylum claims of over 99% of claimed refugees. This asymmetrical state of affairs is ironic when Japan’s own history of colonisation, notably the Rape of Nanking, is taken into consideration.

White guilt is also very profitable for certain establishment figures and zealous entertainers. It’s why twats like Bono and Bob Geldof get up every morning, after all. And, far from sucking the world dry, white folks have repeatedly tried to make it better. Very often this generosity is taken to an extreme, but the point of white-majority countries acting and non-white countries stalling or ignoring remains valid.

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happymetalgirl · 4 years

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Black Lives Matter (adapted from previous post)

I was finishing up my April albums post but I honestly couldn’t write about the albums I needed to without getting this out there first, and (as usual) it ended up being really long, so I separated it and made it its own post here.

I’m writing this part now at the beginning of June after an already tumultuous April and May, and now I’m just making myself sit down and do this because, well, honestly, it’s been pretty hard to justify spending my time writing about anything else with all all of what is going on right now. (I can’t wait to see what July throws at us.) But again, in all seriousness, I’m not looking for any pity or sympathy for my relatively mild circumstances at all because in all honesty, my assorted privileges have allowed my life to be pretty okay and proceed mostly uninterrupted in the midst of everything going on.

I’ll start by disseminating any ambiguity on what I’ll be talking about in these paragraphs. As I write this in the midst of a respiratory virus pandemic, another epidemic (possibly pandemic) of racist police brutality that has always existed in a culture of unhinged toxic masculinity in the United States has exploded to unbelievable and disgusting levels against Black people and peaceful protesters, ironically in wake of protests against fucking police violence, all of which is only emboldened and encouraged by local and federal leadership that is showcasing its oppressive, totalitarian ambitions in its unprecedented attempted revocations of its citizens constitutional and human rights.

I’ll make the necessary side note that this increasingly oligarchical government subservient to the will of military and prison industry has already shown its complete disregard for human rights for decades upon decades now through its violation of human rights through offensive wars and sanctions against other countries and its dehumanization of the refugees and immigrants who its actions create.

If you haven’t already checked out of this from all the political correctness breaching your conservative bubble (good job not being that person), but you’re upset because tHiS iS sUpPoSeD tO bE a MuSiC bLoG, uh, you’re on the wrong website buddy, and the potential tipping point of a long-awaited revolution in the midst of an economic depression, a viral pandemic, and a dual crisis of grotesque police violence and evolutionary transformation of proto-fascism into fascist dictatorship is no time to go about business as usual.

BUT OKAY, ENOUGH INTRODUCTION AND ENOUGH ABOUT ME! The point of this is to spotlight what to do in the wake of all of this. First of all, I don’t have all the answers and my perspective is as limited as any person’s, so if you’re an expert on any of these matters or if you have insight from having experiences that I as a white cis male have not had, if anything I’m bringing up here could be better in any way, feel absolutely free (but not obligated) to let me know.

Okay, so lots of problems at hand. The big, all-encompassing one facing all of humanity of course is the ecological disruption caused by industrially driven human-catalyzed climate change, and the rot of everything crystallizing at this current moment feeds into exacerbating that catastrophe, the next wide-reaching issue being capitalism, whose prioritization of profit and short-term gains is incredibly ill-equipped to handle a slow emergency like climate change or a more acute emergency like a global pandemic. Here in the U.S. we have a federal government so infested with corporate corruption to maximize capital profits for the country’s most wealthy that they couldn’t even choose the obvious solution of pausing the economy and providing for its people for the duration of the pandemic in the interest of public health over the appallingly quick choice of protecting the financial interests of the corporate “donors” that help them hold their positions of power, at the risk of maybe closing the gap a tiny bit between the truly despicably wealthy and the growing number of hopelessly impoverished. So while the wealthy get protection of their assets from the slow-down of business (you know, ‘cause the pandemic), the people in most need of help because of that slow-down and plunged into spiking unemployment get shit from the people meant to represent them. And that’s just the corporate rot that rears its head as a result of a pandemic!

Even in “normal” times, capitalism in this country has built its foundation on slave labor and justifying the use of slavery through racism (even after it became illegal to outright own people as slaves). That cornerstone of free/cheap labor that this country’s economy is built on whose role was served by slavery was filled by outsourcing to countries with an easily exploitable lower class (whose conditions are often exacerbated by U.S. meddling on behalf of business interests) and prison labor made possible by mass incarceration that has targeted similarly vulnerable people and communities of color through strategic, racially profiled over-policing of minority communities trapped in poverty through historic systemic racism.

The study of that global climate change I mentioned earlier is referred to as a crisis study because there isn’t an unlimited time to do something about it, and the ever-changing conditions and pivotal events of the world effect what needs to be done to combat it (and what it is too late to do). This current crisis of police brutality is one of those types of critical moments, for climate change and social justice. Police brutality didn’t become an issue when George Floyd was murdered on May 25th 2020; it’s been an ugly facet of this multifactedly ugly country for a long time now, but its being brought to light has instigated an uprising the likes of which has not been seen in a long while, and with it, an especially insidious aggression toward it by the increasingly fascist government and its authoritarian figurehead (to the point of threatening institution of martial law and suspending first amendment rights and habeas corpus) that at this point serves only to maintain complacency for the benefit of the ruling class and to the detriment of the disproportionately non-white lower working class (treated as a slave class). Consequently this is a pivotal time that obligates widespread action and ceasing of silence from privileged people like me who have been able to get away with writing about music largely apolitically for years. This is a time when we either plunge unfathomably further into the depths of fascism at the hands of the ruling class and the silence of the less-effected or we consolidate in this moment of broad energizing to both enact substantive change on the critical issue of police brutality and set a precedent and build momentum to achieve justice for LGBTQIA+ folk, other racial minorities and marginalized groups, and make the critical changes need to avoid civilizational dissolution in the face of the imperative to mitigate our impact on global warming.

Speaking of that change and the actions that this moment implores of us all to contribute our energy to: the most immediately critical issue at our feet, to both save human lives from being taken unjustly at the hands of police brutality and to galvanize this revolution to be able to demand further justice and critical social transformation, is ending police brutality. Being an institution born out of rounding up escaped slaves and given the state-supported monopoly on violence that attracts largely those seeking to satiate sadism with the license to that monopolized violence, police culture is inherently toxic and not worth even preserving for the sake of transforming structurally. While abolishing the police is obviously too ambitious of an immediate goal, there are a lot of proposed steps to defunding and largely dismantling the police as a whole. The project Campaign Zero outlines and pushes for ten tangible reforms that would (some of which have recently been proposed in Colorado) decrease police violence, especially in the majority-Black communities that suffer from it the most. The “8 Can’t Wait” proposal that has been making rounds lately is part of Campaign Zero, and donations to these projects are of course, quite helpful and a good start for this blossoming movement. Furthermore, donations to local bail funds is especially important at this time with police making wanton arrests of peaceful protests (and also just random Black people not making any disruption) to support the people going out and protesting. Because this money of course gets siphoned into the courts, and then partially to law enforcement, it’s important to also direct funds to organizations where that money will not later be used against us, but again, keeping people able to protest is of utmost importance, since that it what is driving positive change in this moment.

Also helpful is direct support of the people on the frontlines of these protests. It is a time for privileged people to take action in solidarity and support, but not one for privileged groups to take over or “lead” the movement. Right now, this is about who is hurting the most and who is being oppressed the most, and right now that is Black people, by police, hence BLACK LIVES MATTER. Now is not a time for even underprivileged white people to use these protests’ likelihood of escalating to indulge in venting frustrations against the system by inciting police violence that puts Black people disproportionately in more danger in such situations. Now is the time to use that privilege of being less prone to racism police violence to whatever extent possible to protect the people of color protesting. And again, this isn’t about being white saviors or martyrs, this is about supporting people in the way they wish, so don’t listen to my advice over the insight and requests of what Black people and the Black community have. And by all means, fucking listen to them! Read from them! Engage in good-faith conversation with them (though don’t expect any individual Black person to give you a seminar on racism when there are ample resources that don’t demand someone devoting their precious time to you)! Learn where the limits of your perspective fail you! And for fuck’s sake, don’t just cherry pick the word of one token Black friend that happens to have some class privilege to conveniently discount the testimonies of other Black people!

Lastly, on a personal note to the metalheads that read this blog, I think this is a particularly important time for the metal community, not to center itself, but to bring itself alongside social justice in a more complete way than it has in the past. Former Opeth and current Soen drummer Martín López said last year in an interview published in Blabbermouth that the metal community is very behind the curve on sociopolitical issues, and the response to his saying that from the metal community that floods Blabbermouth comment sections basically just made the case for the exact point he was making. And it’s a shame because I think such a huge part of metal is about standing up to injustice as part of or in support of the oppressed, or at least such a huge part of the metal I gravitate toward is. Without sounding too spiritual or cheesy because I’m not a really spiritual person, I feel like when I see the injustice going on, I feel that spirit of metal in all of it on the side of the oppressed. I feel like all the grindcore and deathcore and thrash and death metal I’ve been binging lately is in the spirit of the protesters standing up to and, when they have to, fighting back against the unjustified aggression of the police, and looking back at old, certified classic albums like …And Justice for All, Toxicity, and Chaos A.D. and more recent albums like Machine Head’s The Blackening, and Thy Art Is Murder’s Human Target, and Venom Prison’s Samsara, it’s always been about standing up to this kind of bullshit. So I think if there ever was a time since Sabbath birthed it for metal to prove that it’s as important as it makes itself out to be and as important as it is to everyone who listens to it in such a way that they read an obscure blog about it, now is that time to show that it’s not just about being an angry white guy. Now is the time to make Martín López happy by proving him wrong.

