ThePrettiestOne

Case closed. [@neiltyson]

ethiopienne:

dragonheartedrabbit:

Going on right now in Ferguson: Police are raiding a church that has been stocked with medical supplies, food, and tear gas recovery kits for community members engaging in protests. This cannot be allowed to continue.

Stand up, speak out. 

This is real life. (x)

“I am not Mike Brown. I am white. I am middle class. I am female. I am small. I am not considered a threat. When police see me they see someone who looks like them. They see their mothers, their daughters, their sisters, themselves. I am not at risk of being shot by police for existing while black. I am not at risk of being shot while unarmed. I am not at risk of being shot while armed with nothing more than a BB gun. I am not at risk of being shot for reaching for my wallet. I am privileged.
But I am outraged. And if you aren’t outraged, then you aren’t paying attention. This is America in 2014. This is our reality. It’s so easy to get jaded and to ignore these atrocities, to act like this doesn’t affect us. It’s so easy to get apathetic. In the past it was the youth who protested. Where is the rage of the youth? Where is our rage?
Like I said, I am not Mike Brown. But I am outraged.”

- : I am not Mike Brown.  (via fitle-tight)

piddlebucket:

thisiswhiteprivilege:

softboycollective:

TUESDAY 8/19: Ferguson PD presented a table full of fabricated evidence at this morning’s press conference - allegedly seized from protestors and stopped cars. The Colt 45 Molotov with a white bandana was the crowning glory, turns out you can’t even buy glass 40’s in Missouri. Stay classy, FPD

I seriously think white supremacist are coming in the area to frame the protesters, but it could just be the cops

Nah I think that’s exactly what’s going on.

ppaction:

thisisprsnl:

New polling shows that the majority of Americans (nearly 70%), across party lines and geographic location, support legal abortion and do not want the government to restrict access to abortion. The majority of politicians who represent us however? Not so much. Let’s make it clear whose voices should really matter. H/t prochoiceamerica

There’s a disconnect here. This November, let’s fix it. 

harrysde:

From Elon James White Tuesday night.

RogertEbert.com's Matt Zoller Seitz has penned an excellent piece on what white privilege really means, in response to all the horribleness that has been happening in Ferguson. He reminds us that there's a very big difference between knowing something and truly understanding it.

Read more...

micdotcom:

Potent minimalist art sends a strong message about police and vigilante brutality in America

Journalist and artist Shirin Barghi has created a gripping, thought-provoking series of graphics that not only examines racial prejudice in today’s America, but also captures the sense of humanity that often gets lost in news coverage. Titled “Last Words,” the graphics illustrate the last recorded words by Brown and other young black people — Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant and others — who have been killed by police in recent years.

Let us not forget their voices

The United States has no database of police shootings. There is no standardized process by which officers log when they've discharged their weapons and why. There is no central infrastructure for handling that information and making it public. Researchers, confronted with the reality that there are over 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the country, aren't even sure how you'd go about setting one up. No one is keeping track of how many American citizens are shot by their police. This is crazy. This is governmental malpractice on a national scale. We'd like your help in changing this.

Read more...

odinsblog:

The New Jim Crow

1. Ferguson, Missouri has a population of approximately 21,000 people — roughly 75% of those residents are Black

2. The Ferguson police department has around 530 cops —less than 5 of them are Black

3. Ferguson had *zero* homicides for all of 2014 —until Michael Brown was murdered by Darrin Wilson

4. Things you should know: Five Myths About Black-on-Black Crime

5. Michael Brown was 18yrs old and was about to begin college. Brown had no criminal record, and despite the Ferguson PD’s smear campaign, Mike Brown PAID FOR the cigars —those facts are all important and should be known, but even if Brown was a high school dropout with prior arrests who stole the cigars, 1) it wouldn’t have made his life any less valuable, 2) we have a court system and those are not capital offenses and 3) it doesn’t change the fact that the cop who killed him, Darren Wilson, had no idea about Brown’s personal history when he executed Brown. Wilson saw only a Black teen deemed either “too uppity” or “suspicious” because of his skin color

6. Five examples: The Militarization of the police

7. It’s deeply Institutional: Police view Black Children As Less Innocent

8. So please - don’t get it twisted

soulslookingforhome:

thinksquad:

As anger erupted again on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, a human rights team from Amnesty International worked on the ground in the US for the first time ever.

Confrontation flared up after an autopsy found that Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager who was fatally shot by an officer on 9 August, had suffered at six bullet wounds including one in the top of his head.

Eye-witnesses report seeing police, with no visible ID badges, hurling tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters and threatening members of the press in another night of demonstrations.

