firehose

liz-pls:

I’m only sharing tweets for those who are not on twitter and can’t see how passionate and outraged journalists are as they tweet from #Ferguson.

If you are on Twitter, here’s a good roster of people to follow if you want to keep updated.

cimness:

yle.fi | News 28.11.2014 12:55 | updated 28.11.2014 14:00 

The Finnish Parliament has approved a bill allowing same-sex marriage. The vote was 105 to 92, with one MP absent.

Thousands of people - pro and con - demonstrated on Citizens’ Square across from Parliament House.

The Finnish Parliament voted on Friday afternoon to allow gender-neutral marriage, 105-92. The vote had been expected to be closer.

The gender-neutral marriage bill was seventh on the list of 15 votes. Four MPs out of the 200 MPs were absent on the first vote, concerning a reform of language laws, and two on the second vote, on car taxation. The third vote, on child subsidies, was also a vote of confidence in the government - which survived by a margin of 100-97. Only two MPs out of the 200 MPs were absent.

The unprecedented outcome marks the first time that a citizens’ initiative has received lawmakers’ blessing to be written into the law books. It also allows Finland to finally catch up with its Nordic peers, all of which have already legalised gay marriage.

Sweet triumph for supporters

The result was a sweet triumph for the thousands of supporters of marriage equality who gathered around the Parliament this afternoon. Many of them waved rainbow-coloured flags and banners. Shouts of “I do!” - the battle cry of the movement - echoed through the streets. Opponents of the measure also turned out for the session, but found themselves vastly outnumbered.

Parliamentary Speaker Eero Heinäluoma tightened security ahead of the vote, calling for calm on what has been a polarising subject both inside and outside the chamber. However there were no reports of disruptive behaviour - with one Yle correspondent describing the scene as having a Carnival-like atmosphere.

The reform will force wide-ranging changes in other legislation, which will take well over a year to finalise. The law will therefore not take effect until 2016 at the earliest.

Congrats Finland!

freeqthamighty:

Photo Source: Jamal Williams

On Thursday August 14^th, 2014, Feminsta Jones called for a National Moment of Silence (NMOS) to pay ‘respect to fatal victims of police shootings and brutality’. New Orleans, a (for now…) majority black city with a long history of police violence against black bodies (including the famous case of Henry Glover, an unarmed black man who was shot by police who then burned his body in an attempted cover up), took part in the NMOS by hosting a vigil in Lafayette Park. According to the NOLA Defender, a young black woman named Chanelle Batiste organized and led the vigil activities:

Left Photo: Chanelle Batiste, Photo Source NOLA Defender

Right Photo: NOLA crowd in moment of silence, Photo Source Instagram @BMike2c

I showed up to the park and saw a racially diverse crowd of between 100-200 people. The largest racial groups that were visually represented were whites and blacks, and my initial thoughts were, ‘Well, if all these white folks gathered here today then they must at some level understand the targeting and criminalization of black bodies and its consequences, including Mike Brown’s death”

Baptiste started the vigil with a few words before asking the crowd to raise their hands in the “Don’t Shoot” pose that has become symbolic of Mike Brown’s death. Right before the moment of silence and call for raised hands, I took a moment to close my eyes and re-center myself. I re-opened them when Baptiste started reading the names of other victims of police violence after the moment of silence passed and was caught off guard by the numerous white people holding up their hands in the ‘Don’t Shoot’ pose:

Photo Source: Twitter #MikeBrownNOLA

After the reading of names, Baptiste and others announced follow up events to the vigil, then abruptly ended the gathering (it took no more 20 minutes from start to finish). When they stepped down from the steps they were speaking from, a collective, “Was that it?” feeling took over the park. I turned to a black woman activist friend of mine named Mshaiti A Uwenzo Siyanda and we quickly agreed that something about the brevity of the vigil did not feel right, did not feel like enough to encompass how we were feeling about the not-so-new phenomenon of disregard for black lives. Mshaiti and I took each other’s hands and made our way to the steps of the statue where I called out something along the lines of “EXCUSE ME! Is that all? I know too many busy people here who could be somewhere else but chose to be here. For Mike and others. There is too much collective energy here to waste. If we took to the streets, would you join us?”

Mshaiti and I stepped off the statue and into the street and led, what would be at its peak, a crowd of about 400 in a march for Mike Brown. We led them through downtown Canal St to Jackson Square and eventually ended the event with the occupation of a police station in the French Quarter where participants peacefully aired their grievances against police nationally & locally (including an August 11^th incident where an NOPD officer shut off her body camera and shot a black man in the head. The NOPD failed to immediately release a public report about it).