Well, in typical Happymetalboy fashion, I can’t seem to make anything brief.

#racism #black lives matter #metal #heavy metal

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blackkudos · 4 years

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Nina Simone

Eunice Kathleen Waymon (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003), known professionally as Nina Simone, was an American singer, songwriter, musician, arranger, and civil rights activist. Her music spanned a broad range of musical styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop.

The sixth of eight children born to a poor family in Tryon, North Carolina, Simone initially aspired to be a concert pianist. With the help of a few supporters in her hometown, she enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. She then applied for a scholarship to study at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she was denied admission despite a well-received audition, which she attributed to racial discrimination. In 2003, just days before her death, the Institute awarded her an honorary degree.

To make a living, Simone started playing piano at a nightclub in Atlantic City. She changed her name to "Nina Simone" to disguise herself from family members, having chosen to play "the devil's music" or so-called "cocktail piano". She was told in the nightclub that she would have to sing to her own accompaniment, which effectively launched her career as a jazz vocalist. She went on to record more than 40 albums between 1958 and 1974, making her debut with Little Girl Blue. She had a hit single in the United States in 1958 with "I Loves You, Porgy". Her musical style fused gospel and pop with classical music, in particular Johann Sebastian Bach, and accompanied expressive, jazz-like singing in her contralto voice.

Biography

1933–1954: Early life

Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon on February 21, 1933, in Tryon, North Carolina. The sixth of eight children in a poor family, she began playing piano at the age of three or four; the first song she learned was "God Be With You, Till We Meet Again". Demonstrating a talent with the instrument, she performed at her local church. Her concert debut, a classical recital, was given when she was 12. Simone later said that during this performance, her parents, who had taken seats in the front row, were forced to move to the back of the hall to make way for white people. She said that she refused to play until her parents were moved back to the front, and that the incident contributed to her later involvement in the civil rights movement. Simone's mother, Mary Kate Waymon (née Irvin, November 20, 1901 – April 30, 2001), was a Methodist minister and a housemaid. Her father, Rev. John Devan Waymon (June 24, 1898 – October 23, 1972), was a handyman who at one time owned a dry-cleaning business, but also suffered bouts of ill health. Simone's music teacher helped establish a special fund to pay for her education. Subsequently, a local fund was set up to assist her continued education. With the help of this scholarship money, she was able to attend Allen High School for Girls in Asheville, North Carolina.

After her graduation, Simone spent the summer of 1950 at the Juilliard School as a student of Carl Friedberg, preparing for an audition at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her application, however, was denied. Only 3 of 72 applicants were accepted that year, but as her family had relocated to Philadelphia in the expectation of her entry to Curtis, the blow to her aspirations was particularly heavy. For the rest of her life, she suspected that her application had been denied because of racial prejudice. Discouraged, she took private piano lessons with Vladimir Sokoloff, a professor at Curtis, but never could re-apply due to the fact that at the time the Curtis institute did not accept students over 21. She took a job as a photographer's assistant, but also found work as an accompanist at Arlene Smith's vocal studio and taught piano from her home in Philadelphia.

1954–1959: Early success

In order to fund her private lessons, Simone performed at the Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey, whose owner insisted that she sing as well as play the piano, which increased her income to $90 a week. In 1954, she adopted the stage name "Nina Simone". "Nina", derived from niña, was a nickname given to her by a boyfriend named Chico, and "Simone" was taken from the French actress Simone Signoret, whom she had seen in the 1952 movie Casque d'Or. Knowing her mother would not approve of playing the "Devil's Music", she used her new stage name to remain undetected. Simone's mixture of jazz, blues, and classical music in her performances at the bar earned her a small but loyal fan base.

In 1958, she befriended and married Don Ross, a beatnik who worked as a fairground barker, but quickly regretted their marriage. Playing in small clubs in the same year, she recorded George Gershwin's "I Loves You, Porgy" (from Porgy and Bess), which she learned from a Billie Holiday album and performed as a favor to a friend. It became her only Billboard top 20 success in the United States, and her debut album Little Girl Blue followed in February 1959 on Bethlehem Records. Simone lost more than $1 million in royalties (notably for the 1980s re-release of her version of the jazz standard "My Baby Just Cares for Me") and never benefited financially from the album's sales because she had sold her rights outright for $3,000.

1959–1964: Becoming popular

After the success of Little Girl Blue, Simone signed a contract with Colpix Records and recorded a multitude of studio and live albums. Colpix relinquished all creative control to her, including the choice of material that would be recorded, in exchange for her signing the contract with them. After the release of her live album Nina Simone at Town Hall, Simone became a favorite performer in Greenwich Village. By this time, Simone performed pop music only to make money to continue her classical music studies, and was indifferent about having a recording contract. She kept this attitude toward the record industry for most of her career.

Simone married a New York police detective, Andrew Stroud, in 1961. He later became her manager and the father of her daughter Lisa, but he abused Simone psychologically and physically.

1964–1974: Civil Rights era

In 1964, Simone changed record distributors from Colpix, an American company, to the Dutch Philips Records, which meant a change in the content of her recordings. She had always included songs in her repertoire that drew on her African-American heritage, such as "Brown Baby" by Oscar Brown and "Zungo" by Michael Olatunji on her album Nina at the Village Gate in 1962. On her debut album for Philips, Nina Simone in Concert (1964), for the first time she addressed racial inequality in the United States in the song "Mississippi Goddam". This was her response to the June 12, 1963, murder of Medgar Evers and the September 15, 1963, bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four young black girls and partially blinded a fifth. She said that the song was "like throwing ten bullets back at them", becoming one of many other protest songs written by Simone. The song was released as a single, and it was boycotted in some southern states. Promotional copies were smashed by a Carolina radio station and returned to Philips. She later recalled how "Mississippi Goddam" was her "first civil rights song" and that the song came to her "in a rush of fury, hatred and determination". The song challenged the belief that race relations could change gradually and called for more immediate developments: "me and my people are just about due". It was a key moment in her political radicalization. "Old Jim Crow", on the same album, addressed the Jim Crow laws. After "Mississippi Goddam", a civil rights message was the norm in Simone's recordings and became part of her concerts. As her political activism rose, the rate of release of her music slowed.

Simone performed and spoke at civil rights meetings, such as at the Selma to Montgomery marches. Like Malcolm X, her neighbor in Mount Vernon, New York, she supported black nationalism and advocated violent revolution rather than Martin Luther King's non-violent approach. She hoped that African Americans could use armed combat to form a separate state, though she wrote in her autobiography that she and her family regarded all races as equal.

In 1967, Simone moved from Philips to RCA Victor. She sang "Backlash Blues" written by her friend, Harlem Renaissance leader Langston Hughes, on her first RCA album, Nina Simone Sings the Blues (1967). On Silk & Soul (1967), she recorded Billy Taylor's "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free" and "Turning Point". The album 'Nuff Said! (1968) contained live recordings from the Westbury Music Fair of April 7, 1968, three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. She dedicated the performance to him and sang "Why? (The King of Love Is Dead)", a song written by her bass player, Gene Taylor. In 1969, she performed at the Harlem Cultural Festival in Harlem's Mount Morris Park.

Simone and Weldon Irvine turned the unfinished play To Be Young, Gifted and Black by Lorraine Hansberry into a civil rights song of the same name. She credited her friend Hansberry with cultivating her social and political consciousness. She performed the song live on the album Black Gold (1970). A studio recording was released as a single, and renditions of the song have been recorded by Aretha Franklin (on her 1972 album Young, Gifted and Black) and Donny Hathaway. When reflecting on this period, she wrote in her autobiography, "I felt more alive then than I feel now because I was needed, and I could sing something to help my people".

1974–1993: Later life

In an interview for Jet magazine, Simone stated that her controversial song "Mississippi Goddam" harmed her career. She claimed that the music industry punished her by boycotting her records. Hurt and disappointed, Simone left the US in September 1970, flying to Barbados and expecting Stroud to communicate with her when she had to perform again. However, Stroud interpreted Simone's sudden disappearance, and the fact that she had left behind her wedding ring, as an indication of her desire for a divorce. As her manager, Stroud was in charge of Simone's income.

When Simone returned to the United States, she learned that a warrant had been issued for her arrest for unpaid taxes (unpaid as a protest against her country's involvement with the Vietnam War), and returned to Barbados to evade the authorities and prosecution. Simone stayed in Barbados for quite some time, and had a lengthy affair with the Prime Minister, Errol Barrow. A close friend, singer Miriam Makeba, then persuaded her to go to Liberia. When Simone relocated, she abandoned her daughter Lisa in Mount Vernon. Lisa eventually reunited with Simone in Liberia, but, according to Lisa, her mother was physically and mentally abusive. The abuse was so unbearable that Lisa became suicidal and she moved back to New York to live with her father Andrew Stroud.Simone recorded her last album for RCA, It Is Finished, in 1974, and did not make another record until 1978, when she was persuaded to go into the recording studio by CTI Records owner Creed Taylor. The result was the album Baltimore, which, while not a commercial success, was fairly well-received critically and marked a quiet artistic renaissance in Simone's recording output. Her choice of material retained its eclecticism, ranging from spiritual songs to Hall & Oates' "Rich Girl". Four years later, Simone recorded Fodder on My Wings on a French label.

