#black gay civil rights leader

[thequeereview]

Watch Colman Domingo as March on Washington architect, civil rights activist & organizer Bayard Rustin in Rustin teaser trailer

Marking today’s 60th Anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Netflix has launched the teaser trailer for the upcoming Bayard Rustin biopic Rustin starring Emmy-winning Euphoria actor Colman Domingo in the title role. An often overlooked civil rights activist and organizer, Rustin was the architect of 1963’s March on Washington, working alongside Reverend Martin Luther King…

[iamafanofcartoons]

RWBY is a good show, and I’m tired of people pretending its not!

I’m sorry, I’m just so tired of all these random claims that RWBY is “boring anime cliche” or “racist white male writing”, So...let’s go over them in segments

Female characters:

Aren’t walking fanservice shots and aren’t sexualized

Aren’t degraded in their field (combat, tactics, dust usage, etc) to boost up male characters (cause seemingly female characters being too skilled at something is emasculating to incels)

When a woman says no to a man, the man takes no for an answer and doesn’t keep trying. (So dear Hbomberguy, stop claiming that Weiss x Jaune was ever a thing)

Women don’t require a man to “Defend their honor” (This is in response to the dude who harassed me in anonymous about V5 who was upset that Yang punched a creep)

Aren’t woobified or emotionally weakened, instead having reactions to things like normal human beings. (Sorry Shonen anime which loves to make women woobified or emotionally weakened vs men) Being capable of emotions but also doing things effectively.

Aren’t made into waifu for male characters. Nora is still a badass and even being allowed to explore who she is outside of Ren, which runs against the usual anime/manga bs. Weiss didn’t get with Jaune after finding out he helped w/ Neptune. Blake actually defended her boundaries when Sun crossed certain lines (even though they’re brotp not romantic, he’s a male character that could’ve been put as a pseudo-love interest). Yang is also shown to be more than just Blake’s GF as we see in Ruby Yang interactions, Yang vs Salem, Yang ageeing to talk with Robyn. They’re all their own characters not trying to be the perfect wife for a male character.

LGBT+ characters:

aren’t in a world of “everyone is gay or straight”, so for me at least coming across as more impactful

have Ilia (lesbian); Coco (lesbian); Terra (wlw) and Saphron (wlw) also married and w/ kid that aren’t treated different to any other couple; Scarlet (gay-male); Nolan (implied, I think its at this point and not confirmed, mlm); May (non-deadnamed, voiced by and helped crafted with the help of a trans VA, and not having her trans status be the central element of her character trans character); Blake (bi) and Yang (wlw) that are a main pair that are being allowed to build to a relationship at the same pacing as the hetero alt. pairing. BB being naturally built up and not rushed into a relationship, though still soft-canon locked in via Nora.

Are ALL ALIVE (funny how the straight white male characters get killed off?)

PoC characters:

Includes Marrow, Pietro, Joanna, Flynt, Yatsuhashi, Lie Ren, and Robyn as default heroes side

Includes Emerald having switched to the heroes side after having it foreshadowed in v3. Also possibly Elm and Harriet, depending on where they go in the future.

includes Sienna, who was admittedly actual wasted potential, being contrasted against Adam as the morally better version of violence in activism. A controlled violence actually giving a shit rights activist leader vs. a co-opting murderous abusive bloodthirsty psychopathic terrorist.

are easily the lesser in villain count vs. Caucasian villains.

So can the RWDE please stop trying to claim how RWBY isn’t better than anime/manga at least, but overall “isn’t progressive” in these areas.

Adam Taurus represents a very real element in real life regarding “Radical civil rights movements” ; extremism and co-opters; While the actual faunus rights aspect on its own is given a sympathetic light repeatedly. We also have Ilia Amitola, the female POC lesbian, get a redemption. While Adam Taurus, the cis white male edgelord? Is Evil  and gets his death by double penetration at the hands of two lesbians. (Edit: yes, I know Blake is Bi, as is her VA. It was an expression explaining how cis white male “authority” individuals get emasculated)

The WF has a lot of references, not specifically the Black Panther one. Also the WF on its own is fine, its the version that gets corrupted by Adam’s psychotic co-opting terrorist ass that is the problem.

 Reflective of reality where if any group for any cause crosses into violence that involves innocent bystanders; then they lose any credibility and are nothing more than terrorists. I don’t care what the cause is. Which is exactly what the WF under Adam presents; but is just 1 vein of it with Sienna’s vein existing, Ghira’s, and even Blake’s. Was it handled perfectly? No, you could have easily have shaved time from Adam to give to Sienna and had her live to continue. Personally I found Sienna to be the actual wasted potential, but EruptionFang naturally loves cis white male evil men as his favorite Meow Meows. Don’t even try to recommend a gay or bisexual dude to rwby critics, they’ll flip and call it pandering.

