41 shots
41 shots
41 shots
41 shots
41 shots
41 shots
41 shots
41 shots....
and we'll take that ride
'cross this bloody river 
to the other side 
41 shots... cut through the night 
You're kneeling over his body in the vestibule 
Praying for his life 


Is it a gun, is it a knife 
Is it a wallet, this is your life 
It ain't no secret 
(It ain't no secret)
It ain't no secret
(It ain't no secret)
No secret my friend 
You can get killed just for living in
Your American skin 


41 shots
41 shots
41 shots
41 shots
41 shots and 
Lena gets her son ready for school 
She says "on these streets, Charles 
You've got to understand the rules 
If an officer stops you
Promise me you'll always be polite, 
that you'll never ever run away
Promise Mama you'll keep your hands in sight"

Milkee Mountain Mama - Most female-specific stereotypes are based in the...

Milkee Mountain Mama - Most female-specific stereotypes are based in the...

“

Most female-specific stereotypes are based in the universal fear of an unbridled and autonomous female sexuality. For women on welfare, this is complicated by their assumed undesirability and dependency on a patriarchal state economic system as well as the physical and material ways that poverty and working class lifestyles are visible on the body. Women on welfare are perceived and discriminated against in terms of their sexual activity and their body image. It is assumed that loose sexual morals or deviant desires placed them in the shameful status of poor; but not just poor—poor women that no man wants or that men only want for one thing.

As a teenage girl from a welfare family I automatically was labeled as SLUT, actually long before I was a teenager, by the time I was nine. There are two kinds of girls, those you marry and those you don’t—if you are poor you are a don’t. My sexuality was named and positioned before I was sexual. Adults were constantly deciding that their sons and daughters were not allowed to be around me and especially not allowed in my house/apartment (whatever it happened to be that month)…

I have also been noting how the assumptions of ignorance particularly diminish poor women and the incredible brilliance they operate in. Stupid girls make easy girls.

”

—

—Tammy Rae Carland, “Reflections of a Stupid Slut” (from I <3 Amy Carter)

Dear Hugo Schwyzer,

Poverty does not make girls, as you say, hypsersexualized, competitive, and promiscuous. Being poor (or being nonwhite) makes rich, white, sexist men project their own feelings about the availability and worth of poor and nonwhite women onto their bodies in order to justify abusing them.

(via rgr-pop)

Nerdshares - washingtonpoststyle: Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.)...

Nerdshares - washingtonpoststyle: Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.)...

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) dons a hoodie on the House floor, recites Bible verses, and is removed from the rostrum for violating clause 5 of House rule 17, which prohibits the wearing of hats during a session. More here.

"To be rich like Wharton may be what all of us secretly or not so secretly want, but privilege like hers isn’t easy to like; it puts her at a moral disadvantage. She was deeply conservative, opposed to socialism, unions, and woman suffrage, intellectually attracted to the relentless world view of Darwinism, hostile to the rawness and noise and vulgarity of America. Her biographers supply this signal image of the artist at work: writing in bed after breakfast and tossing the completed pages on the floor, to be sorted and typed up by her secretary. Wharton did have one potentially redeeming disadvantage: she wasn’t pretty. The fine quip of one of Wharton’s contemporary reviewers—that she wrote like a masculine Henry James—could also be applied to her social pursuits: she wanted to be with the men and to talk about the things men talked about. An odd thing about beauty, however, is that its absence tends not to arouse our sympathy as much as other forms of privation do. To the contrary, Edith Wharton might well be more congenial to us now if, alongside her other advantages, she’d looked like Grace Kelly or Jacqueline Kennedy..."