During the 1980s, Simone performed regularly at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London, where she recorded the album Live at Ronnie Scott's in 1984. Although her early on-stage style could be somewhat haughty and aloof, in later years, Simone particularly seemed to enjoy engaging with her audiences sometimes, by recounting humorous anecdotes related to her career and music and by soliciting requests. In 1987, the original 1958 recording of "My Baby Just Cares for Me" was used in a commercial for Chanel No. 5 perfume in Britain. This led to a re-release of the recording, which stormed to number 4 on the UK's NME singles chart, giving her a brief surge in popularity in the UK.

Later, Simone moved to Europe, first living in Nyon, Switzerland, and in 1988 moved to Nijmegen and later Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Simone published her autobiography, I Put a Spell on You, in 1992. She continued to tour through the 1990s, but rarely traveled without an entourage. During the last decade of her life, Simone had sold more than one million records, making her a global catalog best-seller.

1993–2003: Final years, illness and death

In 1993, she settled near Aix-en-Provence in Southern France. In the same year, her final album, A Single Woman, was released. She variously contended that she married or had a love affair with a Tunisian around this time, but that their relationship ended because, "His family didn't want him to move to France, and France didn't want him because he's a North African." During a 1998 performance in Newark, she announced, "If you're going to come see me again, you've got to come to France, because I am not coming back." She suffered from breast cancer for several years before she died in her sleep at her home in Carry-le-Rouet, Bouches-du-Rhône, on April 21, 2003. Her funeral service was attended by singers Miriam Makeba and Patti LaBelle, poet Sonia Sanchez, actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, and hundreds of others. Simone's ashes were scattered in several African countries. She is survived by her daughter, Lisa Celeste Stroud, an actress and singer, who took the stage name Simone, and who has appeared on Broadway in Aida.

Activism

Influence

Simone's consciousness on the racial and social discourse was prompted by her friendship with black playwright, Lorraine Hansberry. The influence of Hansberry planted the seed for the provocative social commentary that became an expectation in Simone's repertoire. One of Nina's more hopeful activism anthems, "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" was written with collaborator Weldon Irvine in the years following the playwright's passing, acquiring the title of one of Hansberry's unpublished plays.

Beyond the civil rights movement

Simone's social commentary was not limited to the civil rights movement; the song "Four Women" exposed the eurocentric appearance standards imposed on black women in America, as it explored the internalized dilemma of beauty that is experienced between four black women with skin tones ranging from light to dark. She explains in her autobiography I Put a Spell on You (p. 117) that the purpose of the song was to inspire black women to define beauty and identity for themselves without the influence of societal impositions.

Artistry

Simone standards

Throughout her career, Simone assembled a collection of songs that would later become standards in her repertoire. Some were songs that she wrote herself, while others were new arrangements of other standards, and others had been written especially for the singer. Her first hit song in America was her rendition of George Gershwin's "I Loves You, Porgy" (1958). It peaked at number 18 on the Billboard magazine Hot 100 chart.

During that same period Simone recorded "My Baby Just Cares for Me", which would become her biggest success years later, in 1987, after it was featured in a 1986 Chanel No. 5 perfume commercial. A music video was also created by Aardman Studios. Well-known songs from her Philips albums include "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" on Broadway-Blues-Ballads (1964), "I Put a Spell on You", "Ne me quitte pas" (a rendition of a Jacques Brel song) and "Feeling Good" on I Put a Spell On You (1965), "Lilac Wine" and "Wild Is the Wind" on Wild is the Wind (1966).

"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" and her takes on "Feeling Good" and "Sinnerman" (Pastel Blues, 1965) have remained popular in cover versions (most notably a version of the former song by The Animals), sample usage, and their use on soundtracks for various movies, television series, and video games. "Sinnerman" has been featured in the films The Crimson Pirate (1952), The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), High Crimes (2002), Cellular (2004), Déjà Vu (2006), Miami Vice (2006), Golden Door (2006), Inland Empire (2006), and Harriet (2019), as well as in TV series such as Homicide: Life on the Street (1998, "Sins of the Father"), Nash Bridges (2000, "Jackpot"), Scrubs (2001, "My Own Personal Jesus"), Boomtown (2003, "The Big Picture"), Person of Interest (2011, "Witness"), Shameless (2011, "Kidnap and Ransom"), Love/Hate (2011, "Episode 1"), Sherlock (2012, "The Reichenbach Fall"), The Blacklist (2013, "The Freelancer"), Vinyl (2016, "The Racket"), Lucifer (2017, "Favorite Son"), and The Umbrella Academy (2019, "Extra Ordinary"), and sampled by artists such as Talib Kweli (2003, "Get By"), Timbaland (2007, "Oh Timbaland"), and Flying Lotus (2012, "Until the Quiet Comes"). The song "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" was sampled by Devo Springsteen on "Misunderstood" from Common's 2007 album Finding Forever, and by little-known producers Rodnae and Mousa for the song "Don't Get It" on Lil Wayne's 2008 album Tha Carter III. "See-Line Woman" was sampled by Kanye West for "Bad News" on his album 808s & Heartbreak. The 1965 rendition of "Strange Fruit", originally recorded by Billie Holiday, was sampled by Kanye West for "Blood on the Leaves" on his album Yeezus.

Simone's years at RCA-Victor spawned a number of singles and album tracks that were popular, particularly in Europe. In 1968, it was "Ain't Got No, I Got Life", a medley from the musical Hair from the album 'Nuff Said! (1968) that became a surprise hit for Simone, reaching number 4 on the UK Singles Chart and introducing her to a younger audience. In 2006, it returned to the UK Top 30 in a remixed version by Groovefinder.

The following single, a rendition of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody", also reached the UK Top 10 in 1969. "The House of the Rising Sun" was featured on Nina Simone Sings the Blues in 1967, but Simone had recorded the song in 1961 and it was featured on Nina at the Village Gate (1962).

Performance style

Simone's bearing and stage presence earned her the title "the High Priestess of Soul". She was a piano player, singer and performer, "separately, and simultaneously." As a composer and arranger, Simone moved from gospel to blues, jazz, and folk, and to numbers with European classical styling. Besides using Bach-style counterpoint, she called upon the particular virtuosity of the 19th-century Romantic piano repertoire—Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and others. Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis spoke highly of Simone, deeply impressed by her ability to play three-part counterpoint (her two hands on the piano and her voice each playing a separate but complimentary melody line). Onstage, she incorporated monologues and dialogues with the audience into the program, and often used silence as a musical element. Throughout most of her life and recording career she was accompanied by percussionist Leopoldo Fleming and guitarist and musical director Al Schackman. She was known to pay close attention to the design and acoustics of each venue, custom tailoring performances to each location.

Simone was perceived as a sometimes difficult or unpredictable performer, occasionally hectoring the audience if she felt they were disrespectful. Schackman would try to calm Simone during these episodes, performing solo until she calmed offstage and returned to finish the engagement. Her early experiences as a classical pianist had conditioned Simone to expect quiet attentive audiences, and her anger tended to flare up at nightclubs, lounges or other locations where patrons were less attentive. Schackman described her live appearances as hit or miss, either reaching heights of hypnotic brilliance or on the other hand mechanically playing a few songs and then abruptly ending concerts early.

Critical reputation

Simone is regarded as one of the most influential recording artists of the 20th century. According to Rickey Vincent, she was a pioneering musician whose career was characterized by "fits of outrage and improvisational genius". Pointing to her composition of "Mississippi Goddam", Vincent said Simone broke the mold, having the courage as "an established black musical entertainer to break from the norms of the industry and produce direct social commentary in her music during the early 1960s".

In naming Simone the 29th-greatest singer of all time, Rolling Stone wrote that "her honey-coated, slightly adenoidal cry was one of the most affecting voices of the civil rights movement", while making note of her ability to "belt barroom blues, croon cabaret and explore jazz — sometimes all on a single record." In the opinion of AllMusic's Mark Deming, she was "one of the most gifted vocalists of her generation, and also one of the most eclectic". Creed Taylor, who annotated the liner notes for Simone's 1978 Baltimore album, said the singer possessed a "magnificent intensity" that "turns everything—even the most simple, mundane phrase or lyric—into a radiant, poetic message". Jim Fusilli, music critic for The Wall Street Journal, writes that Simone's music is still relevant today: "it didn't adhere to ephemeral trends, it isn't a relic of a bygone era; her vocal delivery and technical skills as a pianist still dazzle; and her emotional performances have a visceral impact.

"She is loved or feared, adored or disliked", Maya Angelou wrote in 1970, "but few who have met her music or glimpsed her soul react with moderation". Robert Christgau, reviewing her album Baltimore, wrote that her "penchant for the mundane renders her intensity as bogus as her mannered melismas and pronunciation (move over, Inspector Clouseau) and the rote flatting of her vocal improvisations." Regarding her piano playing, he dismissed Simone as a "middlebrow keyboard tickler ... whose histrionic rolls insert unconvincing emotion into a song". He later attributed his generally negative appraisal to Simone's consistent seriousness of manner, depressive tendencies, and classical background.

Mental health

Known for her temper and frequent outbursts, in 1985, Simone fired a gun at a record company executive, whom she accused of stealing royalties. Simone said she "tried to kill him" but "missed". Simone was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the late 1980s. In 1995 while living in France, she shot and wounded her neighbor's son with an air gun after the boy's laughter disturbed her concentration; she was sentenced to eight months in jail, which was suspended pending a psychiatric evaluation and treatment.

