the self-care sideblog of Vesper (@queerascat) devoted to any and everything they find helpful for navigating queerness, mental health and self-care as a black person.
They’ve Always Been Watching Us: From COINTELPRO and Martin Luther King, Jr to the NSA’s surveillance program, the US Government has been keeping a close watch on the American Left for a long time.
I’d been kicking this idea around for a while and trying to think about how to articulate it. Pretty happy with how it eventually turned out!
Sometimes I think about my reasons for getting tattoos (just for myself, not because they need justification). Adding onto this painting metaphore, I think getting ink is a way for me to put down portable roots. I move a lot and will be doing it again soon, and until I can actually settle down and paint some walls I’ll take visual control of something more accessible, namely myself.
They’ve Always Been Watching Us: From COINTELPRO and Martin Luther King, Jr to the NSA’s surveillance program, the US Government has been keeping a close watch on the American Left for a long time.
...personally, i've only ever heard such an assertion / statement made by one person of color to another, which requires a lot more unpacking than this person (and people in general) seem(s) to realize, but yeah ok...
My advice to you is that if you wanna do something totally different and reinvent a little part of yourself but you’re afraid people will think you’re trying too hard: just do it anyway.
In high school there was a girl who wore heels every single day and I was so envious. I wanted to wear heels but I was a huge tomboy growing up and no one thought of me as feminine and I was worried people would think I was being “fake,” or trying too hard.
But one day I wore a pair and I got a lot of remarks, not all of them nice. And then I wore another and another until one day a girl said to me “I wish I could wear heels like you and [the girl I envied] but I couldn’t pull it off.”
And I realized I’d become known for wearing heels and it was just a thing I did now and nobody questioned it.
I know this is such a small thing but I have held on to this lesson throughout my young adulthood because it’s proven true again and again with bigger things like my career and my sexuality
When you first step out of the idea of yourself other people have accepted or invented and express a part of you that they don’t know, it’s scary. People like to think they know you you, and challenging their perception of you threatens them.
That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to express who you are.
You’re not fake or trying too hard just because you decide to share a new side of yourself!!!
an ecofascist blog has been gaining a lot of followers recently
the user captain-planet-official, who got popular from posts like this masking as environmental care (as most ecofascists do):
frequently slip in bits of white supremacist/racist/antisemitic commentary or ideals between posts, such as these:
or even the user outright requesting fashwave images from other fascists on here:
i’m not only worried about this for the sake of kicking weird fascist cunts like this off of the site, but also because of the fact that his entire persona has been attracting minors who don’t understand the undertone or even ecofascism itself. i’ve recently talked to one who had drawn fan art for the page! this isn’t good at all!
Meet the Civil Rights Leaders Who Served on Planned Parenthood’s 1942 Advisory Council
The National Negro Advisory Council of Planned Parenthood Federation of America formed in 1942 to lead educational and outreach efforts in Black communities. Dorothy Celeste Boulding Ferebee, Mabel Keaton Staupers, and Dr. Paul B. Cornely were just three of more than 100 Black leaders and health care providers who joined the initiative, along with W.E.B. Dubois and Mary McLeod Bethune. This Black History Month, we honor Black leaders of the past who fought for the lives, dignity, and future of black communities in the US.
U.S. National Library of Medicine
Dr. Dorothy Celeste Boulding Ferebee (1898-1980) was an obstetrician and civil rights activist who was the first medical director of the Mississippi Health Project, working to administer health care to thousands of Black Mississippians during Jim Crow. Later, she became president of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, president of the National Council of Negro Women, and a vice president of Girl Scouts of the United States of America.
U.S. National Library of Medicine
Dr. Paul B. Cornely (1906-2002) was a physician and civil rights leader who fought for desegregation in hospitals and became first Black president of the American Public Health Association (APHA) in 1969.
Moorland Spingarn Research Center, Howard University
Mabel Keaton Staupers (1890-1989) (center) was a nurse who helped establish the Booker T. Washington Sanitarium, a Harlem-based health care facility that was the first to treat Black tuberculosis patients. Later, she fought against quotas that limited the number of black nurses allowed in the military during World War II.