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in sixth grade my homeroom teacher caught this kid stephen saying, “that’s so gay.”

so he told the class that for the rest of the week, anytime you wanted to express something negatively, you could say, “that’s so stephen.”

and it started out as a joke, where even this stephen kid was going around using it, laughing at it, not really caring. it was funny, i guess.

but then one of his friends got a bad mark on a test and said, “that’s so stephen.”

we had a blacktop recess and everyone kept saying, “that’s so stephen.”

and when we got too loud doing groupwork and had to separate and work silently, everyone in the class kept muttering, “that’s so stephen.”

and the weirdest part was that even though it was just a word we were using, even though it had nothing to do with stephen, we all sort of blamed stephen.

and as everyone kept using “that’s so stephen,” all week, you could see stephen himself finding it less and less funny. we played a game called “pamplemousse” in french class and everyone got stephen out right away if they could. someone literally went and found one of stephen’s art projects when nobody else was around and ruined it so he had to start over.

and when my homeroom teacher found out about it, he sat everyone down and told us that it wasn’t okay to say “that’s so stephen” anymore. that the things we’d been blaming him for weren’t his fault and the things we’d been doing to him weren’t fair.

he told us that stephen couldn’t help it that he was stephen. he didn’t choose to be stephen. he was born stephen.

and that’s when it clicked.

we all felt pretty stupid, i think, for sort of falling for it, but i’ll be damned if i’ve ever had a teacher get a lesson across so utterly and completely as mr. bernard did.

it hadn’t even been the full week.

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I am watching ‘Making A Murderer’ on Netflix and you can see how criminal justice, police, judges, and prosecutors are so very warped and prejudiced towards the vulnerable [mentally, financially, etc]

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#Repost @awake_minds with @repostapp ・・・ #oregonunderattack

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How One Boston Neighborhood Stopped Gentrification in Its Tracks

Tony Hernandez remembers playing as a child on the vacant lots in the Dudley Street neighborhood of Boston. In the 1980s, white flight and disinvestment had so devastated this neighborhood that more than 20 percent of the land—1,300 lots—lay vacant. Today, Hernandez owns a home on this land, one of 225 units of permanently affordable housing. His home is surrounded by parks and gardens, a town common, community center, charter school, community greenhouse, and several urban farms. This transformation was led by residents of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, who in the late 1980s established a community land trust to take democratic ownership of the land and guide development.

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Jesus Wasn’t White And Here’s Why That Matters

The traditional image of Jesus as a blue-eyed, blonde-haired white man is historically inaccurate. In her latest video for MTV Decoded, Franchesa Ramsey tells us how this picture of Jesus came to be even though the Bible doesn’t mention race.

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Watch: Beauty vlogger Jordan Bone revealed she’s tetraplegic — and gave inspiring advice to anyone facing adversity.

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An amazing searchable  online photographic resource for researchers, historians, and curious time travelers.

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21 Pope Francis quotes to remember on his 79th birthday