According to a biographer, Simone took medication for a condition from the mid-1960s onward, although this was supposedly only known to a small group of intimates. After her death the medication was confirmed as the anti-psychotic Trilafon, which Simone's friends and caretakers sometimes surreptitiously mixed into her food when she refused to follow her treatment plan. This fact was kept out of public view for many years, until 2004 when a biography, Break Down and Let It All Out written by Sylvia Hampton and David Nathan, was published posthumously. Singer-songwriter Janis Ian, a one-time friend of Simone's, related in her own autobiography, Society's Child: My Autobiography, two instances to illustrate Simone's volatility: one incident in which she forced a shoe store cashier at gunpoint to take back a pair of sandals she'd already worn; and another in which Simone demanded a royalty payment from Ian herself as an exchange for having recorded one of Ian's songs, and then ripped a pay telephone out of its wall when she was refused.

Awards and recognition

Simone was the recipient of a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 2000 for her interpretation of "I Loves You, Porgy." On Human Kindness Day 1974 in Washington, D.C., more than 10,000 people paid tribute to Simone.Simone received two honorary degrees in music and humanities, from Amherst College and Malcolm X College. She preferred to be called "Dr. Nina Simone" after these honors were bestowed upon her. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.

Two days before her death, Simone learned she would be awarded an honorary degree by the Curtis Institute of Music, the music school that had refused to admit her as a student at the beginning of her career.

Simone has received four career Grammy Award nominations, two during her lifetime and two posthumously. In 1968, she received her first nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for the track "(You'll) Go to Hell" from her thirteenth album Silk & Soul (1967). The award went to "Respect" by Aretha Franklin.

Simone garnered a second nomination in the category in 1971, for her Black Gold album, when she again lost to Franklin for "Don't Play That Song (You Lied)". Ironically, Franklin would again win for her cover of Simone's Young, Gifted and Black two years later in the same category which Simone's Black Gold album was nominated and features Simone's original version of "Young, Gifted and Black". In 2016, Simone posthumously received a nomination for Best Music Film for the Netflix documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone? and in 2018 she received a nomination for Best Rap Song as a songwriter for Jay Z's "The Story of O.J." from his 4:44 album which contained a sample of "Four Women" by Simone.

In 2018, Simone was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by fellow R&B artist Mary J. Blige.

In 2019, "Mississippi Goddam" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Legacy and influence

Music

Musicians who have cited Simone as important for their own musical upbringing include Elton John (who named one of his pianos after her), Madonna, Aretha Franklin, Beyoncé, Adele, David Bowie, Boy George, Emeli Sandé, Antony and the Johnsons, Dianne Reeves, Sade, Janis Joplin, Nick Cave, Van Morrison, Christina Aguilera, Elkie Brooks, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Kanye West, Lena Horne, Bono, John Legend, Elizabeth Fraser, Cat Stevens, Anna Calvi, Cat Power, Lykke Li, Peter Gabriel, Justin Hayward, Maynard James Keenan, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Mary J. Blige, Fantasia Barrino, Michael Gira, Angela McCluskey, Lauryn Hill, Patrice Babatunde, Alicia Keys, Alex Turner, Lana Del Rey, Hozier, Matt Bellamy, Ian MacKaye, Kerry Brothers, Jr., Krucial, Amanda Palmer, Steve Adey and Jeff Buckley. John Lennon cited Simone's version of "I Put a Spell on You" as a source of inspiration for the Beatles' song "Michelle". American singer Meshell Ndegeocello released her own tribute album Pour une Âme Souveraine: A Dedication to Nina Simone in 2012. In late 2019, American rapper Wale released an album titled Wow... That's Crazy, containing a track called “Love Me Nina/Semiautomatic” which contains audio clips from Simone. The clips outline the message of the song, as Simone was an active activist in her lifetime.

Simone's music has been featured in soundtracks of various motion pictures and video games, including but not limited to, La Femme Nikita (1990), Point of No Return (1993), Shallow Grave (1994), The Big Lebowski (1998), Any Given Sunday (1999), The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), Disappearing Acts (2000), Six Feet Under (2001), The Dancer Upstairs (2002), Before Sunset (2004), Cellular (2004), Inland Empire (2006), Miami Vice (2006), Sex and the City (2008), The World Unseen (2008), Revolutionary Road (2008), Home (2008), Watchmen (2009), The Saboteur (2009), Repo Men (2010), and Beyond the Lights (2014). Frequently her music is used in remixes, commercials, and TV series including "Feeling Good", which featured prominently in the Season Four Promo of Six Feet Under (2004). Simone's "Take Care of Business" is the closing theme of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), Simone's cover of Janis Ian's "Stars" is played during the final moments of the season 3 finale of BoJack Horseman (2016), and "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free" and "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" were included in the film Acrimony (2018).

Film

The documentary Nina Simone: La légende (The Legend) was made in the 1990s by French filmmakers and based on her autobiography I Put a Spell on You. It features live footage from different periods of her career, interviews with family, various interviews with Simone then living in the Netherlands, and while on a trip to her birthplace. A portion of footage from The Legend was taken from an earlier 26-minute biographical documentary by Peter Rodis, released in 1969 and entitled simply, Nina. Her filmed 1976 performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival is available on video courtesy of Eagle Rock Entertainment and is screened annually in New York City at an event called "The Rise and Fall of Nina Simone: Montreux, 1976" which is curated by Tom Blunt.

Footage of Simone singing "Mississippi Goddam" for 40,000 marchers at the end of the Selma to Montgomery marches can be seen in the 1970 documentary King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis and the 2015 Liz Garbus documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone?

Plans for a Simone biographical film were released at the end of 2005, to be based on Simone's autobiography I Put a Spell on You (1992) and to focus on her relationship in later life with her assistant, Clifton Henderson, who died in 2006; Simone's daughter, Simone Kelly, has since refuted the existence of a romantic relationship between Simone and Henderson on account of his homosexuality. Cynthia Mort, screenwriter of Will & Grace and Roseanne, has written the screenplay and directed the 2016 film, Nina, which controversially stars Zoe Saldana in the title role.

In 2015, two documentary features about Simone's life and music were released. The first, directed by Liz Garbus, What Happened, Miss Simone? was produced in cooperation with Simone's estate and her daughter, who also served as the film's executive producer. The film was produced as a counterpoint to the unauthorized Cynthia Mort film, and featured previously unreleased archival footage. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2015 and was distributed by Netflix on June 26, 2015. It was nominated on January 14, 2016, for a 2016 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

The Amazing Nina Simone is an independent film written and directed by documentary filmmaker Jeff L. Lieberman and was released in more than 100 cinemas in 2015. The director initially consulted with Simone's daughter before going the independent route and instead worked closely with Simone's siblings, predominantly Sam Waymon. The film debuted in cinemas in October 2015, and has since played more than 100 theatres in 10 countries.

Drama

She is the subject of Nina: A Story About Me and Nina Simone, a one-woman show first performed in 2016 at the Unity Theatre, Liverpool — a "deeply personal and often searing show inspired by the singer and activist Nina Simone" — and which in July 2017 ran at the Young Vic, before being scheduled to move to Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre.

Books

As well as her 1992 autobiography I Put a Spell on You (1992), written with Stephen Cleary, Simone has been the subject of several books. They include Nina Simone: Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (2002) by Richard Williams; Nina Simone: Break Down and Let It All Out (2004) by Sylvia Hampton and David Nathan; Princess Noire (2010) by Nadine Cohodas; Nina Simone (2004) by Kerry Acker; Nina Simone, Black is the Color (2005) by Andy Stroud; and What Happened, Miss Simone? (2016) by Alan Light.

Simone also inspired a book of poetry, me and Nina by Monica Hand.

Honors

In 2002, the city of Nijmegen, Netherlands, named a street after her, as "Nina Simone Street": she had lived in Nijmegen between 1988 and 1990. On August 29, 2005, the city of Nijmegen, the De Vereeniging concert hall, and more than 50 artists (among whom were Frank Boeijen, Rood Adeo, and Fay Claassen) honored Simone with the tribute concert Greetings from Nijmegen.

Simone was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009.

In 2010, a statue in her honor was erected on Trade Street in her native Tryon, North Carolina.

The promotion from the French Institute of Political Studies of Lille (Sciences Po Lille), due to obtain their master's degree in 2021, named themselves in her honor. The decision was made that this promotion was henceforth to be known as 'la promotion Nina Simone' after a vote in 2017.

Simone was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.

The Proms paid a homage to Nina Simone in 2019, a prom titled Mississippi Goddamn is performed by The Metropole Orkest at Royal Albert Hall led by Jules Buckley. Ledisi, Lisa Fischer and Jazz Trio, LaSharVu provided vocals for the prom.

#02/21 #04/21

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wordssplatteredoncement · 4 years

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The World Is On Fire (and So Am I)

There are times in your life where you experience things that you know will become a memory that lasts a lifetime. Several of those moments have been pleasant in my experience. A shared moment with a friend where you realized you both inched your bond towards something more. Various parties thrown where you watched the weeks worth of thought, time, and effort payoff in a night that will be talked about for ages. A concert where the band’s connection with the crowd transcends the usual “musician/ audience” role play, and a melding of minds makes the show something unforgettable. This year has been one most won’t soon forget, but for all of the wrong reasons.

“FUCK 2020!!” A sentiment uttered by many, and one I’ve said more than my share. The reality... 2020 isn’t the problem. The issues that have arisen have occurred due to years of neglect. The change of a calendar isn’t going to bring back the lives of hundreds of people of color who have died at the hands of those pledged to “protect and serve”. The turn of a year won’t suddenly erase a pandemic that has killed a half a million people worldwide, and shows no sign of slowing it’s destruction on any semblance of normalcy we’re yearning for. And, on a personal level, 2021 brings no promise that my body will stop feeling as though it’s trying to burn from the inside-out. Instead of leaning hard into this notion that the turn of the next 365 will somehow cure our sorrows, why don’t we take some responsibility for the moment and do our part today to ensure tomorrow is aimed in a direction of correction and healing?

