Several Missouri cops have resigned after their town elected a black female mayor
The city of Parma, Missouri, has seen mass resignations among the local police force after the city’s first black female mayor, Tyrus Byrd, was sworn in on Tuesday. Five of the force’s six officers handed in their resignations to the outgoing mayor — but they weren’t the only ones to quit on the new mayor.
Beyond microaggressions.
This is what black women have to deal with in any professional situation. This is the most extreme, but we are constantly having to prove our competence.
I feel for this woman. I really do.
But those cops who are such racist pieces of shit they refuse to work for a Black woman? Good riddance. Mayor Byrd and the whole community will be better off without them in positions of authority.
Wait, it’s bigger than this. This mayor ran on an anti-corruption platform, and there were a total of twenty people who resigned from various parts of the city - city attorney, police, water supervision. It’s suspected that they were all linked to the previous mayor and were part of the corruption she was campaigning against. Citizens have been complaining for years about the corruption with the previous Mayor Randall, and it’s suspected that these resignations were from his cronies.
Which makes her the one of the most effective mayors in the U.S. simply by being elected.
(Source: mic.com, via brightnessdavar)
#BlackWomenMatter (4/2/15): Far too often, I see responses to my post asking why our Black men only seem to be under attack by the police. The sad truth is that both our women and children face harassment and death from those sworn to “protect and serve.” This past weekend, Meagan Hockaday, a mother of three, was killed with in 20 seconds of the police arriving to her house on a domestic dispute call. Her children witnessed her death. Like Janisha Fonville earlier this year, police chose to shoot-to-kill rather than employ de-escalation tactics for a situation they receive extensive training to handle. Little to no answers have been provided at this point. Her death also comes in the wake of allegations that the police force who killed her gets tattoos to symbolize every shooting they’re involved in and life they’ve taken. Help raise the call for justice. Meagan Hockaday, we fight for you now too! #staywoke #farfromover
(via punlich)
Black Activist Charged With Lynching | Black Youth Project
Maile Hampton, a 20 year-old activist in Sacramento, Ca., was charged with “lynching” for pulling a fellow activist away from a police officer.
Hampton was charged under an archaic 1933 California law that was created to prevent people from forcibly taking others from police custody in order to dole out vigilante justice.
Clearly the law was written to prevent people, most often black and Latino, from being murdered. But police are now using it to target anti-police violence activists.
“Based on how law enforcement has interacted with us and tried to get information, we know that they know that we are very intersectional in our activism and we are two young educated people of color,” Hampton told Alternet.
Hampton faces four years if convicted. The irony of a black woman being charged with lynching while protesting police violence is lost on no one.
Read more at the Guardian here.(Photo Credit: Maile Hampton/Answer Sacramento Facebook)
Editor’s Note: I do not know Maile personally, but I have marched with them and feel confident in vouching for them. Here’s what you can do to help:
1) Click here to sign the petition demanding that the Sacramento County District Attorney drop all charges against Maile Hampton now.
2) Contact the Sacramento County District Attorney and demand that the charges be dropped. Email daoffice@sacda.org and in your email CC both mayor@cityofsacramento.org and Sac@ANSWERcoalition.org.
3) Learn more about Maile’s case and get in touch with those working to fund her legal defense here.
are you fucking kidding me
White peoples have literally taken a law that prevents racism and used it for racism like damn
Sometimes I think about returning to America … then I read something like this.
Come to Scotland folks, we have the 21st century.
Why is Australia trying to be like these arseholes again?
(Source: fullpraxisnow, via reallyautomaticphantom)
No Justice, No Peace (¾/15): The full report of the Department of Justice’s investigation into the Ferguson Police Department has been released and it is nothing short of horrifying. Please take the time to read each screencap above, and if you can stomach more afterwords, read the full report. The above barely scrapes the surface of the indignities Ferguson PD inflicted on the people they were supposed to protect and serve. Ferguson PD is not unique. This is everyday terrorism faced by Black folks from the police, around the country. #staywoke #farfromover
(via kogiopsis)
casual transmisogyny, cissexism,and racism on my dash
notice the lack of WOC in this PSA. white women have structural privilege over MOC and make more money that them on average. And yes there are women with penises who are trying to get into the job sector, but they are more likely to be murdered or be homeless than even be offered a decent starting salary for any job
Someone needs to do an “add bleach” or “add whitener” reply ad to highlight the pay gap for POC. Alas, my photoshop skills are lacking :(
I wish I could think of something clever to say on the side of trans*folks, too. I’m just losing out, today.
