by Guest Contributor Jessica Annabelle
CeCe and several friends, all black, were walking to the grocery store on June 5th, 2011 when white adults standing in the patio area of a South Minneapolis bar started screaming racist and transphobic slurs at the youth. CeCe, who is only 23 years old, approached the group and replied that she and her friends would not tolerate hate speech. In response, one of the white women said “I’ll take you bitches on” and smashed her glass into CeCe’s face. The broken glass sliced all the way through CeCe’s cheek. A fight ensued between the adults and the young people after this initial attack and one of the attackers, Dean Schmitz, was fatally stabbed.
As if it were not sufficiently tragic that a group of young people were subjected to such severe violence and that Dean Schmitz lost his life, police arriving at the scene arrested CeCe, denied her adequate medical treatment, interrogated her for hours, and placed her in solitary confinement. In the aftermath of being attacked, she was not treated with care, but launched into another nightmare. The only person arrested that night, she has since been charged with two counts of 2nd degree murder. Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman has the power to drop these charges, a choice he made in multiple other clear instances of self-defense this year, but he has not yet done so.
CeCe’s story is a portrait of the United States Criminal Justice System. Her story is what is meant when we are told that transgender people, especially transgender women of color, experience disproportionate rates of police harassment, profiling, and abuse. She is living one of the stories rolled into statistics like: trans people are ten to fifteen times more likely to be incarcerated than cisgender (not transgender) people, or nearly half of African American transgender people have spent time in jail or prison. Continue reading »
“By healing, you resist oppression. – Emad Burnat”
5 Broken Cameras is a story of living in the shadow of oppression, a moving portrait of vibrant resistance through the unapologetic embrace of life itself. Set in the small Palestinian village of Bil’in, the story and narrative belongs to Emad Burnat, who became the eye of the village and ultimately chronicled over five years of activism. The people of Bil’in found their lands being encroached on by the building of a new settlement, and the wall to protect that settlement. They protest peacefully, marching up to the wall each Friday and thinking of new actions and demonstrations to stop the advancement of the settlement.
During this time, Emad also had a son, Gibreel, which brought his total brood to four. Emad mentions that each of the boys knows a slightly different world. The eldest was born during the Olso Accords which meant that he grew up with more freedom and mobility. Gibreel, on the other hand, mixes his first words of “mommy” and “daddy” with “army,” “cartridge” and “run! run!” If it weren’t for the ever present undercurrent of violence, Emad’s life would almost be seen as idyllic: a loving family; a large, involved village; numerous dances and celebrations are cornerstones of the life they create. Their marches are also full of hope and some humor. At one point, tired of the late night raids on the village, a group of children march up to the wall, chanting “We want to sleep! We want to sleep!” The situation in Bil’in gained international attention, and groups of Israeli, German, and other activists come at various points to show their support and solidarity. However, violence is never far enough away, and the promise of more hangs over Bil’in like a cloud. Continue reading »
- Racist hate crimes in Vancouver mobilize community (Vancouver Observer) (WARNING: Trigger Alert)
After a series of high-profile hate crimes in B.C., including damage to a Jewish cemetery in Victoria last month – and recent criminal charges for the burning of a Filipino man and assaults on Black, Hispanic and Native people several years ago – anti-racist activists are organizing a renewed drive to stamp out racism in Vancouver.
With three alleged members of the hate group Blood and Honour facing trial – one of them tomorrow – for a string of attacks on people of colour, several groups are organizing around the upcoming February 13 trial of Alistair Miller and Robert de Chazal.
The pair – who were arrested in December – are accused of pouring kerosene over a sleeping Filipino man and lighting him on fire in 2009, and then attacking a black man who intervened. Tomorrow’s trial centres around another alleged Blood and Honour member, Shawn MacDonald, charged with separate attacks on an Indigenous women, a Hispanic man and a black man in Vancouver.