I’m going to start by reflecting inward. The last time I touched this blog was nearly a year ago. I wrote about the horrible pain I’m experiencing on a daily basis. My asshole feels like Satan decided to relocate Hell inside of it. I truly feel as though like I’m on fire from the inside out. Today marks the 2 year anniversary of this pain that has completely upended up my life. Earlier this week, I had my 4th procedure in hopes of finding some reprieve from this pain and, for 2 days, I thought maybe I was healed to a level I could cope with. The pain had largely subsided... and then yesterday happened. I didn’t really see any fireworks on the 4th, but I felt them. My body ignited from beyond my balloon knot and the pain has lingered to this very moment. I spent a good portion of the day on my couch, partially in hopes of reprieve, but mostly in wallowing over another disappointment. I peeled myself off of the couch and decided to splatter a few more words in hopes that I could inspire those who give the blog a gander, but also to help myself out of a seemingly hopeless situation.

8 minutes and 46 seconds. My 2 years of asshole-aflame don’t hold a candle to the suffering the neglect, hurt, and tyranny 5 dickheads wearing a badge made to an entire race in our country. In those near-9 minutes, we all witnessed a man completely prone and in constraints, cry out for his mother as he suffocated in cold murder. Immediate responses from cop-defenders shot out with “All Lives Matter”, “Blue Lives Matter”, and “not all cops are bad people”... Here’s the problem with all of those statements, this isn’t a one-off occurrence. This isn’t a singular police officer who went rogue. In this very instance, 4 other cops watched, with hands in pocket, as this man, George Floyd, had his life taken from him. The uprising that came in the wake of this atrocity was a natural response to the oppression of a culture long held down by those in authority. Peaceful protests over the mistreatment of African Americans have existed for years, each met with hostility in the way of thinly veiled racism and clearly falling upon deaf ears, all while more instances of death at the hands of oppressors pile up. Breonna Taylor, a 26 year old black woman, was shot in her sleep when three police officers, in plain clothes mind you, broke into her home with a no-knock warrant... erroneously... AS THEY WERE IN THE WRONG HOUSE. In both of these instances (two of hundreds, I must add), the police were not arrested until met with the pressure of the public in the form of protesting. Sure, some protests have been met with opportunists. Buildings have been burned. Statues brought down by force (and I stand that these statues dedicated to slave-owning southern leaders should have never been erected in the first place), but PEOPLE ARE DYING AT THE HANDS OF THOSE IN AUTHORITY. And yet, I hear more about these buildings and statues from our “leader” on down to people I come in contact with, than the human lives taken. White privilege at its finest, folks. I’d love to hear an “All Lives Matter”-crier, shout “All Cancer Matters” at a breast cancer awareness event to experience the absolute ignorance of that statement. Everyone matters, you dumb fucks, but there are times that call attention to a specific group... this isn’t your time. “Blue Lives Matter!!”.. you aren’t born blue.. you choose that life. You don’t choose to be a person of color. Let’s take a fucking second to recognize that there is a disparity in this world in how we are treated and figure out how we can correct our ways.

So that brings us to the last bit of “2020″, the year is “cursed and doomed”. COVID-19, aka coronavirus. A pandemic that was written off as nothing more to be worried about than a flu by our “genius” leader. Trump compared this pandemic to the number of lives that are taken yearly by the common flu and thus created the great divide in America. Half of our country decided that everything was cool.. our president said “we’re good”. The other half, listening to the CDC, and other health experts, whose literal job is to track and control the spread and containment of disease, followed advice from those who have dedicated their life to the education of well-being. Trump slowly had to cater to those health experts when it became very clear this was something far more serious than a “flu”, and we were ordered to stay indoors. People went into bat-shit-crazy-survival mode. Toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and canned goods became the new gold as the masses flocked to stores in droves to ensure their asses were wiped, hands were.. sanitized.. and goods had a shelf life of several months. Hospital ICUs were strained as the number of people needing to be treated met new highs. We were asked to wear masks in public and keep 6 feet away from those we don’t live with. And the response from a wide number of Trump’s supporters.. “THIS IS CRAZY.. YOU’RE INFRINGING ON MY FREEDOMS.. THE ECONOMY!!!!”. As stated earlier in this blog.. human lives > businesses and the economy. Due to this outcry, backed by the moron-in-chief and his plethora of tweets (seriously.. what job have you ever had where you can sit around and call people names through social media all day long??.. certainly not mine..), the shelter-in-place orders were lifted, just as we were starting to see a leveling out in the number of cases our country was dealing with. And Americans, being as stubborn as they’ve proven to be over the years, went out en masse. With this, the number of cases has risen to absurd levels. The president, always one to find a way to suck his own cock, daily gives praise to this being accredited to the great testing he has imposed. Even taking it so far as to say we might be testing “too well” and that if we just test less.. the numbers will go down.... I’ll take a minute to let the absurdity of that statement, which he has doubled down on, sink in. I work in health care. This isn’t a joke. This isn’t a farce. This isn’t the flu. This isn’t a conspiracy. 533,000+ deaths isn’t a joke. Wear a fucking mask. Stop going out for the sake of killing boredom. Start thinking and do your part. Your parents, grandparents, and neighbors count on it.

So there you have it. 2020 hasn’t been kind but, as I’ve stated, this isn’t the problem of a singular year. This is years of neglect and a current state of ignorance. January 1st will come and go. It changes nothing. The only thing that will cure the issues we’re facing is recognizing there is indeed an issue and taking action to improve our current state. Nothing is solved if we don’t accept reality and inflect on how we can do our part to make a change. Stating “Make America Great Again” is a stupid way of saying we’ll revert to a past laced in hatred. Instead of looking over our shoulder the days that we’ve progressed from, let’s focus on a future that provides equality for all. Instead of crying about our freedoms being removed over having to stay indoors or wear a mask, let’s think about those we might be saving by stopping the spread of disease. As for my butthole.. I got off the couch to write this, all while in a fair amount of pain. I can reflect on a time I didn’t feel this, or I can accept what this is and do my part to seek improvemnt. I opt for the latter.

#wordsspatteredoncent #fuckdonaldtrump #covid #coronavirus #fuckpolicebrutality #killignorance #thinkforyourself

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ucflibrary · 6 years

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Pride Month has arrived! While every day is a time to be proud of your identity and orientation, June is that extra special time for boldly celebrating with and for the LGBTQIA community (yes, there are more than lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender in the queer community). June was chosen to honor the Stonewall Riots which happened in 1969. Like other celebratory months, LGBT Pride Month started as a weeklong series of events and expanded into a full month of festivities.

In honor of Pride Month, UCF Library faculty and staff suggested books, movies and music from the UCF collection that represent a wide array of queer authors and characters. Additional events at UCF in June include “UCF Remembers” which is a week-long series of events to commemorate the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in 2016.

Click on the Keep Reading link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links for the 20 titles by or about people in the LGBTQIA community suggested by UCF Library employees. These, and additional titles, are also on the Featured Bookshelf display on the second (main) floor next to the bank of two elevators.

A guide to LGBTQ+ inclusion on campus, post-Pulse edited by Virginia Stead The research in A Guide to LGBTQ+ Inclusion on Campus, Post-PULSE is premised on the notion that, because we cannot choose our sexual, racial, ethnic, cultural, political, geographic, economic, and chronological origins, with greater advantage comes greater responsibility to redistribute life's resources in favor of those whose human rights are compromised and who lack the fundamental necessities of life. Among these basic rights are access to higher education and to positive campus experiences. Queer folk and LGBTQ+ allies have collaborated on this new text in response to the June 16, 2016 targeted murder of 49 innocent victims at the PULSE nightclub, Orlando, Florida. Seasoned and novice members of the academy will find professional empowerment from these authors as they explicitly discuss multiple level theory, policy, and strategies to support LGBTQ+ campus inclusion. Their work illuminates how good, bad, and indeterminate public legislation impacts LGBTQ+ communities everywhere, and it animates multiple layers of campus life, ranging from lessons within a three-year-old day care center to policy-making among senior administration. Suggested by Tim Walker, Information Technology & Digital Initiatives

Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld Darcy Patel has put college on hold to publish her teen novel, Afterworlds. With a contract in hand, she arrives in New York City with no apartment, no friends, and all the wrong clothes. But lucky for Darcy, she’s taken under the wings of other seasoned and fledgling writers who help her navigate the city and the world of writing and publishing. Over the course of a year, Darcy finishes her book, faces critique, and falls in love. Woven into Darcy’s personal story is her novel, Afterworlds, a suspenseful thriller about a teen who slips into the “Afterworld” to survive a terrorist attack. The Afterworld is a place between the living and the dead, and where many unsolved—and terrifying—stories need to be reconciled. Like Darcy, Lizzie too falls in love…until a new threat resurfaces, and her special gifts may not be enough to protect those she cares about most. Suggested by Rebecca Hawk, Circulation

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She's used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remains of her world. Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer, Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot--if she's willing to sow the seeds of civil war. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

And Then I Danced: traveling the road to LGBT equality: a memoir by Mark Segal On December 11, 1973, Mark Segal disrupted a live broadcast of the CBS Evening News when he sat on the desk directly between the camera and news anchor Walter Cronkite, yelling, "Gays protest CBS prejudice!" He was wrestled to the studio floor by the stagehands on live national television, thus ending LGBT invisibility. But this one victory left many more battles to fight, and creativity was required to find a way to challenge stereotypes surrounding the LGBT community. Mark Segal's job, as he saw it, was to show the nation who gay people are: our sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers. Because of activists like Mark Segal, whose life work is dramatically detailed in this poignant and important memoir, today there are openly LGBT people working in the White House and throughout corporate America. An entire community of gay world citizens is now finding the voice that they need to become visible. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