Amnesty International, said it would be observing police and protester activity and gathering testimonies as well as training local activists “on methods of non-violent protest” in an “unprecedented” move by the campaigners.

Amnesty International USA’s Executive Director, Steven W Hawkins said that the “people of Ferguson have the right to protest peacefully the lack of accountability for Michael Brown’s shooting”.

Jasmine Heiss, one of the 13-strong team sent by Amnesty, told Buzzfeed that the limits placed on the organisation’s access to post-curfew areas was indicative of “the overall lack of transparency in this investigation”.

Complex Magazine said that police had opened fire into the crowds without warning three hours before the midnight curfew began, causing some children and members of the media to be hit with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Two black journalists from Complex also said that they had been racially profiled, being refused re-entry into the press area whereas white members of the press had been.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/michael-brown-shooting-amnesty-international-sends-team-within-us-for-first-time-as-national-guard-deployed-9675149.html

it begins

This is one of the best slates ever. Info taken from here. Full ballot results are here.

The 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, Loncon 3, has announced the 2014 Hugo Award winners. 3587 valid ballots were received and counted in the final ballot.

BEST NOVEL

Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie (Orbit US / Orbit UK)

BEST NOVELLA

“Equoid” by Charles Stross (Tor.com, 09-2013)

BEST NOVELETTE

“The Lady Astronaut of Mars” by Mary Robinette Kowal (maryrobinettekowal.com/Tor.com, 09-2013)

BEST SHORT STORY

“The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” by John Chu (Tor.com, 02-2013)

BEST RELATED WORK

“We Have Always Fought: Challenging the Women, Cattle and Slaves Narrative” by Kameron Hurley (A Dribble of Ink)

BEST GRAPHIC STORY

“Time” by Randall Munroe (xkcd)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM

Gravity written by Alfonso Cuarón & Jonás Cuarón, directed by Alfonso Cuarón (Esperanto Filmoj; Heyday Films;Warner Bros.)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM

Game of Thrones “The Rains of Castamere” written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, directed by David Nutter (HBO Entertainment in association with Bighead, Littlehead; Television 360; Startling Television and Generator Productions)

BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM

Ellen Datlow

BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM

Ginjer Buchanan

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST

Julie Dillon

BEST SEMIPROZINE

Lightspeed Magazine edited by John Joseph Adams, Rich Horton, and Stefan Rudnicki

BEST FANZINE

A Dribble of Ink edited by Aidan Moher

BEST FANCAST

SF Signal Podcast, Patrick Hester

BEST FAN WRITER

Kameron Hurley

BEST FAN ARTIST

Sarah Webb

JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER

Award for the best new professional science fiction or fantasy writer of 2012 or 2013, sponsored by Dell Magazines (not a Hugo Award).

Sofia Samatar

Congratulations to all the winners!

cactesse:

thesoftghetto:

Protesters upset about the smearing of Mike Brown converged at CNN headquarters.

people complain sooo much about social media and “twitter activism” completely ignoring that without social media the only way anyone would know whats going on is through media controlled by straight, white, capitalist men

msnbc:

"From 2006 to 2012, a white police officer killed a black person at least twice a week in this country." - MHP

Melissa Harris-Perry gives a heart-wrenching tribute to the deaths of black men that have occurred at the hands of police in the past decade.

fakespacegirl:

Hate doesn’t breed hate. Hate inspires anger in victims of hatred and that anger is called hatred to delegitimize it and villainize people. If you wanna help people who are victims then first you gotta stop acting like they’re just as bad their oppressors and abusers.

postcardsfromspace:

According to a Pew Research survey, only 37% of white Americans think the events in #Ferguson raise important issues about race.

Okay, fellow white people. We need to talk.

Let me tell you a story: I was an angry punk teenager. Not violent, but I did a shitton of trespassing, and I got into a lot of screaming matches with cops.

I have never been arrested.

I have never been violently attacked by police. Hell, I have never been seriously threatened by police.

I am fully aware that I’ve survived to adulthood largely on the benefits of my race.

When you are white in America, you get away with all sorts of shit. Have you read this account from a white dude who actively tried to get himself arrested? You should. It’s telling.

So, if that’s your main frame of reference for dealing with law enforcement, it is really easy to assume that when someone else gets targeted by the police, they must have done something really bad. After all, you know the police aren’t that petty, right? They’re there to help: That’s what TV tells you, what your teachers told you, what your parents told you. “If you’re in trouble, find a police officer. They’ll help.” And, y’know, if you’re white, most of the time, that’s probably true.