-Jonathan Franzen in the New Yorker, on Edith Wharton, or rather, on how Edith Wharton was ugly

Breaking news! Sexist male writers not only write female characters in sexist ways in their books, but also write about other female writers in sexist ways! Of course Edith Wharton's face is a huge part of of what defines her, because, didn't you know, she had vagina! And women (w/ or w/out vagina btw) are all so largely defined by their beauty, or according to Jonathan Franzen's opinion in Edith Wharton's case, the lack thereof. I for one would find it extremely refreshing if Jonathan Franzen's writing is talked about alongside his beauty, or well, at the risk of coming off petty, although I think we can all largely agree, his lack thereof. My acknowledgement that this is a petty thing to do, talking about a writer's appearance as a focal point of their identity and significant contributing factor to their work, is more consideration than he is willing to grant Wharton. Which says a lot about just how big of a dick he is.

Project Unbreakable

Project Unbreakable from Nino Gallego on Vimeo.

6 Images of Kids Too Insane to Be Real (That Totally Are) | Cracked.com

6 Images of Kids Too Insane to Be Real (That Totally Are) | Cracked.com

#1. Riot Kid

The Riot Kid photo has become an icon for resistance despite overwhelming odds. It's easy to see why: This is a pure visual representation of the most powerful thing in the world - that unique slurry of bravery, fury and complete lack of self-preservation that can topple governments and tear down entire societies. The riot kid is simultaneously inspiring, funny, and awesome, and if you don't want to whip a bottle into a corrupt wall of faceless facist automatons after seeing this, then congratulations on finding this website through the ReThink filter, worker #264XJ6, but authorities have been alerted and are on their way. Please remain calm and fill out form 27b stroke 6 while you await their arrival, to best facilitate your transition to the Purification Factories.

For the rest of us, Riot Kid is emblematic of every wandering fuck not given. He's scrawny, alone, half the size of his enemies, and he just does not seem to care. Those cops are going to get their god damn heads bashed open, and that is just a fact; the sun rises in the east, sets in the west, and some motherfuckers are going to get their mullet-helmets caved in today.

Once again, this kind of photo doesn't seem to need context, but context still changes everything. The picture originally comes from photographer Evandro Monteiro, and was taken during a police action in Sao Paulo, Brazil. And while we look at an image like this and recognize what it inspires in us all, we still kind of assume the kid was just joking around. The boy probably didn't know what he was doing at the time; he was just making funny faces at the cops until his panicked mother could sprint in and sweep him away. But then here's another image of the riot kid from Monteiro's portfolio that implies otherwise:

So not only was he actually standing out in that street, alone, hurling rocks at the police (which is way more impetus than they need in Sao Paulo to beat some ghetto kid to death,) but he was so overcome with rage afterward that he stripped to the waist, slammed his jacket to the dirt, puffed out his chest and dared them to make a move. This was not a joke, or a childish prank. This was life or death.

Literally.

The photographer has this child tagged as a 'street boy.' That's not a generic descriptor. In Sao Paulo 'street child' refers to a specific type of young homeless in the city. There are thousands, if not millions of them in Brazil, and they're largely considered pests. Roughly 20% of police homicides in Sao Paulo are minors. In fact, the street children are so reviled that in some places, local shopkeepers and low-level politicians actually put out bounties on their heads to the tune of about $50 per kid. As a result, masked death squads rove the streets of Brazil at night, eliminating children.

And while that knowledge is incredibly awful, and gut-churning, and heart-dropping, and just makes you want to burn this whole miserable species to the ground and hope that nature knows enough to start from scratch this time, it also drastically magnifies the importance of this image.

This is not the same as a white, English-speaking child playing at revolutionary because he's got the implied protection of society. This boy is not joking, and he is not safe. If he's really a 'street child,' then those cops he's challenging are the men that might make half a week's pay for murdering him, and would face little to no reprisal for it. And if he really is a 'street child,' then he is utterly alone up there: It's unlikely any of the other people in those photos have a vested interest in whether he lives or dies.

And he simply does.

Not.

Care.

Because there is nothing on this earth - not overwhelming odds, nor brutal police states, nor fear, nor violence, nor the kind of horrible, devouring apathy that makes things like death squads for children possible - that will ever, from now until the heat death of this whole screwed universe, force this kid to sit down and put his fucking shirt back on.

uhhh is this true about brazil? what the fuck are you kidding me brazil?

ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME WITH THIS SHIT ESPN

i'm also resentful toward the fact that i'm made to allow espn any bit and form of relevance in my life, even if just to say FUCK YOUR FUCKING RACIST PIECE OF SHIT ASS ESPN

I Will Show You Things

I Will Show You Things

roseanne love.

...and since we're talking about mainstream news, any talk of whitney houston's death/decline should include her history of domestic abuse and all kinds of emotional and physical fuckery she had to endure, instead of obsessing over her fucking drug addiction. drug addiction is a SIGN of a troubled life, not the ROOT of it. (same goes for amy winehouse.) every mainstream report i've read talks about whitney's marriage with bobby brown as "tumultuous" or "volatile" while refusing to acknowledge and clearly state the abuse that went on which was widely gossiped and joked about before she died. it's fucking disgusting this virtually audible "sigh" and head-shaking extant in these reports about their "love-hate" relationship, while ignoring the very real violence that was done to her when she was alive, and how that might have contributed to her early death.

Jeremy Lin’s Grandmother Watches, Along With Taiwan - NYTimes.com

Jeremy Lin’s Grandmother Watches, Along With Taiwan - NYTimes.com

Justin Guariglia/Redux, for The New York TimesJeremy Lin's surprising star turn with the Knicks has created legions of basketball fans in Taiwan, including his grandmother Lin Chu A Muen.By KEITH BRADSHERPublished: February 15, 2012

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Long before Jeremy Lin began winning games in spectacular style for the Knicks, his Taiwanese grandmother, Lin Chu A Muen, came to the United States to look after him as a young child while his parents worked. She diapered and fed him and, as he grew up, cooked big batches of fried rice with dried turnips and egg, a Taiwanese favorite.

i love every minute of the jeremy lin phenomenon, all the hype and the (surprisingly relatively limited) hate, the sensationalizing as well as the long overdue reflection on race and stereotype, subtle and overt alike. but this really touched me. how this 23 year old got the world's attention, hailed as the perfect sportsman, the inspirational underdog, the cinderella story that if not broke at least pushed boundaries, and here is his grandmother, a continent away, proud because she got to give, got to nurture, got to participate in the success through her care for him. i mean, really, on how many women's backs are these men's successes built upon? these women who fed and washed, cooked and cleaned, who devoted their time and energy to endless mundane tasks and are rewarded by bearing witness to another's success, but rarely their own. that gloria steinem quote about how no man can be considered progressive or advocate of fair play, if his work depends in any way on unpaid or underpaid labor of women at home or in the house- there is just so much painful truth in it. these care-giving women, the world pay them a lot of lip service, praising the selflessness of motherhood, thanking the females for all their sacrifices in order to advance their male's careers. but women are still treated like shit, their hard work taken for granted, their personal value independent of what they can do for another ignored and erased. and like i said, i'm loving all of this, and i'm, you know, feeling a lot of feelings, as i'm wont to do, toward jeremy lin, and a lot of them are positive, like excitement, fascination, and pride, etc, but this is just fucking sad, because i just don't know when i'll get to see someone i can really identify with, a girl, a woman, achieve such universal mainstream recognition, partly because this girl might have been assigned the tasks of frying rice and changing diapers so that a dude could go off to become a jeremy lin. 

in conclusion, jeremy lin is awesome, but sexism sucks. 

and yeah, i may or may not post a lot about him in the months to come...

...probably because all y'all white asses have been posting about white motherfuckers since, oh i dunno, THE INTERNET.

haters can kiss his amazingly talented taiwanese american jesus loving ass.