Basically Queer: an intergenerational introduction to LGBTQA2S+ lives by Claire Robson, Kelsey Blair, and Jen Marchbank Basically Queer offers an introduction to what it can look and feel like to live life as lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, two spirited and trans. Written by youth and elders who've lived these lives first hand, the book combines no-nonsense explanations, definitions, and information with engaging stories and poetry that bring them to life. Basically Queer answers those questions that many want to ask but fear will give offence--What is it really like to be queer? What's appropriate language? How can I be an ally? It also provides a succinct and readable account of queer history and legal rights worldwide, addresses intergenerational issues, and offers some tips and tricks for living queer. It does so in an easy and conversational style that will be accessible to most readers, including teens. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is swift, graphic -- and redemptive. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections, and Schuyler Kerby, Rosen Library

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella "Especially Heinous," Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes. Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Inseparable: desire between women in literature by Emma Donoghue Emma Donoghue examines how desire between women in English literature has been portrayed, from schoolgirls and vampires to runaway wives, from cross-dressing knights to contemporary murder stories. She looks at the work of those writers who have addressed the "unspeakable subject," examining whether same-sex desire is freakish or omnipresent, holy or evil, as she excavates a long-obscured tradition of (inseparable) friendship between women, one that is surprisingly central to our cultural history. Inseparable is a revelation of a centuries-old literary tradition — brilliant, amusing, and until now, deliberately overlooked. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann Claire Kann’s debut novel Let’s Talk About Love, chosen by readers like you for Macmillan's young adult imprint Swoon Reads, gracefully explores the struggle with emerging adulthood and the complicated line between friendship and what it might mean to be something more. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Little and Lion by Brandy Colbert Suzette returns home to Los Angeles from boarding school and grapples with her bisexual identity when she and her brother Lionel fall in love with the same girl, pushing Lionel's bipolar disorder to spin out of control and forcing Suzette to confront her own demons. Suggested by Emma Gisclair, Curriculum Materials Center

Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal Myra's personality is altered by her sex change operation and Myron is transported back through time to the year 1948. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Subject Librarian

Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers Set on a Southern army base in the 1930s, REFLECTIONS tells the story of Captain Penderton, a bisexual whose life is upset by the arrival of Major Langdon, a charming womanizer who has an affair with Penderton's tempestuous and flirtatious wife, Leonora. Upon the novel's publication in 1941, reviewers were unsure of what to make of its relatively scandalous subject matter. But a critic for Time Magazine wrote, "In almost any hands, such material would yield a rank fruitcake of mere arty melodrama. But Carson McCullers tells her tale with simplicity, insight, and a rare gift of phrase." Written during a time when McCullers's own marriage to Reeves was on the brink of collapse, her second novel deals with her trademark themes of alienation and unfulfilled loves. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Subject Librarian

Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala In the tradition of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, Speak No Evil explores what it means to be different in a fundamentally conformist society and how that difference plays out in our inner and outer struggles. It is a novel about the power of words and self-identification, about who gets to speak and who has the power to speak for other people. As heart-wrenching and timely as his breakout debut, Beasts of No Nation, Uzodinma Iweala’s second novel cuts to the core of our humanity and leaves us reeling in its wake. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Tash hearts Tolstoy by Kathryn Ormsbee Fame and success come at a cost for Natasha "Tash" Zelenka when she creates the web series "Unhappy Families," a modern adaptation of Anna Karenina--written by Tash's eternal love Leo Tolstoy. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

The Boys in the Band by Mart Crowley The Boys in the Band was the first commercially successful play to reveal gay life to mainstream America. This is a special fortieth anniversary edition of the play, which includes an original preface by acclaimed writer Tony Kushner (Angels in America), along with previously unpublished photographs of Mart Crowley and the cast of the play/film. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Subject Librarian

The Sleeper and the Spindle by Neil Gaiman On the eve of her wedding, a young queen sets out to rescue a princess from an enchantment. She casts aside her fine wedding clothes, takes her chain mail and her sword, and follows her brave dwarf retainers into the tunnels under the mountain towards the sleeping kingdom. This queen will decide her own future -- and the princess who needs rescuing is not quite what she seems. Suggested by Rebecca Hawk, Circulation

Very Recent History: an entirely factual account of a year (c. AD 2009) in a large city by Choire Sicha What will the future make of us? In one of the greatest cities in the world, the richest man in town is the Mayor. Billionaires shed apartments like last season's fashion trends, even as the country's economy turns inside out and workers are expelled from the City's glass towers. The young and careless go on as they always have, getting laid and getting laid off, falling in and falling out of love, and trying to navigate the strange world they traffic in: the Internet, complex financial markets, credit cards, pop stars, microplane cheese graters, and sex apps. A true-life fable of money, sex, and politics, Very Recent History follows a man named John and his circle of friends, lovers, and enemies. It is a book that pieces together our every day, as if it were already forgotten. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Victim directed by Basil Dearden A highly respected, but closeted barrister, Melville Farr, risks his marriage and reputation to take on an elusive blackmail ring terrorizing gay men with the threat of public exposure and police action. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Subject Librarian

Why be happy when you could be normal? by Jeanette Winterson Traces the author's lifelong search for happiness as the adopted daughter of Pentecostal parents who raised her through practices of fierce control and paranoia, an experience that prompted her to search for her biological mother. Suggested by Lindsey Ritzert, Circulation

Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman. Suggested by Rebecca Hawk, Circulation

#lgbtq pride month #lgbtqia #pride month #neil gaiman #ucf #ucf library #ucf libraries bookshelf #booklr

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orbemnews · 3 years

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Amazon Pauses Construction at Connecticut Site After Nooses Are Found Amazon said it had temporarily stopped construction of a new fulfillment center in Windsor, Conn., after seven ropes that appeared to be nooses were found on the site since April 27. The Windsor Police Department said it was investigating what it called “potential hate crime incidents” with the Connecticut State Police and the F.B.I. Amazon said it had shut down construction on the site until at least Monday while new security measures were being put in place. It said a $100,000 reward had been offered; Amazon said that it had contributed $50,000 and that construction companies and subcontractors working on the site had contributed the other $50,000. “We continue to be deeply disturbed by the incidents at this construction site,” Brad Griggs, an Amazon representative, said at a news conference on Thursday with Black elected officials and members of the N.A.A.C.P. “Hate, racism and discrimination have no place in our society and certainly are not tolerated in any Amazon workplace.” Scot Esdaile, the president of the Connecticut State Conference of the N.A.A.C.P., said that the group had met with law enforcement officials and community leaders and that “we still haven’t felt that the situation has been dealt with adequately.” He said the group was “very, very disappointed” that the N.A.A.C.P. had not been allowed on the site to make sure construction workers were safe. He said that the N.A.A.C.P. had also been asking how many Black vendors and workers were on the site and that “many of these questions have not been answered.” “The N.A.A.C.P. will continue to find out who is exactly on this site, and whose lives have been threatened and have all measures been taken care of, to make sure that their public safety is secure,” he said at the news conference. State and local officials described fear and outrage in Windsor, a town of about 28,000 people north of Hartford. “We want to see someone apprehended,” Nuchette Black-Burke, a member of the Windsor Town Council, said at the news conference. “If we need to get a sit-in, a protest, whatever we need to do, we’re going to continue to do it until the folks here realize it’s not acceptable. It’s a hate crime.” According to the police, the first noose was discovered on April 27, hanging from a steel beam on the second floor of the building, in an area that was not monitored by surveillance cameras and was accessible to hundreds of employees from various companies. The police said that, according to the construction supervisor, the site safety team had documented the episode and discarded the noose. Two days later, on April 29, detectives were notified that five “additional ropes that could be interpreted as nooses” were found in various places throughout the building, the police said. The ropes were collected as evidence and were to undergo testing, the police said, adding that no other messages or markings had been found. On Wednesday, the Windsor police said that officers working on the site had been made aware of a seventh rope that “could be interpreted as a noose” hanging from a beam. Detectives collected the rope as evidence and planned to send it to the state lab for analysis, the police said. “The Town of Windsor prides itself in being an inclusive and diverse community,” the police said. “These incidents do not represent the character of our community. We stand united in condemning these acts that are hateful and intolerant.” Cases of racism on construction sites are not uncommon, according to Construction Dive, a news site focused on the construction and building industry, which said that 65 percent of the readers it surveyed last year had witnessed racist incidents on job sites. Those incidents included nooses, graffiti and slurs. Seventy-seven percent of readers said that nothing had been done to address the incidents. The F.B.I. said it was lending resources and support to the Windsor police. “The implications of a hanging noose anywhere are unacceptable and will always generate the appropriate investigative response,” David Sundberg, the special agent in charge of the New Haven field office, said in a statement. Carlos Best, an ironworker who was at the news conference, said he had seen Confederate flags on hats and on the backs of cars and had heard “racial remarks” on the construction site. He said it was not the only job site where he had seen and heard such things, but “it’s kept quiet because some guys just want to get a paycheck and go home.” “But, personally, on this job here, I’ve seen a lot of racism,” Mr. Best said. “I would like to say to the person that’s doing it: Could you please stop? Stop what you’re doing and grow a conscience and think about other people.” Source link Orbem News #Amazon #Connecticut #Construction #nooses #Pauses #site

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dipulb3 · 3 years

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Melania Trump and adult Trump children avoid the spotlight after one of nation's darkest days

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/melania-trump-and-adult-trump-children-avoid-the-spotlight-after-one-of-nations-darkest-days/

Melania Trump and adult Trump children avoid the spotlight after one of nation's darkest days

Professional lighting, the sort used for photography and videography, could be seen through the windows of the White House. “Photos were being taken of rugs and other items in the Executive Residence and the East Wing,” a person familiar with the day’s activities with the first lady told Appradab. Trump — who, as Appradab has reported, has expressed interest in writing a coffee table book about decorative objects she has amassed and had restored in the White House — was overseeing the photo project, said the source, with her remaining time in the White House dwindling.

