“My teammates and I will continue to use our platform and raise awareness for the #BlackLivesMatter movement until the @wnba gives its support as it does for Breast Cancer Awareness, Pride and other subject matters”
Police in South Florida shot an unarmed black caretaker Monday as he tried to help his autistic patient. I was thinking as long as I have my hands up . they're not going to shoot me, he told local television station WSVN from his hospital bed. Wow, was I wrong. Police then handcuffed him and left him bleeding on the pavement for about 20 minutes.
Professional athletes have provided a flicker of hope during these agonizing days by speaking out against police violence. "Shut up and play" clearly doesn't fly when black bodies are falling at the hands of those whose job is to serve and protect. Now, after the filmed deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, athletes' statements - which have the potential to reach an audience far beyond the normal political blather - are starting up yet again.
On July 13, 2015, Sandra Bland died while in police custody in Texas. On July 13, 2016, the one-year anniversary of her tragic death, The Dream Unfinished held a concert to commemorate her and the large number of Black women impacted by police killings. Whether Black women and girls are killed by police directly; their loved ones are killed by police; or police refuse to intervene or respond - Black women, girls, and femmes are affected by police brutality and killings
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I think we all know, deep down, that something more is required of us now. This truth is difficult to face because it’s inconvenient and deeply unsettling. And yet silence isn’t an option. And I’m sure that many who refused to ride segregated buses in Montgomery after Rosa Parks stood her ground wished they could’ve taken the bus, rather than walk miles in protest, day after day, for a whole year. But they knew they had to walk. And so do we.
It happened again this week, as it has happened more than 100 times so far this year. Police in Louisiana and Minnesota shot and killed two more black men. Stop asking us to be calm. Stop asking us to wear the mask. Stop asking us to take whips, nooses and now police bullets without emotion. In the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, "We are sick and tired of being sick and tired." Two years after Ferguson, police induced murders are continuing...#BlackLivesMatter
A thoughtful and nuanced look at the role identity played in this year's primary contest between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton by a Sanders supporter. Hillary's passionate female (and male feminist) supporters are speaking with sincerity about their hopes for a gender revolution. The reality is that women work for less pay; do more childcare; are often single parents; must weather sexual harassment, abuse, and assault throughout their lives...
As #BlackLivesMatter co-founder Alicia Garza said explicitly at the Roosevelt event in conversation with Melissa Harris-Perry and Nobel Prize–winning economist Joe Stiglitz, “any policy that we develop needs to have an intersectional lens.”
Rosa Parks was a lifelong activist who had been challenging white supremacy for decades before she became the famous catalyst for the Montgomery bus boycott. We see a woman who, from her youth, didn't hesitate to indict the system of oppression around her. As she once wrote, "I talked and talked of everything I know about the white man's inhuman treatment of the Negro." Today we honor her, as part of African American History Month.
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