“We’re interested in building an anti-racist campaign,” said Krystle Alarcon with the Filipino-Canadian Youth Alliance (FCYA). “People think of multicultural Canada, and of Vancouver as a beautiful and diverse city. But racism exists in Vancouver.
“These were very clear acts of outright racist ideology.”
- Christie says like same-sex marriage, civil rights movement could have been settled through ballot referendum (New Jersey Newsroom)
The comment that the civil rights movement of the 1960s could have been settled through a national or southern states voter referendum stunned Assembly Speaker Sheila Y. Oliver (D-Essex), who became the first African-American woman to head the lower house in 2010.
“Gov. Christie better sit down with some of New Jersey’s great teachers for a history lesson, because his puzzling comment shows a complete misunderstanding about the civil rights movement,” Oliver said. “It’s impossible to ever conceive that a referendum on civil rights in the South would have been successful and brought justice to minorities. It’s unfathomable to even suggest a referendum would have been the better course.
“Governor – people were fighting and dying in the streets of the South for a reason,” the Assemblywoman said. “They were fighting and dying in the streets of the South because the majority refused to grant minorities equal rights by any method. It look legislative action to bring justice to all Americans, just as legislative action is the right way to bring marriage equality to all New Jerseyans.
Is Tebow’s privileged status from just being white (male heterosexual Christian), or is it from just being Tebow (the Florida Gator God)? While the answer is “both”, a closer look is necessary to see how much Tebow’s privileges extend to other white NFL quarterbacks.
One of Tebow’s greatest privileges has been his “freedom to fail”. When he had a truly atrocious training camp, he wasn’t cut, but promoted to back-up. When his humiliating loss against the Lions revolutionized the term “incomplete pass”, he was still granted another start. When his arm failed, the offense was changed to suit his legs. If he was terrible for 58 minutes, he was never benched for the final two (yes, I’m looking at you Mike Shanahan). Those last few magical minutes were called “Tebow Time”, but never “John Fox Time” (Denver’s head coach). The difference between Jesus and football is that NFL Resurrections require a coach’s permission.
Lee had stunned an audience of as many as 1,000 people at the festival’s Eccles Theater into silence on Sunday when, responding to an audience question from Chris Rock, he said that “they [studios] know nothing about black people … and they’re going to give me notes about what a 13-year-old boy and girl are doing in Red Hook? [Shoot] no,” he said, repeating it several times, only without saying “shoot.”
On Monday, Lee said he made the film because he felt Hollywood had shirked its duty when it came to portraying young people of color. “One of my favorite films is ‘Stand by Me.’ But there’s no black person in it. It’s a great film, but where’s the African American version? You know, kids growing up. It doesn’t have to be all ducking bullets and.…”
- Tea Party Groups In Tennessee Demand Textbooks Overlook U.S. Founder’s Slave-Owning History (The Huffington Post)
During the news conference more than two dozen Tea Party activists handed out material that said, “Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.”
And that further teaching would also include that “the Constitution created a Republic, not a Democracy.”
The group demanded, as they had in January of last year, that Tennessee lawmakers change state laws governing school curricula. The group called for textbook selection criteria to include: “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”
“Though we tremble before uncertain futures/ may we meet illness, death and adversity with strength/ may we dance in the face of our fears.”
― Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Mosquita y Mari is a slow paced exploration of being a teenager peering over the brink of adulthood. Set in a Mexican-American neighborhood in Los Angeles, Mosquita y Mari follows the lives of two very different Chicana teenagers. Yolanda (Fenessa Pineda) is a studious high-achiever, a dutiful daughter from a loving home. Mari (Venecia Troncoso) is rebellious and volatile, with a chip on her shoulder that crowds out most of the world. Circumstances toss them together again and again, and they embark on a deep and intense friendship.