Just blocks away, domestic terrorists were swarming the US Capitol in a riot that her husband had incited earlier that day at the rally. While images of the mob breaking into the Capitol consumed the airwaves, the first lady was focused — with the White House chief usher, Timothy Harleth — on getting the shoot completed. Both the media, including Appradab, and members of her staff were asking if Trump had plans to tweet a statement of calm, or a call to stop the violence — something she had done a handful of times months earlier during the protests surrounding the police killing of George Floyd. She did not.

Instead, the first lady was quiet, and has remained so. Her disinterest in addressing the country was indicative of being “checked out,” said another White House source, who added, “she just isn’t in a place mentally or emotionally anymore where she wants to get involved.”

Except with the furniture.

By Wednesday evening, two of her first hires as first lady, chief of staff Stephanie Grisham — who also served as Trump’s closest adviser, speechwriter and spokesperson — and Anna Cristina “Rickie” Niceta, White House social secretary, had submitted their resignations effective immediately. Appradab confirmed both Grisham and Niceta quit their jobs in large part because of Wednesday’s events.

Much has been made of the first lady’s influence on her husband. But it was Ivanka Trump, the President’s daughter, who held an emergency meeting with him in the Oval Office Wednesday, where she urged him to call for the violence to stop.

Still, the first lady and the President, as Appradab has reported, have a close relationship, which is sometimes surprising to those who have interpreted salacious stories of Trump’s alleged adulterous behavior and their physical distance as a sign of a dislike. The first lady speaks on the phone throughout the day with the President, according to several sources who have witnessed it — from both wings of the building — and she is the first one to share with her husband her thoughts on domestic and international issues.

Though the bulk of her public statements in recent months have been related to holiday decorations, on November 8, she tellingly tweeted her support of Trump’s baseless fight against the election results. “The American people deserve fair elections,” said the first lady. “Every legal – not illegal – vote should be counted. We must protect our democracy with complete transparency.” It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to indicate she was on his side.

The first lady has also not been shy when her opinions differ from her husband’s, tweeting — either on her own or via Grisham as her mouthpiece — messages that would seem to be out step with his.

But this week was not one of those times.

Appradab has reached out multiple times to the East Wing, both before and after Grisham’s departure, to ask for comment on the first lady’s thoughts about Wednesday’s events, or if she had any comment at all. The requests were not answered.

The Trump children

Along with the first lady, the other three most influential people in the Trump orbit are his oldest children, Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump, all of whom have amplified the voice of their father after his election loss, calling for Americans to “fight” against what they baselessly deemed a corrupt election.

Trump Jr. was part of a roster of speakers at the Ellipse Wednesday morning, more than willing to inflame an already blindly loyal and largely infuriated group of supporters. “This gathering should send a message to them. This isn’t their Republican Party anymore,” railed Trump Jr. “This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party.”

He addressed lawmakers in his hype speech, which was peppered with expletives: “You can be a hero, or you can be a zero. And the choice is yours. But we are all watching. The whole world is watching, folks. Choose wisely.”

Eric Trump and his wife Lara spoke too, and listened with big smiles as the crowd of thousands serenaded the younger Trump with “Happy Birthday;” he turned 37. The couple vociferously maligned the democratic election process, and the will of American voters who elected Joe Biden as President. The crowd loved it.

“We live in the greatest country in the world, and we will never, ever, ever stop fighting,” said Eric Trump, the word “fight” a dog whistle to the eager crowd who were just blocks from where they — falsely — believed their future was being dealt an illegal hand by lawmakers. Shortly after Eric and Lara left the stage, they were whisked by Secret Service to the airport — the match they helped light in the rear-view as they flew back to their multimillion dollar New York home.

The President was at the rally, too, of course. The headliner, he first watched the crowd on monitors from a tented VIP area with his daughter Ivanka Trump, who did not speak at the rally, before he took the stage.

Ivanka Trump would shortly be the one whose responsibility it was to press her father to publicly call for the violence to stop — but not before she sent her own tweet, referring to the Trump supporters rioting as “American Patriots.”

“American Patriots — any security breach or disrespect to our law enforcement is unacceptable,” wrote Trump, who also said the violence must stop. After being called out for dubbing them “patriots,” Trump deleted her tweet.

At the White House, panic was setting in. “The President didn’t want to listen to people telling him he had to get these people to stop doing this,” a White House official told Appradab.

“Everyone else was told to leave the room,” a different source close to Ivanka Trump told Appradab of her emergency meeting with the President in the Oval Office. Trump had been called on by multiple people, both in person in her West Wing office and from Capitol Hill, where she had multiple contacts. “The message was, ‘President Trump has to tell these people to stop. He’s the only one they’ll listen to,'” said the source, who noted Ivanka Trump was already more than aware the rioters were wreaking irretrievable damage.

In their meeting, Ivanka Trump argued her father must make an immediate, televised address to the nation, the source said. The President was hesitant, with multiple sources telling Appradab he appeared at times to enjoy watching the chaos he had unleashed unfold. Trump turned down the request for an immediate televised address, but would eventually compromise with a milquetoast version of reproach from the Rose Garden, which he then tweeted. “We love you,” he said in a recorded video to the people who forced lawmakers and staff to hide under chairs, scared for their lives. “Go home,” as though they had stayed too long at a dinner party.

“He will do what he wants to do,” said the source close to Ivanka, referring to the President. “But if she wasn’t in there yesterday, his tweets would have been a lot different,” the source added. Ivanka Trump has often received public criticism for taking credit for working “behind the scenes” on issues related to the President — and this time will likely be no exception. But the source told Appradab Wednesday’s actions were not “virtue signaling by her.”

On Thursday evening, in another prerecorded video message, the President publicly conceded for the first time that he will not serve a second term, although he stopped short of congratulating Biden. With his presidency threatened by resignations and potential impeachment, Trump acknowledged that a transfer of power to a new administration is underway.

Ivanka Trump and her brother Don Jr. later retweeted the video.

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wineanddinosaur · 4 years

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Bar Tab Venmo May Ease the Sting of Media Layoffs, But It’s Far From a Safety Net

Push alerts are the scourge of our #mobilefirst existence, so it makes sense that Megan Greenwell had turned them off for all her most used apps. It also makes sense that Venmo, the ubiquitous platform that allows strangers to seamlessly transfer one another funds by phone, was not one of those apps.

After all, who walks the earth expecting strangers to simultaneously begin sending them funds with little to no warning? In this economy?! And yet, one fateful late-October afternoon last year, that’s exactly what happened to the editor of Wired, who had helmed the sports blog Deadspin for 18 months before resigning in protest of what she saw as improper editorial meddling by the executives running the site’s parent company.

“All of a sudden like my phone was like too hot to touch because of all the Venmos coming in,” Greenwell told me in a recent phone interview. The money wasn’t for her, not all of it at least. In fall 2019, 20 of the editor’s former Deadspin colleagues began walking off the job in a principled stand against the firing of one of their own, and the site’s fans (who included millions of regular readers per month and many NYC media insiders) wanted to show their support. Greenwell had stepped up as a digital bagwoman on Twitter, posting her Venmo handle and offering to run point on disbursement of any funds collected.

And lo, did the funds roll in. To buy the erstwhile Deadspinners drinks, strangers on the internet ultimately pooled together a “healthy five figures,” says Greenwell. (This went to more than drinks; we’ll get to that in a moment.) “I was like, ‘Holy fuck, I have to figure out how to turn off my notifications!’”

‘In lieu of a better safety net’

Such is the power and majesty of the “bar tab Venmo,” a digital-age rite borne of journalistic tribalism, smartphone connectivity, and the excruciating death shudders of an ever-collapsing American media ecosystem. It’s a fairly simple exercise: When journalists find themselves out of work, other journalists — plus rank-and-file subscribers, fans of a free press, and so forth — toss a few bucks into a digital bucket as consolation beer money for the newly unemployed.

Unfortunately, layoffs have been a nearly omnipresent specter in the media business for the entire decade I’ve been in it. (This story, in fact, is expanding on an essay I wrote for my drinking culture newsletter after being laid off, for the first time, from a media gig of my own. Fun!) In that time, as shop after shop has shed writers and editors, hard-nosed reporters and soft-handed listicle jockeys, the bar tab Venmo routine has become a bit of a funeral rite.

(Apparently this is a thing that people also did with former staffers of failed Democratic presidential campaigns, which is different and honestly a little weird to me in ways that I can’t quite put my finger on right now. Anyway!)

Given how often journalists get laid off, it’s impossible to say how many of these booze-focused fundraisers have hit the timeline since Venmo was created in 2009. But in the past few years, as the digital-media balloon has deflated in an atmosphere of impossible growth goals, video pivots, and impatient, inept venture-capitalism and private-equity opportunism, they’ve gotten bigger. Due to the site’s stature and its writers’ popularity, the drive for former Deadspinners was arguably the highest-profile of the bunch. The last year and a half alone seen has similar ad-hoc efforts for journalists at BuzzFeed News, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times en Espanol, Outside Magazine … and on and on.

