Figure It Out

fuckyeahsirharder: vastderp: Being skeptical that another person can be incapacitated by a mental...

Fri, 24 May 2013 17:20:31 -0400

vastderp:

Being skeptical that another person can be incapacitated by a mental illness because you cope just fine with your problems is basically the same as saying “I don’t understand why other people’s brakes fail, because my car works great.”

I reblog this every time.

in response to the "nigga" meme: So let me get this straight: it is ok to remember and have sympathy for Irish slaves.

Fri, 24 May 2013 16:49:00 -0400

in response to the "nigga" meme: So let me get this straight: it is ok to remember and have sympathy for Irish slaves.:

bankuei:

ssssisoula:

But, no for Black slaves.

But ya’ll ain’t racist.

Ooooooookay.

Whenever anyone goes, “What about the Irish?” it’s always telling that it’s pulled out to silence people talking about Black suffering.

But if you cared about Irish slavery, poverty, race riots or being driven out of town, wouldn’t the next logical step be to say, “So let’s make sure NO ONE suffers this shit, any where, any time, again?” and have empathy for everyone else who has?

Of course, by saying it only to silence other people talking about suffering, you’re showing you don’t care about the Irish or the Blacks, in fact you’re just using one group’s suffering as a cheap rhetorical trick to reinforce white supremacy and your hatred of Black folks, as if there’s a limited amount of empathy in the world and god forbid Black people get any of it.

freckledangels:

Fri, 24 May 2013 16:06:34 -0400

freckledangels:

ai-yo: agramisbetterthanadamn: maebugrunswithlions: anarcho-qu...

Fri, 24 May 2013 15:25:49 -0400

ai-yo:

agramisbetterthanadamn:

maebugrunswithlions:

anarcho-queer:

Elderly Pakistani Man Stabbed To Death After Leaving Mosque In Birmingham

A 75-year-old man stabbed to death yards from his home may have been targeted in a racially motivated attack, according to police.

Mohammed Saleem, who used a walking stick, was stabbed three times in the back as he returned home from prayers at his local mosque in Small Heath, Birmingham, on Monday night.

The blows were struck with such violence they penetrated to the front of his body.

The father of seven also had no defensive wounds in what has been described as a swift, vicious and cowardly attack by the man leading the murder investigation, Detective Superintendent Mark Payne of West Midlands police.

Officers want to trace a white man, aged 25-32, of medium height and build, spotted on CCTV footage running near the scene of the attack around the time it happened, just before 10.30pm.

Police also want to trace a seven-seat people carrier captured on CCTV, driving near the mosque with the two male occupants, both white and in their 30s, who are considered “significant witnesses”.

In an emotional family appeal on Thursday, two of Saleem’s daughters, Shazia Khan, 45, and Nazia Maqsood, 44, called for the attackers to hand themselves in. They tearfully described their father as a “widely respected member of the community” and “much-loved”.

For just a minute, can we talk about how fucking broadcasted this would be if it was a Christian walking out of church?

The dictionary definition of terrorism states it is “The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.”

So why aren’t anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant attacks ever referred to as terrorist attacks? They seem to fit the dictionary definition perfectly.

thank you

Photo

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:58:07 -0400

thepeoplesrecord: Meet The Red Brigade: formed in November 2011...

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:54:22 -0400

thepeoplesrecord:

Meet The Red Brigade: formed in November 2011 to fight back against a growing number of sexual attacks on women in the city of Lucknow, India

The male tormentor of the young women of the Madiyav slum did not spot the danger until it was too late. One moment he was taunting them with sexual suggestions and provocations; the next they had hold of his arms and legs and had hoisted him into the air.

Then the beating began. Some of the young women lightly used their fists, others took off their shoes and hit him with those. When it was over, they let him limp away to nurse his wounds, certain that he had learned an important lesson: don’t push your luck with the Red Brigade.

Named for their bright red outfits, the Red Brigade was formed in November 2011 as a self-defense group for young women suffering sexual abuse in the northern Indian city of Lucknow, 300 miles south-east of Delhi. Galvanised by the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old medical student in Delhi last December and the nationwide protests that followed against a rising tide of rapes, they are now gaining in confidence.