The MC’s aren’t remotely “paper thin”, nor secondaries. Heck the only ones that fit that bill are characters in the tertiary vein that are supposed to be that way. The “two traits” falls apart if one actually pays attention to the characters.

And most fixit fanfics not only sexualize the characters in a show with no fanservice...

Sadly they also overfocus on male characters and have their favorite male characters talk down the female main characters.

Robyn Hill represents the people standing up NOT against the military, but against fascism/totalitarianism. We see that for all the “good intentions” that Ironwood MAY have? It is always sabotaged by him. Ironwood backstabs Ozpin, brings an Army as a show of force, does multiple projects behind people’s backs, and yet displays more than few acts of hypocrisy. Volume 7 literally showed him acting as a dictator because he believed that only he knew the answer to everyone’s problems. Yet the consequences of HIS actions are what led to Atlas Downfall. Yang and Blake even tried to get Robyn to work with Ironwood and Robyn was literally willing to do so. Which of course pissed off Ironwood stans that anyone, especially a POC hero of the people, would stand against a Cis White Male Authority figure. The elections in V7 meant that anyone’s authority could be challenged by the people. Of COURSE Ironwood stans REFUSE to acknowledge the election part was good.

The attempt to balance idealism with realism is pretty interesting. What do you do against an enemy with an unlimited army, immortality, and agents who seek to turn everyone against each other? Do you submit to the “inevitable?” Or do you keep fighting to the end, instead prolonging the end?

You can think of this as having borrowed a theme or two from dark souls!

RWBY is at the very least leaps and bounds beyond most anime it's close in genre with. I remember seeing, partially in jest, the idea that RWBY has half the fanbase it does for being an action anime with a female case and no fanservice and I think it might almost literally be true.

It is depressingly hard to find a decent action show with a female cast that doesn't sexualize them in gross ways. Even shows I like on the whole end up doing that.

Of course, the points regarding love are helped by the fact that a good chunk of the female cast is front and center in the story. They’re largely in the driver seat and aren’t secondary to any male titular protagonist. Thus you don’t get cases where a girl on the main cast is there to be… the girl.

In any other story, Oscar and/or Jaune  would be front and center. Heck, the three creators of RWBY are guys before their team grew so you’d think they’d “write what they know.” Yet they stick to their guns on having girls get shit done.

One Anime a person I know felt came close to this was, if you can believe it, Fairy Tail where Natsu might’ve been the prominent ass kicker but Erza is the one effectively leader the team, Wendy goes on an arc of learning to love herself and Lucy grows into the wizard that leads the charge against Acnologia.

Yet it sent mixed signals with how the girls (those of age) had designs that left little to the imagination. I can appreciate an artist honest in his horniness… but the Anime did something right when it came to Erza’s torture in Tartaros that helped sell the gravitas of the traumatic experience.

RWBY feels like the above but far more refined in execution. There’s a time and place for schlocky cheesecake but not when it clashes with the narrative and themes overall.

So tell me...without using Hbomberguys’ repeated false information about the “love triangle” or “self-insert” slander...how would YOU respectfully criticize RWBY?  How would you claim to be “a critic” yet still encourage people to watch RWBY? 

If you try to bring up Hbomb’s 2.5 hour hate video, then anyone who tries to claim that a video from 2 years ago no longer is relevant is just being hypocritical. (Looking at you, RWDE Apologist, you know who you are)

Oh, one more thing. RWBY seasons 1-3 were the weakest in terms of writing and animation. But even so, the fact of the matter is that anything that happened in those seasons are ignored by critics, theorists, and straight shippers.

Material Inspired from   https://www.tumblr.com/crimsonxe/691425946111295488/since-i-ran-across-a-dumbass-earlier-that-tried-to 

[bnwo-warrior]

HAPPY BLACK HISTORY MONTH! Whilst black history is a subject that should be celebrated and taught year-round and not relegated to a single month, it's an opportunity for us to draw special attention to the topic.

We've provided a small selection of reading materials and charity links below to get you started. If you have any yourselves, I'd love to hear from you

Reading Materials

Origins of Black History Month: https://asalh.org/about-us/about-black-history-month/ Racial wealth gap origins: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/racial-wealth-gap.html Learn their names - Unarmed African Americans killed by police: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unarmed_African_Americans_killed_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States

Sojourner Truth, prominent slave abolitionist: https://www.nps.gov/people/sojourner-truth.htm Mary Jackson, NASA's first black female engineer: https://www.nasa.gov/people/mary-w-jackson-biography/ Bayard Rustin, openly gay civil rights movement leader: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/rustin-bayard Claudia Jones, founder of Notthing Hill Carnival and activist: https://jacobin.com/2023/02/claudia-jones-communist-theory-black-feminism-internationalism

USA Charities

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (Legal Defense): https://naacp.org/ Black Lives Matter: https://blacklivesmatter.com/ Center For Black Equity (LGBT+): https://centerforblackequity.org/ Association for the Study of African American Life and History: https://asalh.org/

UK Charities

Runnymede Trust: https://www.runnymedetrust.org/ African Rainbow Family: https://africanrainbowfamily.org/ Stephen Lawrence Day Foundation: https://stephenlawrenceday.org/

[nerdygaymormon]

Efforts to include Religious workers

This past Sunday, a man came up to me at church and said he's been thinking about what I said at the last stake general priesthood meeting when I spoke of being a gay member. He's been wanting to talk with me because his company is supportive a queer people, and that's fine, but they don't lift up religious people in the same way and he's unhappy about that. How can he bring that up to his employer? 

