Would everybody please remain in a moment of silence to remember of young Ronin Shimizu, 12 year old cheerleader, bullied to suicide on Wednesday, December 3rd.
Rest In Peace Ronin Shimizu
I want this to be everywhere.
(Source: riot-company)
23 times America failed black people in 2014
Without question, black people dominated news coverage this year, but often not for reasons many would celebrate.
As America witnessed the killings of unarmed black people by police, the reality of a broken justice system, the perpetuation of various anti-black stereotypes and racism rearing its head within many major institutions, the country had no choice but to face its racial demons head-on.
Here are but a few of the many moments when the country failed its black citizens in 2014.
(Source: darvinasafo)
if u weren’t aware of salvation army’s homophobia, its prety hardcore
a guy in a salvos truck yelled at me and my gf while we were kissing today so I was thinking of this
Do you know, when I was in high-school I went to the mall near my house with my girlfriend to do some Christmas shopping.
We were there, sixteen year old me and seventeen year old her, holding hands and window-shopping, minding our own business.
This Salvation Army shitheel gets aggro about it in the middle of the mall and I’m there totally flabbergasted cause like, it’s christmas
Only, 16!Tabi had even less composure than 26!Tabi, so I lost my fucking mind on her.
Thing is: when I’m really angry, I don’t rage, I go all cold and apparently that freaks people out, because I could see my gf backing up and the lady getting tense and then I realized that anger doesn’t solve problems.
So instead, I started wailing.
Picture this: 5’4, tiny, blonde haired high school girl with her little violin on her back and pearls in her ears just as PTA-approved as could be, full on sobbing in the hallway.
Just, sobbing like my dog’s been shot.
Now my gf’s like, “oh fuck” and the lady’s like “oh fuuuuck!” and I’m here, head thrown back, tears down my cheeks and in that shrill, distressed, /loud/ voice, “WHY WOULD YOU B-b-be so MEAN?! It’s CHRISTMAS!”
And the lady’s like “please stop Oh fuck” because now we have a crowd, and this Molly Weasley of a woman putters over, “what’s the matter, dear?”
And mall security’s coming and this bell ringer is looking very uncomfortable so I just look at this matronly ellen-watching suburban housewife lady, eyes wide and wet and my lip wobbling.
"I was, she s-said, s-s-she said I was going to HELL!"
And I burst right back into tears.
Maaaaaaaan, they didn’t even stick around to ask why she’d said it. Soon as I said it, Mall po-po bounced her like a fucking pogo stick.
We get outside and my girlfriend’s like “that is the most Slytherin thing I have ever seen anyone do.”
It was four years before I saw the Army back in that mall.
that is beautiful
Do not give those annoying bell ringers a DIME. Save it and donate it to a local food bank or homeless shelter or somewhere else that isn’t blatantly homophobic.
That story, though. The bell ringer deserved to fucking feel horrible.
becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys:
Source For more facts follow Ultrafacts
YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. Those are the countries. It will be drought-resistant species, mostly acacias. And this is a fucking brilliant idea you have no idea oh my Christ
This will create so many jobs and regenerate so many communities and aaaaaahhhhhhh
more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall
it’s already happening, and already having positive effects. this is wonderful, why have i not heard of this before? i’m so happy!
Oh yes, acacia trees.
They fix nitrogen and improve soil quality.
And, to make things fun, the species they’re using practices “reverse leaf phenology.” The trees go dormant in the rainy season and then grow their leaves again in the dry season. This means you can plant crops under the trees, in that nitrogen-rich soil, and the trees don’t compete for light because they don’t have any leaves on.
And then in the dry season, you harvest the leaves and feed them to your cows.
Crops grown under acacia trees have better yield than those grown without them. Considerably better.
So, this isn’t just about stopping the advancement of the Sahara - it’s also about improving food security for the entire sub-Saharan belt and possibly reclaiming some of the desert as productive land.
Of course, before the “green revolution,” the farmers knew to plant acacia trees - it’s a traditional practice that they were convinced to abandon in favor of “more reliable” artificial fertilizers (that caused soil degradation, soil erosion, etc).
This is why you listen to the people who, you know, have lived with and on land for centuries.
This makes me so happy you have no idea.
[…]One week ago, Tamir Rice, 12 years old, was fatally shot by a police officer while playing at a park.
Officials claim that proper procedure was followed.
And we all know what comes next: “He was a thug.” “He had it coming.”
I’m sure someone will find a photo, maybe one as innocuous as him holding a basket of flowers, or as a baby, being bathed.
And who among you will then see a criminal, instead of a child? Who is willing to learn from history? And which history will you learn from?
How does perception shape our society?
How can you change this?
The smear campaign against Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old murder victim, has already begun.