From a core membership of 15, ranging in age from 11 to 25, they now have more than 100 members with a simple message for the men who have made their lives a misery: they will no longer tolerate being groped, gawped at and worse. Their activities are a lesson in empowerment.

Men who fall foul of the Red Brigade can first expect a visit and a warning. Sometimes the Red Brigade will ask the police to get involved, but if all else fails they take matters into their own hands. Their leader, 25-year-old teacher Usha Vishwakarma, has her own experience of the daily danger faced by many young women in the country. She was just 18 when a fellow teacher tried to rape her. “He grabbed me and put his hands round me and tried to open my belt and trousers,” says Usha, sitting in the bare-brick front room of her small house. “But I was saved by my jeans because they were too tight for him to open, and that gave me a chance to fight, so I kicked him in the sensitive place and pushed him down and ran out of the door.”

No one at the school took her accusations seriously, telling her to forget it and stop causing trouble. The experience left her traumatized and for two years she did nothing. But little by little her confidence came back. In 2009 she set up her own small school for local girls in an outbuilding next to her family home. Yet all around her, she says, she saw more and more young women suffering the same abuse she had faced. And it was threatening to wreck the chances of her young female students.

“Parents were telling girls to stay in their homes so there would be no incidents. They said, ‘if you go to school, boys will be troubling you, so stay home and there will be no sexual violence’,” says Vishwakarma. “But we said no, and we decided to form a group to fight for ourselves. We decided we would not just complain; we would take a lead and fight for ourselves.” They bought red kameez (shirts) and black salwar (trousers) and began to plan the fightback. “We chose red because it means danger and black for protest,” says Vishwakarma.

There is much to fight back against. “It is in the minds of men that girls are objects and it has been like that always,” says Vishwakarma. “Religion shows women as very powerless and that whoever is strong can do anything.”

They have started martial arts training so that the men do not have a physical advantage over them. Pooja, Vishwakarma’s 18-year-old sister, laughs as she recalls the reaction of the boy they grabbed in the street when his taunts became too much. “We all stopped and turned round and we surrounded him and grabbed his arms and legs and he thought it was a joke, but we were not kidding and four of us lifted him in the air and the others started to hit him with their shoes and fists,” she says.

The rough justice the Red Brigade metes out might seem extreme to western sensibilities, but many Indian women are making it clear that they are no longer prepared to put up with endemic abuse. That much is clear from the crime figures: reports of molestation in Delhi are up 590% year on year and rape reports by 147%. The rape cases have hit tourist numbers, which were down 25% in the first three months of the year – 35% fewer women are travelling to India. The Red Brigade say sexual abuse is a part of daily life for young women like them. They all have stories of abuse, attempted rapes and daily harassment. “This is what happens in India,” says 16-year-old Laxmi, one of Vishwakarma’s lieutenants. “These things happen all the time. All of us know this, so don’t let anyone say otherwise. This is why we have formed the Red Brigade.”

Seventeen-year-old Preeti Verma nods in agreement. Her family are too poor to have a toilet in the house, so she has to go out into the fields, she says. Every time she went out, the man in the neighbouring house threw stones at her to try to scare her into jumping up. “He wanted to see my body,” she says. “I told him: ‘What are you doing? You are shameless, don’t you have a mother and sister in your house?’ But he replied that his mother is for his father, his sister is for her husband and that I was for him.” She told Vishwakarma, and the man received a visit from the Red Brigade and another from the police. She has had no trouble from him since.

“We’ve caught a lot of men recently,” says 17-year-old Sufia Hashmi. “I joined up because men always used to pass comments on me and touch my body, but now we beat them the men cannot do anything and they run away. You feel powerful and you feel good.”

On the way back to the slum, the rickshaws pass a public park and for a moment these tough young women show themselves for what they really are – children forced to grow up fast. They beg and plead to stop. “Please, please,” they say, their eyes gleaming in excitement. Shrieking gleefully, they race off towards the swings, slides and roundabouts. Later they stroll back through the market, eating ice-creams, heading for their homes. The sun is low in the sky, the shadows long. The men watch sullenly as they pass. No one risks a word.