He says he has been discriminated against in the past for sharing his religious beliefs and asked if I have some suggestions he can present in the company diversity meetings of how the business can support their religious employees?

This happened in the hallway between meetings, so there wasn't time to have much of a discussion. In our conversation, the Utah compromise was mentioned and that Elder Oaks has spoken in favor of anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ individuals, and that religious people are protected by constitutional amendment. He commented that he wishes church leaders would explain how support for anti-discrimination measures for LGBTQ people are compatible with our beliefs, but if Elder Oaks is in favor then clearly the principles are good ones. He asked that if I think of ideas he can present to his company or any good resources, to email him.

I've written my response and am sharing here since this blog is where I write about the experience of existing in the intersection of being queer and LDS.

————————————————————

I've been thinking about our conversation of your workplace not celebrating or lifting up religious people the same way it does other groups, like LGBTQ employees.

Companies put many policies in place to show they're welcoming to different groups. It benefits the company as their diverse employees can give insight on how to reach customers in different subgroups. It's good for people to see themselves as desired customers and welcome in that space.

The thing about creating a welcoming environment is not everyone is welcome. It feels like an oxymoron, but to create a tolerant space we have to be intolerant of intolerance. If openly racist people were employed & welcomed by a business, then those targeted by their racism would not feel welcome or safe.

Will religious-related conversations make other people feel unsafe? Unfortunately, Christians are increasingly known only for wanting to be able to discriminate against others, for opposing gay rights and medical procedures they don't like, for child abuse by church leaders, for committing violence against trans people or immigrants, and so on. No wonder employers worry about religious conversations at work. 

If a company chooses to celebrate and empower their religious employees, how would it do this? And is that what religious people want? If a work group was put together to come up with ways for the company to be more inclusive of religious people, what would their recommendations be? A business can acknowledge Pride Month or Black History Month or Veteran's Day, how would it choose which religious holidays to recognize? Most businesses in the US already recognize Christmas, do they need to do more? 

Even though things are better now than in the past, as a gay person, I generally enter a space with the assumption that I have to be careful. If I walk in and see a little rainbow flag, it is such a relief to me, I can let down my guard, it indicates that this is a safe place for queer people, and I would expect homophobic things not to be tolerated in that space. As for entering a space as a person of faith, it’s the opposite. Usually I assume I'm fine, in fact I don’t think about it unless I see something that indicates maybe I wouldn't be well received. 

That may sound overdramatic, but I grew up in a society where negative things being said about gay people was accepted and common, and for most of my life many basic legal protections were not in place. It was only in 2020 when federal Civil Rights protections for queer people came into effect. Even today, our governor and legislature are targeting LGBTQ people as a way to boost their appeal, and it feels scary to me and makes me worry about how many people agree with those things. Christianity isn't targeted in the same way. That makes displays of support for queer people more important to me than support for Christian people because the risk isn’t the same.

Being someone who is both gay and religious, it's interesting to see how the perception & reality of both groups has changed. For gay people, it's been a series of steps forward, like getting queer characters in mass media, getting the same legal rights that other people already have, it's moving towards being equal and included in society. Milestones towards equality and inclusion still are taking place, like having the first openly-gay governor elected or the first trans person getting elected to a state legislature.

What I see happening to Christians is their legal protections aren’t taken away but their privileged place in society is being curtailed. The loss of privilege can feel like oppression because what people were once free to do no longer is acceptable. As someone who is part of a group that has been legally and culturally oppressed, I wouldn't characterize the experience of Christians the same way. I think what is happening is Christians are moving towards becoming a minority group. 50 years ago, 90% of American adults identified as Christian, today it's 63% and dropping, and among adults under age 35, it's less than 50%. That has implications. Are Christians ready to be treated the same way as Jewish or Hindu people in our nation? 

Still, with all that being said, employers can do things for their religious employees, similar to how they help other groups. Here's a few ideas: 

Provide "quiet rooms" or spaces employees can use to pray. There's a Muslim who I sometimes see praying in the stairwell of my building and wouldn't it be better if there was a designated space where she could go and not be disturbed as she prays?

Is food at company events going to have kosher or halal options?