When you’re white in America, it is awfully easy to pretend that you don’t live in a country where the nonviolent physical presence of black people, especially black men, is considered sufficient threat to justify use of lethal force. It’s really easy to pretend that laws are enforced equally; that arrest rate has any demographic resemblance to actual crime rates; that the police are there to protect us from the bad guys.

And, I mean, I get that. It’s a lot more comfortable to pretend that safety correlates to virtue than to confront the ugly truth that a system that benefits you very directly does so at the cost of other people’s lives; that what you were taught was the just reward for being a good person is, in fact, the privilege of your skin. That’s a big part of why we work so hard to retcon narratives about how the black people our police murder must have been dangerous, highlight every casual infraction like it’s a killing spree. We are so desperate to believe that the system that feeds us is just.

It doesn’t feel good to acknowledge that stuff. It feels gross. A system we trusted—one we should be able to trust, that should work for the benefit and protection of everyone has made us accomplice to some deeply horrifying shit.

But here’s the thing:

This happened. This is happening. Not recognizing it; stonewalling and insulating ourselves in our little bubbles does not make it go away.

And not acknowledging it, not having asked for it, does not make us any less complicit, or any less responsible for owning and fixing this. We are actively benefitting from a fucked, corrupt, murderous system. That is on us. As it should be.

So educate yourself, get the tools, and start dismantling this fucker. You have the time: after all,  no one’s shooting at your kids.

Privilege is the bandwidth to speak up and dismantle because you’re not in fear for your life. And there is no conscionable excuse for failing to use it.

via twisted doodles via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via via Funny Pic Dump: Next Page–>

Have you visited Pleated Jeans today?

“Yes, there are the disturbingly repetitive and eerily similar circumstances of many cases of unarmed black people being killed by police officers. This reinforces black people’s beliefs — supportable by actual data — that blacks are treated less fairly by the police.
 
But I submit that this is bigger than that. The frustration we see in Ferguson is about not only the present act of perceived injustice but also the calcifying system of inequity — economic, educational, judicial — drawn largely along racial lines.
 
In 1951, Langston Hughes began his poem “Harlem” with a question: “What happens to a dream deferred?” Today, I must ask: What happens when one desists from dreaming, when the very exercise feels futile?”

- Frustration in Ferguson

Jason Katzenstein’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.

Read more Broken Records: A Cartoon About OCD at The Toast.

Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for August 17, 2014

Candorville by Darrin Bell for August 17, 2014

Dog Eat Doug by Brian Anderson for August 17, 2014

Brewster Rockit by Tim Rickard for August 17, 2014

Only 5 days left to submit for BAHFest!

Hugh Pickens writes:

Olga Khazan writes in The Atlantic that police in Ferguson, Missouri, arrested two reporters Wednesday night as protests over the police shooting of an unarmed teenager continued for the fifth day. The journalists, the Washington Post's Wesley Lowery and the Huffington Post's Ryan Reilly, were only detained for about 15 minutes before being released, but the incident provoked widespread outrage over the Ferguson police's increasingly brutal tactics.

Lowery wrote that armed officers stormed a McDonald's in which he and Reilly were working and demanded to see ID. They then told Lowery to stop video recording them, and finally they ordered the reporters to leave and claimed they weren't leaving fast enough. According to other reports, the Ferguson police also demanded that an MSNBC camera man and a local Fox News crew take down their cameras. Police hit the crew of Al Jazeera America with tear gas and dismantled their gear.

"The arrest and intimidation of journalists for documenting the events in Ferguson is particularly disturbing because it interferes with the ability of the press to hold the government accountable. But actually, anyone journalist or otherwise can take a photo of a police officer," writes Khazan. "Citizens have the right to take pictures of anything in plain view in a public space, including police officers and federal buildings. Police can not confiscate, demand to view, or delete digital photos."

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.

BBC's Sherlock does a pretty top-notch job of portraying text messages, but as Tony Zhou points out in the latest installment of Every Frame a Painting, cinematic representations of the digital world – including texting and the Internet – remain, for the most part, inefficient, ineffective, and uninspired.

Read more...

The internet is currently swarming with stories, tributes, and memorials to the late, great Robin Williams who passed 3 days ago. Some people may not know that in addition to being an actor, comedian, activist, and improv performer, Williams was also an unabashed lover of video games, comic books, and graphic novels, and that this loss resonates throughout these communities as well. Yesterday, Nick Gazin over at Vice posted crowd-sourced illustrations that pay tribute to the performer, his characters, and his life. (via vice)

The post Illustrated Robin Williams Tributes Celebrate His Love Of Comics appeared first on Beautiful/Decay Artist & Design.