In her press kit, writer/director Aurora Guerrero writes:
The inspiration behind my debut feature-film, Mosquita y Mari, was my own adolescence. Initially, when I decided I wanted to write a feature-length script I kept coming back to a series of complex, same-sex friendships I had while growing up. When looking back, long before I identified as queer, I realized my first love was one of my best friends. It was the type of friendship that was really tender and sweet but also sexually charged. Despite the fact that we had the makings of a beautiful teen romance we never crossed that line. The beginnings of Mosquita y Mari was reflecting back on that time and asking myself the questions, why didn’t we cross that line and what kept us in “our place”? I didn’t grow up in a household where my parents forewarned me that if I turned out to be gay they would disown me. They didn’t wave the Bible in my face saying it was wrong. Instead the message was subtle. It was hidden in the silences around sex and desire; it was implied in society’s expectations, you know, like you only experience those feelings of love and desire with the opposite sex. I think all of us are subject to society’s rules so I think many people can relate to this story of censored friendship. That was the initial inspiration. [...]
Continue reading »
#rapeculture hurts everyone. The same rhetoric VSB spouted is used in court to make sure less than 20% of all rapists do time.
Say what?
Turns out, Damon (a.k.a. The Champ) decided to create a really flip response to Zerlina Maxwell’s Ebony.com piece “Stop Telling Women How to Not Get Raped.” Despite Maxwell writing lines like these:
Our community, much like society-at-large, needs a paradigm shift as it relates to our sexual assault prevention efforts. For so long all of our energy has been directed at women, teaching them to be more “ladylike” and to not be “promiscuous” to not drink too much or to not wear a skirt. Newsflash: men don’t decide to become rapists because they spot a woman dressed like a video vixen or because a girl has been sexually assertive.
How about we teach young men when a woman says stop, they stop? How about we teach young men that when a woman has too much to drink that they should not have sex with her, if for no other reason but to protect themselves from being accused of a crime? How about we teach young men that when they see their friends doing something inappropriate to intervene or to stop being friends? The culture that allows men to violate women will continue to flourish so long as there is no great social consequence for men who do so.
Damon still decided to write his piece, essentially asking this question:
But, why can’t both genders be educated on how to act responsibility around each other? What’s stopping us from steadfastly instilling “No always means no!” in the minds of all men and boys and educating women how not to put themselves in certain situations? Of course men shouldn’t attempt to have sex with a woman who’s too drunk to say no, but what’s wrong with reminding women that if you’re 5’1 and 110 pounds, it’s probably not the best idea to take eight shots of Patron while on the first, second, or thirteenth date? Yes, sober women definitely get raped too, but being sober and aware does decrease the likelihood that harm may come your way, and that’s true for each gender.
It seems as if the considerable push back again victim-blaming has pushed all the way past prudence and levelheadedness, making anyone who suggests that “women can actually be taught how to behave too” insensitive or a “rape enabler.” And, while the sentiment in Maxwell’s article suggests that victim-blaming is dangerous, I think it’s even more dangerous to neglect to remind young women that, while it’s never their fault if they happen to get sexually assaulted, they shouldn’t thumb their noses to common sense either.
Damon’s already (somewhat) apologized and been raked over the coals by folks on his site, Twitter, and Tumblr.
So my goal in writing this piece isn’t to hold him accountable–that’s already gone on. My goal in writing this is to answer his question. And since I recently gave a talk at Swarthmore on rape culture, I just so happen to have a bunch of examples and facts right at my fingertips.
Continue reading »
By Arturo R. García
With apologies to fans of Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling, et al., by far the most pleasant surprise of this week’s Academy Awards nominee announcements was seeing Demián Bichir get nominated for Best Actor–alongside “conventional” choices like George Clooney and Brad Pitt–for his role as an undocumented single father in A Better Life.