Since religious discussions in the workplace can be risky, maybe training can be provided on how to learn about co-workers' religious preferences with respectful discussions.

Company policies sometimes inadvertently discriminate with dress codes. Can a Muslim woman wear a head covering, can a Sikh man have a beard? Perhaps for safety reasons a necklace with a cross can't be worn in a manufacturing or health care setting, but is there a way for that employee to wear a cross in a way that is safe?

Is there flexibility for a religious employee to attend a special worship service on their religious holiday? 

Can a group of religious employees get together at lunch to support one another?

[dnaamericaapp]

African American LGBTQ Trailblazers Who Made History

From 1960s civil rights activist Bayard Rustin (featured in the photo) to Chicago's first lesbian mayor, Lori Lightfoot, Black LGBTQ Americans have long made history with innumerable contributions to politics, art, medicine and a host of other fields.

“As long as there have been Black people, there have been Black LGBTQ and same-gender-loving people,” David J. Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, told NBC News. “Racism combined with the forces of stigma, phobia, discrimination and bias associated with gender and sexuality have too often erased the contributions of members of our community."

Stormé DeLarverie was called the "guardian of lesbians in the Village." Beyond her LGBTQ activism, DeLarverie also organized and performed at fundraisers for women who suffered from domestic violence and their children.

James Baldwin is perhaps best known for his 1955 collection of essays, "Notes of a Native Son," and his groundbreaking 1956 novel, "Giovanni's Room," which depicts themes of homosexuality and bisexuality. Baldwin spent a majority of his literary and activist career educating others about Black and queer identity, as he did during his famous lecture titled “Race, Racism, and the Gay Community” at a meeting of the New York chapter of Black and White Men Together (now known as Men of All Colors Together) in 1982.

Audre Lorde, a self-described “Black, lesbian, feminist, mother, poet, warrior," made lasting contributions in the fields of feminist theory, critical race studies and queer theory through her pedagogy and writing. Among her most notable works are “Coal” (1976), “The Black Unicorn” (1978), “The Cancer Journals” (1980) and “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name” (1982).

Ernestine Eckstein was a leader in the New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the United States. She attended "Annual Reminder" picket protests and was frequently one of the only women — and the only Black woman — present at early LGBTQ rights protests.

There are plenty more.

DNA America

“It’s what we know, not what you want us to believe.”

[mogai-sunflowers]

MOGAI BHM- Belated Day 19!

happy BHM! today i’m going to be talking about Bayard Rustin!

Bayard Rustin-

[Image ID: A black-and-white photograph of Bayard Rustin, a thin Black man with slightly greying, short frizzy hair. In the photo, he has a deadpan expression on his face and is wearing a black necktie, a white collared undershirt, and a black suit jacket. He is standing by a sign on a wall that says in large block text “INTEGRATION MEANS BETTER SCHOOLS FOR ALL!”. Below that, in small scribbled print, it says “N.A.A.C.P, PARENTS WORKSHOP HARLEM PARENTS”. There is another, smaller sign behind Rustin that is partially obscured by him, but what can be seen of it says “We refuse... another gene... how about... It is our...”. End ID.]

Bayard Rustin, a man who is frequently considered to have been Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “right-hand man”, is a civil rights activist who has been largely erased from the Black history taught in schools, and from the general population’s knowledge and perception of the Civil Rights Movement- but he was an integral part of the movement, and his erasure has largely to do with the fact that he was openly and unapologetically gay.

Bayard Rustin was born in 1912 in Pennsylvania, where he was raised by a Quaker family who very early on instilled in him the principles of nonviolence, which laid the foundation for his involvement with the civil rights movement. At a young age, he was interested in civil rights and racial justice, and at first, the racially progressive views of the Young Communist League attracted him to join. Eventually, their politics changed and he left the league.

In 1941, he turned his sights to socialism by joining the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), who at the time advocated for equal rights for all people (except, as he would later find out, gay people). That same year, he met two other men who would be influential in his life- A.J Muste, the leader of the FOR, and Phillip A. Randolph. With these two men, he helped propose the March on Washington that convinced FDR to sign the executive order that allowed Black workers into the defense industry, and in 1944, Bayard Rustin was arrested as a “conscientious objector” because he refused to sign up for the draft for WWII, to which he was staunchly opposed. 

However, in 1953, Bayard was fired from his position in the FOR after being arrested and charged with “sex perversion” for having sex with another man. At the time, many people feared that open discussions of homosexuality would threaten the image and therefore ultimately the credibility and impact of the civil rights movement, so Bayard, along with many other Black queer people, were often targeted for their identities, either being forced to hide them or be careful with them, or having their identities completely used against them to disparage their credibility within the movement.

During the late 1940s, Bayard Rustin helped to co-found the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, which became one of the most central civil rights organizations in the civil rights movement. In 1947, he participated in FOR’s “Journey of Reconciliation” (discussed more in this post) which provided the blueprint for the Freedom Rides of the 1960s, which led to the illegalization of interstate bus segregation.