AFRICOM and the Recolonization of Africa - Cynthia McKinney on GRTV - YouTube.flv - YouTube

AFRICOM and the Recolonization of Africa - Cynthia McKinney on GRTV - YouTube.flv - YouTube

i don't know nearly enough about politics regarding the african continent outside of the basic imperialism/colonialism/exploitation narratives. but man what i have been exposed to coming from cynthia mckinney hasn't stopped making sense to me.

to clarify | NOWARIAN || nowhere-ian || no-wherian || nothere-ian

to clarify | NOWARIAN || nowhere-ian || no-wherian || nothere-ian

"WHERE DID THE MONEY GO? Last week’s headlines, ledes and nut graphs screamed this question. An American reporter brought it up on a USAID teleconference, her delivery particularly indignant: where did all that money go? $10 billion pledged, $4.5 billion pledged, only half delivered, dispersed, spent, $155 per Haitian, $173 per Haitian, $200 000 for a country director salary, and people are still in tents, where did it all go?

Underlying much of this talk are a few major assumptions. The first, and most revealing, is that spending fixes things. The money that was pledged — Was it not enough? Was it too much? If all those billions of dollars had been spent, rather than just some of them, would Haiti be in top shape by now? There is no nuanced breakdown of how money is spent in a program, of how much is actually needed to deliver specific services or supplies. I’ve seen NGOs struggle with enormous AmCross grants, overwhelmed over how to spend tens- or hundreds-of-millions of dollars in a set period. Other programs, meanwhile, have languished for lack of financial support–not to speak of the chronically cash-starved state.

The money must be spent! Restricted funds, unrestricted funds, emergency response funds, development programme funds. There are submenus to be explored in this monetary breakdown, and sub-questions to pose. Stepping back further: What does the charity spending impulse reveal? What does the bang-for-your-donated-buck demand reveal? Pouring money into a fractured aid system and then being upset that bothersome problems like homelessness and poverty haven’t been solved after two years is a cocktail that gives me the worst kind of headache."

where did the money go? that was also the question that i asked repeatedly regarding Haiti, following all the post quake reports. i had sort of a mini dialogue about charity the other day, and i expressed a lot of things i'm still thinking over, and not to take away all of the good will and effort and compassion driving charitable acts, there are aspects of it that i find problematic: the hierarchy that is intentionally or inadvertently created, and the fact that it seems often to be about easing the symptoms instead of treating the cure, or even prolonging the process of suffering through the momentary relief that masks the deep-rooted systematic injustice. i mean, i feel like a dick saying this, i really do. i have to keep a lot of my thought patterns in check, because they make me indifferent, or inconsiderate, or worst and often, elitist. but maybe there is a possibility of reinventing charity, pushing for a revised definition, that it can evolve to take a different shape, something that doesn't carry with it the loaded expectations and acidic aftertaste of condescension. or maybe that's just my cynicism showing?

i reconcile with the accusations of domestic violence by means of objectification. no i do not experience impulse to nurture you. however i don't mind fantasizing hot steamy fuck with that face and body.

Life's Too Short And How It's Not Awesome

Can we talk about how terrible, lazy, and just generally mean-spirited Life's Too Short is? I mean, really, how many jokes can you spin revolving Warwick Davis being short? Yes, he's deluded and therefore deserves to be mocked for that. Yes, he's self-absorbed and a dick and therefore deserves to be exposed and further mocked for that. But the fact that he has to hustle is somehow used as opportunities to put him in toilets and garbage bins with the intention of getting people to laugh at how ridiculous he is, cause hey look! A small person in the toilet! Hey look a small person forced to hide in a trash can cause Helena Bonham Carter makes him! A small person who can't even get off his own vehicle right without falling over! Ha ha! Not to mention how embarrassing the rigor Ricky Gervais has put into defending this recycled derivative unfunny pile of fail.

