Trayvon Martin
“A man was watching him,” said Rachel Jeantel, 19, who was on the phone with Martin just before he was fatally shot. “He said the man kept watching him. He kept complaining that a man was just watching him.”#JusticeForTrayvon
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My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to a hyper- and pessimistic activism. I think that the ethico-political choice we have to make every day is to determine which is the main danger.
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Afterword, in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Massachusetts Press. (1983)
Tia Williams, left, and her daughter Aissa create a display on the street outside the Minnesota governor’s official residence Thursday, July 7, 2016, in St. Paul, Minn., as people gathered to protest the shooting death of Philando Castile by police.
Photo Credit: Richard Tsong-Taatarii/ Star Tribune via AP
via Photos of the week | The Undefeated
“Peace. Peace. Thank you Debra. Thank you, Nate Parker. Thank you, Harry and Debbie Allen, for participating in that.
“Before we get into it, I just want to say I brought my parents out tonight — I just want to thank them for being here and teaching me to focus on comprehension over career. They made sure I learned what the schools were afraid to teach us. And also, thank you to my amazing wife for changing my life.
“Now, this award, this is not for me. This is for the real organizers all over the country. The activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do. All right? It’s kind of basic mathematics. The more we learn about who we are and how we got here, the more we will mobilize.
“Now, this is also in particular for the black women in particular who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves. We can and will do better for you.
“Now, what we’ve been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to deescalate, disarm and not kill white people every day. So what’s going to happen is we’re going to have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function in ours.
“Now, [standing ovation] I got more, y’all.
“By legitimizing the conduct that produces this double consciousness, this case tells everyone, white and black, guilty and innocent, that an officer can verify your legal status at any time. It says that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights. It implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged.”
History books usually say more about the wielder of the pen than the past, so I’ve noticed. Those with a particular interest in cultural manipulation will do anything to make their preferred reality, the reality we all are forced to swallow as truth. Especially when it can be revealed that those who are viewed as weak or insignificant were actually the gods, the lions, the powerful ones. The powers that be will cut off the nose to spite the sphinx, so I’ve noticed.
Read the rest at the link below →
via How Black Queer Lives Shaped American History, Never Forget | Mused
We less frequently discuss historical violence against black girls and don’t adequately connect these stories to movements for social justice. As a result we think our daughters are safer than our sons. We forget Elizabeth Eckford walking a racist gauntlet toward Central High School in 1957; or tiny Ruby Bridges requiring federal marshals to attend elementary school in 1960, New Orleans; or four little girls murdered in their Sunday school in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. Girlhood has never been a shield against the brutality of white supremacy. We cannot forget the vulnerabilities of black girls. Yes, we must keep our brothers, but what about our daughters? We must also say their names: Rekia Boyd, Renisha McBride, Mya Hall, Natasha McKenna, Sandra Bland.
I am here representing the mothers who have lost children as we go on about our daily lives. When the cameras and lights are gone, our babies are dead. So I’m going to ask you here today to wake up. Wake up. By a show of hands, can any of you tell me the other six women who died in jail in July 2015 along with Sandra Bland? That is a problem. You all are among the walking dead, and I am so glad that I have come out from among you. I heard about Trayvon, I heard about all the shootings, and it did not bother me until it hit my daughter. I was walking dead just like you until Sandra Bland died in a jail cell in Texas.
via Sandra Bland’s mother says her daughter didn’t kill herself | Fusion
Have I spent too much time worrying about the boys
killing each other to pray for the ones who do it
with their own hands?
Is that not black on black violence?
Is that not a mother who has to bury her boy?
Is it not the same play?
The same plot & characters?
The curtain rises, then:
a womb
a boy
a night emptied of music
a trigger
a finger
a bullet
then:
lights.
It always drives the crowd to their feet.
An encore
of boy after boy
after sweet boy — their endless, bloody bow.
They throw dirt on the actors like roses
until the boys are drowned by the earth
& the audience doesn’t remember
what they’re standing for.
via sideshow by Danez Smith | Poetry Magazine.
astound me: D.A. Królak 
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