“I’ve spent a lot of time over the past four years or so specifically … donating to bar tab Venmos,” says Maya Kosoff, a freelance writer and editor who, back in the Before Times, wrote movingly for GEN on “the human toll of the 2019 media apocalypse” that put 3,000 journalists out of work. (Smash cut to 2020 and that number looks downright adorable next to the toll taken by pandemic-related media layoffs, which The New York Times ballparked at 36,000 back in April. And uh, folks, things have not gotten better since April!)

“It feels like you’re trying to help your fellow peers get back on their feet at a time when there’s complete instability in the industry, and no guarantee that you’re gonna find another staff job in journalism,” she added. Bar tab Venmo “is kind of in lieu of there being like a better safety net — for reporters, writers, editors, and freelancers.”

“I don’t know where I first saw people doing this,” says Amanda Mull, a staff writer for The Atlantic whose tweet about the Deadspin walkout was among those that prompted Greenwell to offer up her Venmo handle last fall. “Maybe it was an early round of BuzzFeed layoffs? I saw people doing it, so I sent some money. It seemed like just a nice thing to do, people who are losing their jobs or who are in an unstable employment situation.”

Mutual Aid in the Modern Era

Speaking of which: As the coronavirus pandemic continues its literal and figurative death march through the American economy, rolling layoffs and gobsmacking unemployment numbers have become a de rigeur part of the national discourse. There are a lot more workers (both in the media and beyond) in unstable employment situations than ever before.

As such, new conversation has sprung forth about the shortcomings of America’s dismal system of meat-grinder capitalism and what average folks — buried in student loan, perpetually renting, and/or clinging to garbage jobs they hate because the bad health benefits they get are still better than the obscenely expensive alternatives in our cartoonishly corrupt privatized healthcare industry — can do to help each other survive. Like, beyond buying each other drinks, I mean.

Workers, neighbors, marginalized groups, and more have been passing the hat to help their own cover the costs of sickness, death, and bad luck for centuries. That’s neither new (it was a staple of 19th-century fraternal lodges), nor particularly mainstream, in the United States at least. But things are shifting, according to Max Haiven, an author and professor at Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada. Rank-and-file attitudes toward mutual aid were “changing already very quickly before the pandemic, [and they’re] changing even faster right now. … What we’ve actually begun to see is that since Covid, a lot of workers who previously were not unionized are now taking forms of collective action.”

At the very least, people seem more aware of the idea. Google Trends indicates that interest in the phrase “mutual aid” has been higher than normal for virtually the entire duration of the coronavirus pandemic. That tool also suggests searches spiked directly after a police officer killed George Floyd in the street this past spring, which makes sense because American capitalism and American racism are “different” in the sense that Bud Light and Miller Lite are “different,” which is to say sort of but also not really.

What’s the connection between neighborhood grocery deliveries and strangers paying each other’s medical bills, and random Twitter avatars throwing beer money at unemployed bloggers? Ah, so glad you asked, my dear rhetorical device!

Drinks Do Not a Union Organize

To Haiven, journalism’s money-for-booze routine isn’t quite a pure expression of solidarity — it’s long on symbol, but short on substance, and is probably predicated a bit too much on journalism’s romanticized “brand” and the popularity of individual outlets and writers to constitute real movement-building action.

On that, all the journalists I spoke with for this story agreed emphatically. “Part of me is a little unsettled by the popularity aspect of it,” says Greenwell. The success or failure of a bar tab Venmo is “not determined by who needs it the most, and it’s not determined by whose circumstances were the worst in terms of their layoff or firing or whatever, it’s determined by popularity on Twitter.”

Kosoff, who received some Venmo dough herself after leaving “new Gawker” over ethical concerns regarding the site’s leadership, echoed that reservation, warning that the practice is potentially exclusionary and even “clique-y” — words more or less incompatible with true solidarity.

Another aspect of bar tab Venmo that makes it more a “solidaristic” behavior than a true form of solidarity is that the stakes are relatively low. With the exception of alcoholics who’d be wracked with delirium tremens in the absence of drink, buying rounds for writers online is not really in the same category as, say, passing the hat to help the family of a union brother slain on the job to cover funeral costs.

And contrary to what you’ve heard, not every journalist unwinds at the end of the day with several glasses of Scotch. “Sending money for booze is a heartwarming gesture and a good expression of love and solidarity for people who have been laid off,” says Hamilton Nolan, a labor reporter for In These Times and a former staffer of the various companies that have owned Deadspin. “But speaking as someone who doesn’t drink, I would suggest that an even better practice would be just donating cash to laid off workers. They can buy their own drinks, or pay the rent.”

Still, Haiven says, if labor activism occurs on a spectrum, with strikes and solidarity actions between different unions or workers organizations on one end, “on the other end of the spectrum are these like small almost seemingly insignificant acts of mutual aid, where people say ‘actually, our fates are connected.’”

“It’s kind of a culture of solidarity that could then turn into the structures of solidarity,” he adds.

Beyond the Bar Tab

Those structures, it should be noted, are already being built both outside media — and within it. After five decades of declining union density in the United States, the digital-media industry was a bright spot in the second half of the 2010s, with a wave of successful union drives, with workers at publications like Vox, New York Magazine, Deadspin, Vice, HuffPost, Salon, and many more organizing themselves to bargain for better conditions and more stability. (Disclosure: I organized at Thrillist, another digital shop that went union in that wave. We won, but it took awhile.)

So while bar tab Venmo is an imperfect vessel for building coalition across the industry, it might act as sort of a gateway drug to more substantive acts of solidarity. For one thing, it’s more for newly activated workers to send fallen coworkers beer money with a few taps on an iPhone, than to, say, write them a check for a portion of their rent, or baby formula, or whatever.

“It’s a perfect way to say like, ‘Hey, I’m thinking about you, when we’re not close enough to say “I’m thinking about you,” so here’s 20 bucks,’” muses Greenwell. Under the guise of sending a round of send-off shots, contributors were able to offer financial support that could cover actual necessities. And it did: The Deadspin fund fueled several outings with Greenwell’s former staff, but also went toward paying months of rent and buying half a dozen laptops for those writers who had previously relied on their company-issue machines. Many of those workers went on to launch Defector, one of several promising new worker-owned media co-ops seeking to reinvent a broken business with good blogs. (Maybe the drinks helped!)

Greenwell imagines mutual aid in an ideal world simply as money doled out to people who need it most, donated by those with common cause who weren’t swayed by individual popularity or, as Kosoff put it, “the stereotype of journalists as miserable sad sacks want to drink together at the bar.” Something less like a bar tab Venmo, and more like the Journalist Furlough Fund.

Launched in late March by Seattle Times reporter Paige Cornwell as a GoFundMe, the JFF is a by-journalists, for-journalists effort to plug the gaping holes in both the media industry’s broken model and the United States’ shredded social safety net. The fundraising target was $60,000, but to date the campaign has raised over $96,000 from journalists, local businesses, public-relations pros … you name it.

Speaking on the phone while coordinating wildfire coverage in Seattle, Cornwell was intent to note two things. First: “I do this independent of my employer,” she says, noting that, though the Seattle Times has been supportive of the effort, it is not a company initiative. (The Times, for what it’s worth, is a partly union newsroom; its digital journalists are currently fighting for their right to join their already-organized colleagues, of which Cornwell is one.)

The second thing Cornwell was adamant about was something every other journalist I interviewed also brought up: The sheer deficiency of crowdfunded mutual aid, even $100,000 of it, when compared to the scope of the problem at hand. Even though the JFF is much more explicitly oriented around aid than a bar tab Venmo, it pales in comparison to the broad, systematic dysfunction of the media industry.

“This isn’t a way to make up for [a laid-off journalist’s] loss,” says Cromwell. “It’s for keeping someone from the edge.” As the administrator of the fund, she’s disbursed cash to journalists across the country for daycare tuition fees, medical bills, equipment, and more. The JFF can help some journalists in a pinch, but still, “it’s not enough,” she says.

That doesn’t mean she plans to wind it down anytime soon, though. After surging in the spring, contributions to the fund have slowed, but considering that things are only getting worse in the American media business, she’s hopeful that people will contribute again if they can — if not to “fix” the media, then at least to keep more writers and editors from the meat grinder. “Someone else can figure out how to save journalism as a whole, [the JFF] will just make sure that someone will be able to buy their daughter school supplies,” she quips.

“It’s just so ridiculous that we even have to have those conversations.”

I’ll drink to that. (Please Venmo me.)

The article Bar Tab Venmo May Ease the Sting of Media Layoffs, But It’s Far From a Safety Net appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/bar-tab-venmo-layoffs/

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johnboothus · 4 years

Text

Bar Tab Venmo May Ease the Sting of Media Layoffs But Its Far From a Safety Net

‘In lieu of a better safety net’

Mutual Aid in the Modern Era

Drinks Do Not a Union Organize

“It’s kind of a culture of solidarity that could then turn into the structures of solidarity,” he adds.

Beyond the Bar Tab

“It’s just so ridiculous that we even have to have those conversations.”

I’ll drink to that. (Please Venmo me.)

The article Bar Tab Venmo May Ease the Sting of Media Layoffs, But It’s Far From a Safety Net appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/bar-tab-venmo-layoffs/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/bar-tab-venmo-may-ease-the-sting-of-media-layoffs-but-its-far-from-a-safety-net

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