As Colorlines noted, Bichir’s nomination was one of several nods for Latinos in this year’s Oscar race: cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, also from Mexico, was nominated for Best Cinematography for Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life; Bérénice Bejo, a native of Argentina, earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her turn in the The Artist; Brazilian Sérgio Mendes was nominated for Best Song for “Real in Rio,” his collaboration with Siedah Garrett, of “Man In The Mirror” fame, from the animated film Rio.
But a look at some relevant figures further illustrates how painfully rare Bichir’s accomplishment is.
2: The number of Mexican-born nominees for Best Actor, with Bichir joining Anthony Quinn, who was nominated on two separate occasions, for Wild Is The Wind (1957) and Zorba The Greek (1964).
2: The number of white actors nominated for this category for playing Latino characters (Marlon Brando, 1952, Viva Zapata! and Spencer Tracy, 1958, The Old Man and the Sea).
47: The number of years between Quinn’s nomination for Zorba and Bichir’s nomination.
61: The number of years since a Latino actor born outside of Mexico and the United States was nominated for Best Actor; José Ferrer (born in Puerto Rico in 1912, before it became a U.S. territory) earned the honor in 1950 for Cyrano De Bergerac.
1: The number of:
- Latino actors (going into this year’s ceremony) to win Best Actor, with Ferrer taking the Oscar home.
- Latino actors born in the U.S. to be nominated for the category (Edward James Olmos, 1988, Stand and Deliver.)
- Latinas in Oscars history to win the Best Actress award (Rita Moreno, 1961, West Side Story.)
- Mexican-born actresses ever nominated in that category (Salma Hayek, 2002, Frida.)
0: The number of Latina actresses born in the U.S. to be nominated for Best Actress.
$1,759,252: Total domestic gross for A Better Life, per Box Office Mojo.
$75,524,658: Total domestic gross (as of Jan. 24) for Moneyball, starring Bichir’s fellow nominee Brad Pitt.
11,000,000: The total number of undocumented workers in the United States, as quoted by Bichir in a statement to US Weekly, as he dedicated his nomination to them.
6,650,000: Estimated number of undocumented Mexican immigrants in the U.S. as of 2009, according to the Department of Homeland Security (PDF).
25-to-1: Current odds of Bechir winning the Oscar, according to Vegas Insider.
So, thanks to a fast talking friend, I ended up in Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival.
I’m warning you now – for actual film coverage and movie reviews, go straight to the pros. Tambay, as always, is holding it down for Shadow and Act, and she’s already got a review up of “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” which is the photo illustrating this post.
I’m trying to fit at least 6 movies into the my time here (along with some interviews and some gate crashing), so here’s what I’m eyeing:
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink, in “the Bathtub,” a southern Delta community at the edge of the world. Wink’s tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the universe; for a time when he’s no longer there to protect her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, nature flies out of whack—temperatures rise, and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With the waters rising, the aurochs coming, and Wink’s health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother.
The Words
Starring: Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper
Rory Jansen, a struggling writer, aspires to be the next great literary voice. When he discovers a lost manuscript in a weathered attaché case, he realizes he possesses something extraordinary that he desperately wishes he had created. Rory decides to pass the work off as his own and finally receives the recognition he desperately craves. However, he soon learns that living with his choice will not be as easy as he thought as he faces a moral dilemma that will make him take a hard look at the man he has become.
Filly Brown
Starring:Gina Rodriguez, Jenni Rivera
Majo” Tonorio, a.k.a. Filly Brown, is a raw, young Los Angeles hip-hop artist who spits from the heart. When a sleazy record producer offers her a crack at rap stardom, Majo faces some daunting choices. With an incarcerated mother, a record contract could be the ticket out for her struggling family. But taking the deal means selling out her talent and the true friends who helped her to the cusp of success.
The Octavia Butler Book Club
(Click the book for the latest conversation) Feminism for Real – Jessica, Latoya, Andrea
The Same Woman – Thea
I Speak For Myself – Fatemeh
Yes Means Yes – Latoya
Sex Ed and Youth – Jessica
OMLN