Source

Saw this on Al Jazeera this morning. I’m sure it’s gone around Tumblr in some form before.

anarcho-queer: mirrorontheworld: Trans Rights Europe Map, May...

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:49:29 -0400

anarcho-queer:

mirrorontheworld:

Trans Rights Europe Map, May 2013

The countries in orange all require by law that transgender people be sterilized before their gender identity is recognized by the state (government).

Filmmaker Brings Attention To A Latina Soldier Who Fought In The U.S. Civil War

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:43:39 -0400

fylatinamericanhistory:

nbclatino:

The U.S. military may have recently lifted the ban on women in combat, but Loreta Velazquez, a wealthy Cuban planter’s daughter who immigrated to New Orleans in 1849, secretly fought in the U.S. Civil War 150 years ago — first as a soldier in the Confederate Army, and later as a Union Army spy.

Read More

I wrote a post about this woman last year! PBS will be airing a documentary on her life today (May 24).

nitanahkohe: around this time last year people finally started...

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:38:06 -0400

nitanahkohe:

around this time last year people finally started taking notice of the food-related issues in the upper northern reaches of Canada; consider this your reminder that even since then, juice is still $26 in Pangnirtung, Nunavut, and that the predominately indigenous communities in Canada’s North are forced to pay extraordinarily exorbitant prices for basic groceries due to structural inequity and the contemporary effects of ongoing settler occupation.

submissivefeminist: TW: Sexual Assault A friend of mine was...

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:15:14 -0400

submissivefeminist:

TW: Sexual Assault

A friend of mine was sexually assaulted out to dinner with a professor. When she told her story to her adviser, a dear friend of ours, she told him she wore a turtleneck and long pants and described her outfit. He cut her off and told her, “I don’t care if you were wearing a fucking bikini—nobody has the right to touch you.”

I think that was the first time in the whole process of talking to cops and administrators about what happened where someone actually told her it wasn’t her fault.

They make it about the clothes, the situation—“Why did you agree to dinner? Why didn’t you take your own car? Did you lead him on? For once, someone made it about her and her rights. I think this helped her most of all in the process. Everyone needs to respond like this to survivors, in my opinion.

"Hip-hop was a problem because an underclass that had been left to die didn’t, and instead created a..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:09:26 -0400

“Hip-hop was a problem because an underclass that had been left to die didn’t, and instead created a music decrying their conditions that was vivid, troubling and beautiful, a declaration of existence in the face of those who’d condemned them to oblivion. It screwed up the narrative, and thus was born an anti-rap racism in which symptom became cause, laments of violence and deprivation becoming justifications for violence and deprivation. Anti-rap racists hear rap music as proof that black men pose a uniquely violent danger to the American status quo, even as the entire trajectory of that status quo suggests it’s the other way around. As theories of history go it’s both aggressively incorrect and depressingly unoriginal.
…
Disliking hip-hop doesn’t make you a racist any more than liking hip-hop makes you not a racist, and I’m sure there are plenty of Stormfront enthusiasts with Rick Ross in their iTunes. If you don’t like Jay-Z because you just don’t like the way he sounds, or you’re sick of his cloying ubiquity, or you wish he’d talk about something other than where he’s from for five seconds—hey, I’m not mad, I don’t like Bruce Springsteen for the same reasons. But if you don’t like rap music—a genre that contains multitudes—because of a self-satisfied moralism, or because you’re scared of it, or because you wish those people would stop talking about their problems and get out of your television and radio and kids’ bedrooms: well.

And I’m not just talking about the American right, I’m talking about all the well-meaning white folks who’ve told me how they want to like Lil Wayne but lo, the misogyny, the violence, the drugs. But, but, I’ll say: Bob Dylan aced misogyny; the Rolling Stones sang about violence; the Velvet Underground knew their way around some drugs. Yeeeah, but it’s different, they’ll say, elongating that “yeah” with conspiratorial inflection: you know what I mean. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

Rap music doesn’t get unarmed kids shot to death, “it’s different” does. “It’s different” infuses “these assholes always get away” and gives solace to people who hear that sound bite and nod their empty heads in agreement. “It’s different” is the same logic that suggests a teenager’s skin color combined with the music he listened to means he had it coming, and it’s the same logic that lets a bunch of people feign outrage over a teenager’s use of the n-word to describe himself when they’re really just outraged that he beat them to the punch.”