Photo: Man holds up local Newspaper whose front page reads “NOPD Shoots man during traffic stop” in NOLA police station during occupation of police building,    

Photo Source Twitter: @2ChainzLyrics 

Up front, my friends (4 black women and 1 black man) and I were leading the group in chanting “Justice for Mike Brown” & “What do we want? JUSTICE. When do we want it? NOW” while a black man whom I did not know (pictured above holding newspaper) joined us in front and led a chant of ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’. Because the people leading the unregistered public event in honor of Mike Brown were black, we didn’t think twice about leading with that particular chant. At some point though, I stepped back and joined the body of the rally and it was at this point that I started getting upset.

As mentioned earlier, I had a brief instance during the moment of silence when I opened my eyes and saw a bunch of white folks with their hands raised in the same position that it’s believed Mike Brown adopted before he was shot. As I moved further back into the crowd of the march, I realized that everybody, including almost all the white people, had adopted the ‘Hands up’ pose. The initial rationalization I had done in the park when I first saw white folks in this pose disappeared as I watched white person after white person march past me with their hands up chanting ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!’ as if they would be criminalized and targeted by police because of the color of their skin. As if their existence was an inherent threat despite being unarmed and in a pose of surrender. As if their interactions with law enforcement as white people don’t usually look like this. I remember feeling the exact same way after Trayvon Martin died and white people, in their misguided attempts at solidarity, posted photos like this one:

Photo Source: Google Image search, White People I am Trayvon

Or when white people, after the criticism of the portrayal of Mike Brown (and other black victims of police violence) in the media posted photos like this one:

Photo Source: Twitter @goawayjoyce

Look, I understand wanting to show up and support, but white people need to understand that this symbolic act of raising your hands in a position of surrender is meant to illustrate how black people are violently targeted by police because of their race. If you don’t experience that, you should not mimic the gesture in an attempt at “solidarity”. It is centering yourself in a narrative that you cannot tell because of the protection your white privilege gives you. It shows a lack of understanding about the nature of systemic state sanctioned violence against black bodies. In fact, the day after the rally I was talking to a white male neighbor who had attended the rally (and marched with his hands up chanting ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’) who expressed that he thought the gesture was “too passive”. I had to literally break it down for him that the point of the gesture was so show that a non-aggressive surrender wasn’t enough to save Mike Brown because his blackness made him a threat, disposable, or both. In adopting this pose, Black people aren’t demonstrating passive surrender to oppression, they are communicating that they can make all attempts to appear non-threatening, but the historic and contemporary vilification of blackness in America has made the real danger the perception of their blackness as inherently threatening.

Another thing I noted as I went further back into the rally was the behavior of a number of white people in the crowd. These folks (all of whom that I saw were white with bandanas over their faces) were pushing over trash cans, taunting police officers in their cars as we passed them, spray painting public property and releasing colored gas canisters (as shown in this video of the march. A friend of mine told me after the march that he had seen one such white person throw themselves full force against a police car and there were outside reports that a window had been broken).

Left Photo: Yellow gas canister goes off during march, Photo Source Twitter: @what__bruh

Right Photo: Graffiti found after march, Photo Source Twitter: @what__bruh

This is when I got mad. How dare these white folks come ‘take part’ in this march by bringing unnecessary violence into a demonstration about unnecessary violence? We were already taking a risk by leading an unregistered rally in order to make a statement on injustice, and now it was being co-opted by the group of people least likely to face any consequences. Had the police reacted to the rally or the violence of these provocateurs, they would have been more likely to arrest myself or other Black people peacefully leading the march, not the white people actually causing the trouble. Later, it was revealed that this group of white folks was part of a local (white) anarchist group that was essentially taking advantage of the energy and numbers of the march to bring about their own agenda, mirroring claims of the same escalation tactics used by outsiders in Ferguson.

All of this backstory finally leads us to the title of the piece, White People, Solidarity & Why I Didn’t March for Mike Brown

Recognizing that the spontaneous rally in the business & tourist sectors of New Orleans did not reach most of the city’s black population who are most likely to be impacted by police violence, there were plans to organize a follow up march that would be more intentional about including this population. A friend of mine attended the organizers meeting for this next event where attendees discussed the route that should be taken, what to do about provocateurs and where/when the event should take place (the meeting was described to me by a white attendee as having “a few poc with a definite majority of white anarchists who identified as occupiers [who] spent most of the time talking”). . At sometime during this meeting, it was revealed that one of the pseudo-national events that was originally announced at the vigil was already in the stages of being planned by a local (white) Anarchist group who would eventually make (and later delete) the Facebook page for the event. I showed up to the rally at Washington Square Park to support a black woman friend of mine who had posted that she was one of the organizers online, and this is what I saw:

There were literally more bikes than black people. After finding my friend, she took one look at me and said, “So you probably won’t be marching today huh?” I told her I probably wouldn’t, but stuck around to see if there was going to be any dialogue about this particular gathering for Mike Brown. There wasn’t. After the organizers met and decided on an acceptable route given the make up of those in attendance, they led the 90-95% white crowd out of the park with their hands up chanting “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot”. I turned and walked in the opposite direction with the four other black women I came with and we sat on a playground expressing our frustration about the strange energy of this almost all white group going through the streets of this ‘chocolate city’ chanting ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’.