Since I made this post…
Deandre Joshua, 20, was shot once in the head and then set on fire inside his car in Ferguson, Missouri. He had been friends since childhood with one of the young men who had been walking with Mike Brown when he was murdered by police.
Where does it end?
I live in a nation where John Crawford III can be murdered by the police while walking around with a TOY gun he picked up from the shelves of the store he was shopping at, while talking no the telephone with his family:
And yet, in the same nation, white people can walk around with REAL guns in the SAME stores (Walmart), inexplicably without being murdered:
I live in a nation where this woman’s cashier is more likely to be murdered by the police than the woman she is ringing up, who is holding a REAL semi-automatic rifle:
And instead of addressing the real problems, we see new legislation like and headlines like this:
I do not think the color of the guns is the problem.
I do not think that regulating TOY guns is the solution.
Not only is the United States refusing to learn from its own history, it is refusing the learn from its present.
The United Nations Committee Against Torture expresses deep concern over the "frequent and recurrent police shootings or fatal pursuits of unarmed black individuals."
Where does it end?
All of this is a problem of society and culture. Black lives are devalued, Black people are dehumanized, and all of this is not about “hurt feelings”. It’s about the systematic persecution and murder of human beings, and that murder going unpunished. It is about these men, women and children being blamed for their own deaths in the media.
This is a history blog, but racism is not “in the past”. It is alive, well, and murdering men, women and children right now.
This isn’t an “opinion”, this is a measurable FACT.
A Pew study found that 63% of white and 20% of black people think that Michael Brown’s death at the hands of Darren Wilson is not about race.
Those people are wrong.
African Americans are, in fact, far more likely to be killed by police. Among young men, blacks are 21 times more likely to die at the hands of police than their white counterparts.
But, are they more likely to precipitate police violence? No. The opposite is true. Police are more likely to kill black people regardless of what they are doing. In fact, “the less clear it is that force was necessary, the more likely the victim is to be black” (source).
In the face of this rampant evil, where is the limit? There are people who will still blame these victims of violence for violence.
I can only quote Jay Smooth:
Riots are things that human beings do because human beings have limits.
We don’t all have the same limits. For some of us, our human limit is when our favorite team loses a game. For some of us, it’s when our favorite team wins a game.
The people of Ferguson had a different limit than that. For the people of Ferguson, a lifetime of neglect and defacto segregation and incompetence and mistreatment by every level of government was not their limit.
When that malign neglect set the stage for one of their children to be shot down and left in the street like a piece of trash… that was not their limit.
For the people of Ferguson, spending one hundred days almost entirely peacefully protesting for some measure of justice for that child and having their desire for justice treated like a joke by every local authority… was not their limit.
And then after those 100 days, when the so-called prosecutor waited till the dead of night to twist that knife one last time. When he came out and confirmed once and for all that Michael Brown’s life didn’t matter…
Only then did the people of Ferguson reach their limit.
So when you look at what happened Monday night, the question you should be asking is how did these human beings last that long before they reached their human limit? How do black people in America retain such a deep well of humanity that they can be pushed so far again and again without reaching their human limit?
The history of the United States is steeped in murder, enslavement, genocide, and worse.
The present of the United States is steeped in murder, enslavement, genocide, and worse.
If you scrolled past this trying to just get past this to go back to photos Benedict Cumberbatch or whoever the fuck, GO BACK AND ACTUALLY LOOK AT THE FACES OF THE INNOCENT PEOPLE WHO ARE BEING KILLED BY POLICE. SPREAD AWARENESS.WHITE SILENCE IS WHITE CONSENT.
BE ANGRY. STAY ANGRY. TURN ANGER INTO CHANGE.
BLACK.
LIVES.
MATTER.
"For us, it was a small little idea and the idea of it was about creating a character for young girls who might have grown up like myself or like my nieces and my nephews too, who represent a certain minority that is completely misunderstood. So a little of it was about that. but also changing the face of what it looks like to be a hero.”Sana Amanat, editor and co-creator of Kamala Khan, discusses Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel on Independent Sources Covers Diversity in Comics at NYCC
THIS SHOULD ALSO MAKE YOU ENRAGED.
POLICE BRUTALITY TOWARDS BLACK WOMEN EXISTS.
BLACK WOMEN (ESPECIALLY TRANSGENDER) ARE GETTING MURDERED, RAPED, AND BRUTALIZED BY THE POLICE AND ARE BEING BLAMED FOR **THEIR** ACTIONS.
DON’T SLEEP ON POLICE BRUTALITY TOWARDS BLACK WOMEN.
Her name is Miyekko Durden-Bosley and she’s 23.
The cop punched her in the face while she was in handcuffs and fractured her orbital bone.
chillona , her name is in this version
(Source: iwriteaboutfeminism)
(Source: sassyuchiha)