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On this Memorial Day, I would like to remember all of the countless innocent victims of war who have been raped, maimed, or murdered because of the fear, greed, shortsightedness, and stupidity of people in power. I would like to remember the landscapes that have been decimated, poisoned, and irradiated out of all of their splendor and usefulness. I would like to call out the military industrial complex that uses a spectacular propaganda campaign to convince poor people all around the world—with the allure of glory, patriotic superiority, rations, and “safety”—that they are each others’ enemies. I would like to implore those soldiers who serve to please think and try, if they can, to find another way to survive. The system does not care about its soldiers and the evidence is in how they’re treated once they return from raising hell in some distant land. Every homeless or untreated mentally ill or unemployed veteran is proof that the military industrial complex cares about its soldiers to the degree that they’re guard dogs and cannon fodder; to the degree that they can secure resources for the wealthiest 1%; resources which poor soldiers will scarcely benefit from, if at all. On this Memorial Day, my greatest wish is for REAL justice and LASTING peace.
Ashe.
” — Son of Baldwin (via sonofbaldwin)“”…The institution of marriage is not under attack as a result of the President’s words. Marriage was under attack years ago by men who viewed women as property and children as trophies of sexual prowess. Marriage is under attack by low wages, high incarceration, unfair tax policy, unemployment, and lack of education. Marriage is under attack by clergy who proclaim monogamy yet think nothing of stepping outside the bonds of marriage to have multiple affairs with “preaching groupies.” Same-gender couples did not cause the high divorce rate, but our adolescent views of relationships and our inability as a community to come to grips with the ethic of love and commitment did. We still confuse sex with love and romance with commitment…” ~ Rev. Otis Moss, III, Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois”
What We Aren’t Talking About When We Talk About ‘White Privilege’ -
“We’re white feminists. We aren’t white just because our ancestors were mostly European. We are white because we regularly experience being identified as such by individuals and institutions that systematically favor those who appear white over those who don’t. We aren’t feminists just because we have degrees and teach in Gender and Women’s Studies. We are feminists because we are committed to dismantling the structures that systematically favor men over women, heterosexuals over non-heterosexuals, the rich over the poor, and, amongst many other oppressions, white people over people of color…” ~ By Theresa Warburton and Joshua Cerretti for The Feminist Wire
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[…] I want to pay homage to some of the women whose blood is flowing through my veins and upon whose shoulders I stand. I come from a long line of Black women who didn’t use the words “feminist” or “womanist” to describe themselves. However, these women—
Lucy Goldsby, Hattie Goldsby Temple, Rhoda Bell Temple-Robinson-Hudson-Douglas, Alice Bostic Simmons, Mattie Garrett Cranford, Maggie Pagen White, Mattie Simmons Brown, Jessie Neal Hudson, Corinne Simmons Trumpler, Lula Simmons Thompson, Corinne White, Rebecca White Simmons Chapman, Juanita Cranford Robinson Watson, Ollie B. Smith, Rosetta White, Emma White Reid, Elizabeth White Patterson, and Helen White (to name a few)—
these fierce women were organizers and leaders in their churches, unions, and community organizations. They were survivors of U.S. institutional racism, sexism, and classism, which prevented them from receiving the full formal education they each strongly desired and deserved. And yet, in spite of this egregious reality in their lives, my maternal and paternal (great-great-great) grandmothers and aunts not only persevered in spite of the odds stacked against them because of their race and their gender, some of them made herstory in their communities…” Aishah Shahidah Simmons, “The Unbroken Cycle of Radical Black Feminist/Womanist Women In My Family” for The Feminist Wire
Read in its entirety here > http://bit.ly/Jb4h88
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[…] I chose film/video as one of my tools to make radical and compassionate progressive social change irresistible because we live in an age where people are inundated with images, the majority of which are both directly and indirectly manufactured by a handful of global corporations. Very unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of these images either completely ignore what is in the best interest of the majority of the world’s human inhabitants or they reinforce negative stereotypes of the majority of them. Film/video are powerful mediums where in addition to personally using it in activist/organizing/educational work, one can send a DVD in the mail or upload video content on the web and those images can galvanize, organize, educate and motivate millions of people around the world…” ~ Aishah Shahidah Simmons, The Feminist Wire’s Forum on Women Filmmakers
Read in its entirety here > http://bit.ly/JmzFm0
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[…] As feminists, we don’t want to participate in the use of oppressive force or reproduce any system that legitimates this force. As white people born in the U.S. who work at a university, we’ve benefited enormously from this very system we oppose. These contradictions will not be resolved in silence and, unless we work on recognizing and addressing them, we don’t expect for it to be easy for anyone who hasn’t shared our experiences to work with us…” ~Theresa Warburton and Joshua Cerrett, “What We Aren’t Talking About When We Talk About ‘White Privilege’” for The Feminist Wire
Read in its entirety here > http://bit.ly/MJIBXn
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[…] These challenging conversations are necessary because, in the age of intensive plurality and diversity, any movement worth being part of is going to involve organizing across many forms of difference. Notice how we say ‘across’ and not ‘in spite of.’ We say that because it’s likely that most people in these movements will have at least one identity that provides systematic, unearned advantages – whiteness, maleness, heterosexuality, citizenship, able-bodiedness, etc. – and those same people will have other identities that provide systematic, unearned disadvantages. We need to recognize that the vast majority of people are both oppressed and oppressive in different ways, in different contexts, and in different moments…” ~ Theresa Warburton and Joshua Cerretti, What We Aren’t Talking About When We Talk About ‘White Privilege’ for The Feminist Wire
Read in its entirety here > http://bit.ly/MJIBXn
”Black Girl Dangerous: Obama Loves Queers! (Except Not) -
by Mia McKenzie
*Read Love, QPOC Style*
President Obama just “endorsed” gay marriage. And guess what? I barely give a damn.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s okay. It’s fine. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. Saying that gay people who want to get married to each other should be…
Black Girl Dangerous: Love, QPOC Style -
by Mia McKenzie
Love is challenging in all its forms. Familial love, love in friendship, love in romance. Love in our relationships with ourselves. There are all sorts of definitions for love, all sorts of ideas about what love is. In All About Love, bell hooks talks about love “as the…
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