(via the-gay-is-over9000)
Zimmerman to be charged in killing of Trayvon Martin
Took them long enough.
I’d like to say, “better late than never,” but there’s also the hundreds [if not thousands] of other deaths caused by pallid police shooting at innocent brown people. There’s too many of those and not enough outrage IMO.
One small step towards good progress, anyway.
What? Me Racist?
All my life [that’s 39 years and counting] I have used the word “piker” to mean “someone mean with money”. Usually in the following situation:
::self finds 5 cent coin::
“Wealth beyond the dreams of Avarice!” (beat) “Avarice was a piker.”
It’s a routine I inherited from my parents and it used to be a bit of harmless fun. Something funny to say.
I have since learned via an internet chat, of all things, that “piker” is derived from “pikey”, meaning “Irish gypsy”.
I do not believe that any particular ethnic group should be singled out as having one main trait. Not all brown people, for instance, are astoundingly athletic. Or perpetually happy. Not all native Americans have an instinctive connection with the mystical. Not all Jewish folks are smart with money. And not all WASPs are intolerant bigots willing to slap a label on anyone or anything just so they can stop thinking.
The Gypsies [Rom, Sinde(?) and a few others I forget, right now] have had a bad run of things. Chiefly because they remained nomads in a perpetually growing environment of others who settle down in one place and stay for the long haul.
And it’s precisely because they don’t have a homeland, a King, and whatever other trappings we “normal” people decide they “should” have, that we stationary folk find it so easy to cast aspersions on them.
And vice versa.
We gadje are WAY more likely to thieve Gypsy kids than the Gypsies are prone to take ours. The whole bit about one side eating the others’ kids is racist claptrap invented to encourage separatism. And the persecution. OMFG the persecution. Even if they try to move in and settle and try to “be normal”, they face unbelievable hostility and social shunning from everyone around them because they are “not like us”.
For fuck’s sake, people! No matter what flavour your “us” or “them” is, we are all humans together on this planet! We’re all born with the same number of appendages, sensory organs and whatnot. Just because someone is raised into a different set of beliefs is no reason to get your hate on. “They” are ordinary people within the perspectives of their culture. “They” are just trying to raise their kids and have a decent life. Just like “us”.
Once we see that, once we listen and try to understand, then we have a halfway decent chance of making this poor, broken world we’ve made work better.
I try not to hate any one group of people. I also try not to assume they have special gifts because of their genetic heritage.
And I feel a great shame because I happen to belong to the group of pale-skinned monotheists that did a whole bunch of evil in the past to people of differing hues, lifestyles and theologies. I don’t want to make the same mistakes. I’m trying to teach my kids not to make the same mistakes.
I try to avoid saying “black” when talking about people who are melanin-enhanced. Mostly because a very rare few are actually black. Brown is not black. Black is black. I prefer to say someone is “of [continent] descent”. Native Australians and their descendants of mixed heritage are “of Australian descent”. I am of European descent. Mostly.
Though my skin is pale beige, there are little hints that I might not be completely “white”. There’s these little, downward protrusions on the edge of my cheekbones. An alleged legacy of Gypsy descent. Yet, all my life, I have been using a racial slur as personal amusement.
It should not be “okay” because I “am one”. Nobody should use hate-speak about any racial group. “Whites” should not use the word ‘cracker’ on themselves or anyone who looks as pale as they do. “Blacks” should not use any of the multitude of slurs that I choose not to repeat here. [As an aside: why the hell are there more racist terms for non-WASPs than there are for WASPs? WTF?] Everyone everywhere should be “other people” first and their colours and creeds after that.
To me, hateful words breed a hateful attitude.
I will not be doing the “Avarice was a piker” routine any more. I will instead say, “Avarice was a Grinch.”
Grinch isn’t a racist term. Yet.
Right?