- GOOD || America Is Dying Slowly (via drinkyourjuice)

"Fifa to introduce mandantory five match ban for racism and points deductions for clubs"

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:02:08 -0400

"Fifa to introduce mandantory five match ban for racism and points deductions for clubs":

Fifa will follow England’s lead and bring in a mandatory five-match ban for players found guilty of racism plus point deductions for clubs where fans are serial offenders.

spider-mannam-redips: drappleluv: goldenbug0: princess-potterh...

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:55:34 -0400

spider-mannam-redips:

drappleluv:

goldenbug0:

princess-potterheadxo:

did she get a haircut

no she’s not in uniform

Is that a new bow?

I swear she lightened her hair.

knowledgeequalsblackpower: dreamingofhalab: Body Count by...

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:05:39 -0400

knowledgeequalsblackpower:

dreamingofhalab:

Body Count by Religion- has Islam historically been the cause of most world violence and conflict?

Results of a study done by the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute in Amman, Jordan- on the death toll for both violence in general and specifically, genocide (from 0-2008 BCE).

The study found that Muslim societies/governments were responsible for less than 6% of violence in general historically, and less than 8% of genocides historically.

Period: You want cookies

Thu, 23 May 2013 23:08:49 -0400

Period: You want cookies
Period: You want to fuck
Period: You want to fuck while eating cookies.
Period: Let's be sad about trivial things, shall we?
Period: Kill them.
Period: Kill them too.
Period: Kill them and eat their cookies.
Period: Shhhh it's okay you'll feel better soon.
Period: HAHAHAHAHA NO YOU WON'T FUCK YOU.

photolies: untitled by zulfiyag on Flickr.

Thu, 23 May 2013 23:01:44 -0400

photolies:

untitled by zulfiyag on Flickr.

Photo

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:59:07 -0400

brutalgeneration: (by nick hopper)

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:57:28 -0400

brutalgeneration:

(by nick hopper)

anarcho-queer: NYPD Data Proves White People Are More Likely To...

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:56:03 -0400

anarcho-queer:

NYPD Data Proves White People Are More Likely To Possess Drugs Or A Weapon Than Racial Minorities When Stopped, Yet 84% of Stop & Frisk Victims Are Black/Latino

During the just-concluded trial on the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program, the city argued that officers’ disproportionate targeting of black and Latino New Yorkers was not due to racial profiling but because each stopped individual was doing something suspicious at the time. The data, however, tells a different story: weapons and drugs were more often found on white New Yorkers during stops than on minorities, according to the Public Advocate’s analysis of the NYPD’s 2012 statistics.

White New Yorkers make up a small minority of stop-and-frisks, which were 84 percent black and Latino residents. Despite this much higher number of minorities deemed suspicious by police, the likelihood that stopping an African American would find a weapon was half the likelihood of finding one on a white person.

• The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded a weapon was half that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered a weapon in one out every 49 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 71 stops of Latinos and 93 stops of African Americans to find a weapon.

• The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded contraband was one-third less than that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered contraband in one out every 43 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 57 stops of Latinos and 61 stops of African Americans to find contraband.

It’s unlikely that the appropriate lesson to take from these findings is that stops of white people should increase because they are more likely to carry weapons and drugs. Rather, they suggest that police are excessively targeting minorities. Officers may be netting more successful stops of white New Yorkers because they are only likely to stop a white person when they actually suspect that person of committing a crime. Considering one officer’s testimony that superiors explicitly directed him to target young black men, minorities are judged by a much more flexible definition of “reasonable suspicion.”

In general, stop-and-frisk has proven to be remarkably ineffective; nearly 89 percent of all stops result in no charges. The city has also had to settle a surging number of civil rights lawsuits against police to the tune of $22 million in one year.

Photo

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:17:01 -0400