I want to think that white people care about systemic racism. I want to think they are outraged by Mike Brown’s murder, that they are bursting with righteous anger and that they want to riot because the state of our country’s “criminal justice” system is unacceptable. I want to think that. But when I see white people smiling for pictures at protests, carrying the biggest sign that takes up the most space, bringing in unnecessary violence, and talking about how ‘we are all victims and all just need to get along’ during demonstrations about the targeting of black people…I can’t help but think that maybe they’re just here to make themselves feel better about their own prejudice and advance their own agendas because of how so many choose to participate. I’m not saying don’t support and/or participate , I’m saying make sure how you do so makes sense for you as a white person and doesn’t harm the cause you claim to support.

On Thursday I attended an event featuring Kalamu ya Salaam where a friend and myself expressed our frustration about the derailment of the first rally by white participants. A few elders in the audience reminded us that these tactics were not new, that they themselves had to deal with provocateurs and other tactics during the Civil Rights Movement. One in particular told us that when white people were using your issues to fight their own battles and doing so at your expense, then it was your responsibility to call them out before they do you more harm. So white people, this is me calling you out. Solidarity is not meant to be comfortable. It is not shining light on yourself as ally at the expense of the oppressed who are demanding their counternarratives be centralized. It is understanding that your whiteness protects you from certain things which in turn prohibits you from participation in others, because at the end of the day, when you get tired of marching and chanting, you can put your hands down and feel confident that the police won’t see you as a threat.

Some of us simply don’t have that luxury.

themaskednegro:

I just got a ride home from the gym from a 40-ish year old five foot tall white woman that I’ve never talked to before tonight.

She offered as she saw me leaving. I live literally across the street. Maybe a 5-10 minute walk.

I asked her why she wanted to give me a ride and she said “Because with what’s going on out there I don’t think it’s safe for you to walk alone in the dark.”

I’m a black male in my late 20s who is six feet 8 inches tall and is roughly 400 lbs. I’m a literal giant.

And she feared for my safety because of what she’s seen on the news all week.

Think about that shit.

ifitisntloveff:

shanellbklyn:

ragernoir:

myriadsubtletiess:

I don’t think I have ever been more done with Pharrell than I am right now. *deletes all N*E*R*D music + “GIRL” from my iTunes*

ACTUAL QUOTE FROM ARTICLE:

"It looked very bully-ish; that in itself I had a problem with," he said. "Not with the kid, but with whatever happened in his life for him to arrive at a place where that behavior is OK. Why aren’t we talking about that?"

I don’t even know why ya’ll fuck with him tbh. I knew he wasn’t shit, when he said that shit saying that racism isn’t real for Blacks, and Blacks are the reason for all the fucked up shit that happens to them, racism isn’t real for Blacks, and he said the only people that face racism & hardships/struggles in this country are Mexicans & Hispanic people.  When he said all that dumb shit, idk why ya’ll continued to praise and love his ass

I wanna back hand the shit out of him so bad right now!

damn..

hairstylesbeauty:

Two Wolves by ZenPencils
hairstylesbeauty.tumblr.com

Just FYI this is not a “native” story it’s a Christian thing, it was always a Christian thing, and presenting it as coming from an unnamed Native American tribe is some bullshit along the lines of “ancient Chinese proverb”.

The fine folks at the Bay Area Newsgroup, which includes newspapers the San Jose Mercury, Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, and others, asked me to write a long profile of Trick Dog's Caitlin Laman, so that's what I did. 

The story comes out in this Sunday's Eat Magazine, an insert into all those papers. I'm not sure if it's going online in traditional format, but here it is in Issu, the online magazine format. If it comes out as traditional text I'll share the link. 

They did a nice job! Lots of photos and a lovely layout. 

The article also includes illustrated recipes by 8 Bay Area bartenders:

• Caitlin Laman of Trick Dog
• Suzanne Long of Longitude
• Nick Kosevich for Mortar and Pestle
• Antoine Nixon of Jack's Oyster Bar and Fish House
• Russ Stanley of Jack Rose Libation House
• Jimmy Marino of The Lexington House
• Brandon Clements of The Village Pub
• Andrew Majoulet of Rich Table

They asked for ten but chose eight - sorry if yours was one of the ones left out. 

Go read the story here!

Fact-Checking the Clear Ice Balls Method

New Booze: Six New Cognacs Hit the States, All of Them Expensive

New Booze: 2 White, 1 Aged, and 9 Flavored Whiskies