In 1956, Randolph, who had become Rustin’s mentor, urged him to meet with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. amidst the Montgomery Bus Boycott. When Rustin agreed, he and several other key pacifists of the movement met with King and were instrumental in convincing him to more fully adopt nonviolence as a way of life. Bayard Rustin’s upbringing in nonviolence led to it being one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement.

Over the next couple of years, Bayard became part of King’s “inner circle” of close associates within the civil rights movement. He held a key position in King’s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which he had helped to found, and he was behind many efforts of integration. He helped to organize many key events, like the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, and the Youth Marches for Integrated Schools. However, in 1960, he reluctantly agreed to step away from the SCLC and from Dr. King, because the Democratic Convention threatened to publish a rumor that King and Rustin were romantically and sexually involved, using Bayard’s orientation against him, if they followed through with a protest against the convention that they’d been planning. Bayard himself was very disappointed with the way King didn’t stand up for him, but he also acknowledged that it was probably best for the movement that he step away.

In the following years, he got involved outside of the scope of the SCLC. He did community organizing, and eventually, in 1963, he was reintegrated into King’s campaign through the Birmingham Campaign. It was then that he made his most notable and significant contribution to the Civil Rights Movement. He had strong organizational and strategic skills, and people who worked with him knew that there was no better man to re-energize the movement through a strategic march, than Rustin- and thus began the plan that brought to fruition Bayard’s previous plans of a march on Washington.

Many people involved were still against Bayard being involved- including John Lewis, a prominent member of the SNCC, and Roy Wilkins, a prominent chair of the NAACP. Their reservations were largely against both his sexuality and his previous communist affiliations, so it was agreed that instead, his mentor, Philip A. Randolph, would be elected to lead the march, so that he could then, in secret, choose his mentee, Bayard Rustin, to lead the march from behind the scenes.

So, within a time span of eight weeks, Bayard Rustin organized the infamous 1963 March on Washington. He spent those weeks incessantly writing letters and organizing with others. It was an extremely chaotic environment, but he was very focused and determined, and when the march happened, it singlehandedly re-energized the Civil Rights Movement and is remembered to this day as a monumental moment from the movement. From it, King’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech was born. Thanks to Rustin’s tireless efforts, the movement regained a lot of steam.

After that point in time, more people, including King himself, began to come out in support of Rustin, causing the accusations against him to lessen their effectiveness, although many within the movement were still against his involvement. For the rest of his life, Bayard Rustin remained a committed part of the Civil Rights Movement, and his contributions cannot be overstated. He was a proud gay Black man and he fought for his rights in the face of adversity from every angle.

tagging @metalheadsforblacklivesmatter​ @bfpnola​ @intersexfairy​ @cistematicchaos​ 

Sources-

https://www.history.com/news/bayard-rustin-march-on-washington-openly-gay-mlk#:~:text=Why%20MLK's%20Right%2DHand%20Man,...and%20openly%20gay.&text=Jun%201%2C%202018-,Bayard%20Rustin%20was%20an%20indispensable%20force%20behind%20the%20Civil,...and%20openly%20gay.

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/rustin-bayard

https://www.history101.com/bayard-rustin-mlk-right-hand/

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The House Criminal Justice Committee of the Tennessee legislature was discussing a bill to add the firing squad to electrocution and lethal injection as the state’s death penalty options when Rep. Sherrell suggested one more.

“Could I put an amendment on that that would include hanging on a tree, also?” he inquired during Tuesday’s proceedings.

Sherrell paused and sat with his hands folded before him, the fingers interlaced. His mouth briefly closed and his cheek registered a swirl of his tongue, as if he were savoring the moment.

Among the other committee members who can be seen in a video of the proceedings is Rep. Joe Towns Jr., a Democrat from Nashville. He could not be reached by The Daily Beast afterward, but his clearly horrified expression said it all.

Sherrell did not respond directly to requests for comment, but he released a statement on Wednesday through the House Republican caucus press secretary apologizing for his “very poor judgment.”

“My exaggerated comments were intended to convey my belief that for the cruelest and most heinous crimes, a just society requires the death penalty in kind,” Sherrell said.

“Although a victim’s family cannot be restored when an execution is carried out, a lesser punishment undermines the value we place on protecting life. My intention was to express my support of families who often wait decades for justice. I sincerely apologize to anyone who may have been hurt or offended.”

The prospect of stringing someone from a tree has a particular history in a southern state such as Tennessee, especially in some of the rural communities such as Sherrell represents. That includes his hometown, Sparta, where a runaway slave was dragged from the jail and hung from a tree on a hill in the town cemetery in 1855. One man tried to stop the lynching, and a newspaper recorded the mob’s reply.

“Hang the speaker to the other end of the rope.”