In Extras, Andy and Maggie are asked to do a lot of humiliating things, and put into embarrassing situations. But the audience are still meant to root for them. We're on their side, because they are made real to us. Yes, it's funny sometimes to see people made fun of, slighted, or mistreated in other ways. So much of comedy involves scenarios that if happen to ourselves in real life, would cause a substantial amount of psychological and even physical damage. It makes us feel better to know we would never be this unlucky, this silly, this degraded. Or for those of us who have, it's probably comforting that others can relate to it in ways that lessen its severity. Likewise, in The Office, there are some characters that are one-note throughout, but the central peronalities are humanized so that despite their often obnoxious behavior, we are still capable of empathizing with them. David Brent is your quintessential anti-hero, but when he was made redundant, his visible vulnerability conjures in us sympathy.

There is none of that in Life's Too Short. The whole direction of the characterization doesn't seem to be about  humanizing Warwick Davis, but turning him into a caricature. The more we watch, and I've watched all 7 episodes now, the more predictable and two dimensional he becomes. If he sees his ex-wife, you can bet he is going to try to impress her in desperate, pathetic manners that would backfire. In fact, that's pretty much his whole deal, wanting to impress but always having the attempts end in humiliation and chaos. He never knows any better, because he never learns. Another persistent aspect to him is his need to hustle. Because surprise, it ain't easy to make it in Hollywood being a dwarf. But this particular dwarf deserves all the shit, and a lot of it discriminatory shit, thrown his way, because, hey, he's kind of an asshole anyway. Plenty of people have raised the issue of exploitation. One response from Gervais is tweeting Davis 'I love how people respect your right to BE a dwarf but not PLAY one on TV. How dare you? Be small in private OK?Sicko!'

This falls in line with the false dichotomies that Gervais like to uphold- people who can't laugh at AIDS must be prudes, lacking a developed sense of humor; people who are religious must not have reason and aren't enlightened; people who object to the portrayal of Warwick Davis in Life's Too Short must be bigots who can't bear to have dwarves on their TV screens. The reality is, most people, if not everyone, who question whether or not the series is problematic to say the least, aren't taking issue with a dwarf playing one on TV. That is an intentionally simplistic view put forth to obfuscate the real discussion.The concern is how you characterize the dwarf, how you might be using something that is systematically used to marginalize him without a lot of insight or consideration, how you might even be contributing to the marginalization and stereotype, regardless of whether or not that was your intention, because there simply doesn't seem to be a lot of thought put into building a complex, three-dimensional character, someone that the audience can identify with. Now you can argue that maybe this has so far all been a built-up to his ultimate transformation, to maximize the impact when a different side of him is finally shown. But seven episodes is enough time for at least glimpses of that to seep through. Yet so far, nil.

The reason that I mentioned Extras and The Office, and I will add another film of Gervais', Cemetery Junction, an unremarkable film in every way, but in which a working class family is shown in a positive light despite their socioeconomic status as well as their personal failings, Gervais has always been the one proclaiming the heart must be there for the stories and the comedy to work, and I completely agree. I appreciate his past attempts to create story lines that don't often take the center stage in our culture. I appreciate being made to sympathize with characters who have to do a lot of demeaning shit, who make questionable choices, who struggle to reach goals that might seem trivial or unrealistic to us. Again, there is none of that in Life's Too Short. We're invited to laugh at him, and that's it. And yeah, I think this makes Gervais kind of a bully.

And the jokes aren't even funny.

Nearly 1 in 5 Women in U.S. Survey Report Sexual Assault - NYTimes.com

Nearly 1 in 5 Women in U.S. Survey Report Sexual Assault - NYTimes.com

"An exhaustive government survey of rape and domestic violence released on Wednesday affirmed that sexual violence against women remains endemic in the United States and in some instances may be far more common than previously thought.
Nearly one in five women surveyed said they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape at some point, and one in four reported having been beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women have been stalked, according to the report.
“That almost one in five women have been raped in their lifetime is very striking and, I think, will be surprising to a lot of people,” said Linda C. Degutis, director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which conducted the survey.
“I don’t think we’ve really known that it was this prevalent in the population,” she said."

this came out a while ago and it seems redundant cause you know, if you've actually talked to people, this is not news. again and again what's shocking is this isn't gonna be enough to make people care.