And Sherrell was not talking about a gallows on Tuesday. He meant a noose dangling from a tree limb, just like in Sparta 168 years ago and in thousands of lynchings that followed across the South. He ended his pause by saying the firing squad is “a very good idea” and asked to become a co-sponsor of the legislation.

Sherrell is already one of two sponsors of a bill to rename part of a Nashville street after Donald Trump that is currently named after the late civil rights icon and longtime U.S Rep. John Lewis in 2021. Lewis attended American Baptist College and Fisk University in Nashville. He was a leader of the 1960 sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in downtown Nashville. The four months of non-violent protests led to Nashville becoming the first city to admit Blacks to previously segregated public places.

Trump’s only significant connection with Nashville was a 30-minute speech he delivered at the Municipal Auditorium in May 2017, followed by a visit to The Hermitage, the plantation where President Andrew Jackson once kept 200 slaves. Jackson says in his letters that he lynched two Native American chiefs. Trump laid a wreath on Jackson’s tomb on what would have been Old Hickory’s 250th birthday.

“We will make America great again!” Trump declared.

Unless Sherrell succeeds in renaming it President Donald Trump Boulevard, the address of his legislative office will remain 425 Rep. John Lewis Way. The street was previously Fifth Avenue and the official state assembly website still uses that name, which is only fitting for Sherrell. He was one of only two state legislators who voted against a 2022 bill requiring schools to include Black history and Black culture in their curriculums in grades five through eight.

And Sherrell’s bigotry is not limited to race. He was a co-sponsor of a 2020 bill that ensures private adoption and foster care agencies can reject gay couples. Just last month, he championed a bill to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youths.

“Our preacher would say, ‘If you don’t know what you are, a boy or girl, a male or a female, just go in the bathroom, take your clothes off and look in the mirror,” Sherrell said. “You’ll find out what you are.”

Throughout four terms in the legislature, Sherrell has repeatedly shown exactly who he is. And his fellow Republicans have responded by making him the majority floor leader, whose official duties include “working toward passage of all Administrative bills approved by the Republican Bill Review Committee.”

“Paul Sherrell is an extraordinary legislative leader who is admired and respected by his Republican colleagues,” House Majority Leader William Lamberth was quoted saying at the time of the selection in 2018.

Assistant Majority Leader Ron Gant said, “I know he will work tirelessly to ensure Tennessee remains a model of success that our entire nation can follow.”

The person who made Tennessee a model for the nation to follow was John Lewis, for whom a street is so rightly named. Lewis is one of the figures Sherrell did not want school kids to study.

But Sherrell was taught a little lesson of his own in Black history on Tuesday with his suggestion about hanging from a tree. It even came with just a ghoulish hint of a smile, followed by an apology.

[lizardbytheriver]

"Capitalism loves Trans People" If you are Transphobic. You are siding with Capitalism. Why are the most Rightwing Figures Anti-Trans, yet Pro-Capitalism? Why is Donald Trump, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ron DeSantis, even more moderate/establishment Republicans like McConnell all Anti-Trans. Yet they profess undying love to Capitalism. Yet they demonize Socialism and Communism. Communists Scholars and Leaders warn you about Reactionaries. And Anti-Trans is a reactionary position. It looks at progress being made for a Minority, and seeks to undo that progress and harm that vulnerable group of people. If you think Democrats/Liberals love Trans People as much as they love Capitalism. We have a Dem President in the USA. And we have hundreds of Anti-Trans legislation going into affect across the country. And where's the Democrats coming to help? They are just standing by useless as ever. But they still have the power to break a Strike. If you think Corporations love Trans People. Then understand any benefits Trans People get are conditional. Corporations exploit Trans People, just as much as any worker or minority. We've seen corporations willing to restrict Trans People's right to Healthcare, if those Trans People aid in Unionization. It is true some Corporations love the appearance of being progressive. But this does not stop at them including Trans Folks. But also Muslims, Black Folks, Indigenous Folks, Latino Folks, Gay Folks, etc. Does this mean these Corporations love these groups? I think you would have to be a Child to believe this is the case. Does Amazon love all these groups, as they exploit their workers? Many of these workers being Muslims, Black Folks, Indigenous Folks, Latino Folks, Gay Folks, and yes, even Trans Folks. It is genuinely silly for "Communists" to say being against Trans People is being against the bourgeoisie. When you are all repeating Fox News talking points. Fox News being a reactionary bourgeoisie program where a millionaire and product of nepotism goes on air and screams about minorities (whether those minorities being trans, exploited migrants, or muslims). Communists need to stand with Trans People. Communists embracing Reactionary Positions and Politics, will doom any and all momentum Communist Movements have. Communists have screwed themselves over before for not embracing Civil Rights, Gay Rights, etc. And Communists especially screwed themselves over in the West over these issues, when they had opportunities to use these issues to help Minorities but to also help their Movements grow. You either stand with Trans People or with the Reactionaries. I know who I am going to protect, uplift, support, and help.

[100gayicons]

“I became involved in a lot of human rights activities, which all stemmed from my sexual orientation as much as anything.”

Kiyoshi Kuromiya was a true hero who devoted his life to the struggle for social justice. Whether it’s was for civil right for Black Americans, the injustice of the Viet Nam War, Gay Rights, or effective treatment for people with AIDS - Kuromiya was there fighting for the cause.

Perhaps Kuromiya passion to fight oppression stems from the fact he was born at the World War II–era Japanese American internment camp (Heart Mountain, Wyoming).

At a very young age, Kuromiya was aware he was homosexual, although he didn’t know the term for it. At the age of 9 he found a copy of The Kinsey’s report on sexual behavior on open shelves in Public Library. It explain his nature to him. He soon “came out” to his parents. But later he was arrested for lewd behavior in a public park with a 16 year old teen boy. They were both detained and placed in juvenile hall for three days as punishment.

”… the judge or whatever he was told me and my parents that I was in danger of leading a lewd and immoral life.”

The arrest made Kuromiya feel like a criminal. The sense of shame forced him to keep his sexual identity a secret.

But those repressed feelings drove him to fight oppression. While attending the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1960s Kuromiya got involved with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in their efforts to desegregate Maryland diners. Then in August 1963, he attended the March on Washington (along with 250,000 others) to demand justice for all citizens. At the end of the march Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

That evening Kuromiya had the opportunity to meet King and other Civil Rights leaders. He formed a friendship with King and became his assistant. He participated in the March on Washington and in the voter registration campaign with Black Students in Montgomery, Alabama.

As part of his anti-war efforts Kuromiya designed the “Fuck the Draft” using the pseudonym Dirty Linen Corp.

As a gay man, Kuromiya also sought equality and freedom for other gay people. In 1965 he participated in the “Annual Reminder” at Independence Hall, one of the earliest rallies to remind the public that LGBT people did not have basic civil rights protections. He used the occasion to publicly announce he was Gay.

After the Stonewall riots in 1969, Kuromiya helped to organize the Philadelphia chapter of the Gay Liberation Front. With the advent of the AIDS crisis he was involved with the creation of ACT-UP and was the editor for the organization’s “Standard of Care”, the first medical treatment and competency guidelines for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Kuromiya was diagnosed with AIDS in 1989. Then he suffered a recurrence of lung cancer that he had survived in the 1970s. But that didn’t stop him. He insisted on receiving the most aggressive treatment for his cancer and it’s impact on his HIV drug regimen. And participated in every treatment decision. Kuromiya died of complications from cancer in May 2000.

“I'm a twenty-year metastatic lung cancer survivor and a fifteen-year AIDS survivor. And I really believe that activism is therapeutic.”

[petervintonjr]

"We, the people. It's a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that 'We, the people.' I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in We, the people. Today I am an inquisitor. An hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution." --from Barbara Jordan's opening remarks to the House Judiciary Committee on July 24, 1974, regarding the impeachment of Richard Nixon

Today, June 1, kicks off Pride Month (and also incidentally marks the third anniversary of the start of this series), and I thought it appropriate to examine the amazing accomplishments of Texas civil rights leader, attorney, and Congresswoman Barbara Charline Jordan.

Born in a poor Houston neighborhood in 1936, Jordan discovered an early aptitude for languages and oration, and also debate. She graduated from Texas Southern University in 1956, then obtained her LL.B. from Boston University School of Law in 1959. She was admitted to both the Massachusetts and Texas bars in 1960, then began practicing law in Houston --at the time only the third African American woman to be so licensed. An outspoken supporter of John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign, she herself entered politics and unsuccessfully ran for state representative in 1962 and again in 1964. Two years later her fortunes changed, however, and in 1966 she became the first African American elected to the Texas Senate in 1966.

Jordan's standing as a fellow Texan Democrat endeared her to then-President Lyndon Johnson and in many respects she became LBJ's protégée. In 1972 Jordan ran for Congress for Texas's 18th District, and unseated the incumbent Republican, becoming the first woman --of any race-- elected to Congress from that state.

Jordan's political career accomplishments extend far beyond this biography's available space, but among the high points include her aggressive sponsorship of the Voting Rights Act of 1975 (an extension of the more famous 1965 measure), and the Equal Rights Amendment in 1977. Also significantly she served on the House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon impeachment hearings, and her speech at the 1976 Democratic National Convention is widely regarded as one of the best keynote speeches in modern history; her presence in many ways even eclipsing that of the party's nominee, Jimmy Carter. (She would return as a keynote speaker for the 1992 Democratic National Convention.)

Jordan retired from politics in 1978 and became a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin. In 1993 Jordan was the first recipient of the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights. A year later she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton for her trailblazing work. That same year Jordan was also named the chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. Jordan died from complications from pneumonia in January of 1996, and is buried at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin --significantly breaking barriers even in death as the first-ever black woman to be interred there. While Jordan never explicitly acknowledged her personal sexual orientation in public, she was open about her life partner of nearly 30 years, educational psychologist Nancy Earl.

Her legacy continues through the Jordan Rustin Coalition (named for her and for Civil Rights organizer Bayard Rustin --see Lesson #05 in this series): a non-profit advocacy group working to empower Black same-gender loving, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals and families; and to promote equal marriage rights and to advocate for fair treatment of everyone without regard to race, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

Full text of Jordan's July 24, 1974 remarks: https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/impeachment/my-faith-constitution-whole-it-complete-it-total

A truly absorbing 1976 article about Jordan's life and career by William Broyles, indexed at: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/the-making-of-barbara-jordan-2/

[friendofhayley]

Friendofhayley's Top Books of 2022 Pt. 1 LGBTQIA+ Fiction

This Book Rec is on LGBTQ+ books (realistic fiction edition). It includes 5 books. Let's go!!

"There are so many forms of Asian-parent tough love, where parents say and do mean things only because they want the best for us. Is all of that “tough love” abusive? What distinguishes tough-love parenting from abuse? After all, Mom did say she’s afraid of what other people might say about me. Even though she is mostly afraid that people might think she’s a bad parent, isn’t the fact that she’s worried about me a good thing?"

I'll Be the One by Lyla Lee | F/M both bisexual!!

This book follows Skye, a Korean-American bisexual girl in high school who wants to be the next K-Pop star. Her dancing is incredible but the biggest barrier to everyone else is her body. As someone is half-Korean and considered plus-size in that culture, this book definitely felt like something I've always wanted. It hurt but I definitely understood every character's intentions and I loved every second of it. (Even the painful parts. Do we all have mommy issues??) I will definitely read this again whenever I'm feeling down after hearing another Ajumma comment on my body.

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley | Sapphic Relationship

This book follows 2 girls: the daughter of the head Civil Rights leader in town and the daughter of his rival. Sarah is the leader of the small group of black students to start integration at Jefferson High. This story was ambitious and carried itself well which is mainly why it's a top book for me. Intersectionality is so important and this author emphasized race but also heavily included the LGBTQIA+ struggles as well in that lens. However, the author is white, so take it with a grain of salt.

"What if this—this rule that says what I did in the back room that day is a terrible sin—what if that’s just a rule some old white man made up, too?"

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera | Latinx Lesbians

Juliet goes on an internship to peek outside the closet by studying under a white cis feminist. She discovers the communities she belongs to and the drama they have, along with finding herself. I loved the queer joy in this book and the warm acceptance Juliet found everywhere in every pocket of the BIPOC community in all the corners of America. You can tell I love intersectionality.

"My God is Black. It’s queer. It’s a symphony of masculine and feminine. It’s Audre Lorde and Sleater-Kinney. My God and my understanding of God are centered on who I am as a person and what I need to continue my connection to the divine,” Maxine explained. She took a long breath. “It’s everyone’s job to come up with a theodicy. One that has room for every inch of who they are and the person they evolve into.”

The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta | biracial gay man

This book is a metaphor for a biracial gay boy growing up while feeling like an outsider in two different worlds. The story is told in prose, yet it cuts you to the core. I absolutely loved this book and how it told this story. It's hard to even put into words how amazing it was. The characters were real and incredible, especially the drag queens.

"If you’re happy in the closet for the time being, play dress-up until you find the right outfit."

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel | dykes & co

This book was an absolute delight. It has all the comic strips of this story showing the life of dykes (and their chosen families) from 1983 to 2003. It was literally queer joy seeing these characters grow from post-grad to settling down (or definitely not), finding themselves, and supporting each other.

[mariacallous]

Having vanquished the manufactured menaces of vaccine mandates, the gay agenda and widespread election fraud, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, used his midterm’s election victory speech to position himself as a wartime leader. Now, he was preparing his constituents for the existential battle posed by their newest imaginary adversary: wokeness. In Churchillian tones, he announced: “We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.”

DeSantis was summoning the resentment that produced the racial terrorism of Reconstruction, the pro-lynching Red Summer of 1919, and the pro-segregation states’ rights movement. This time, it was called anti-woke: a modern-day mixture of McCarthyism and white grievance.

In 2021, the right became increasingly irate at what it described as “wokeness” but which tended to mean any attempt to engage in civil rights or social justice. In 2022, anti-woke became an ideology in itself, an attempt for the right to rebrand bigotry as a resistance movement.

The movement found a leader in DeSantis, who leveraged the anxiety of white voters to win re-election and author the Stop Woke Act, a legislative prototype that would prevent educational institutions and businesses from teaching anything that would cause anyone to “feel guilt, anguish or any form of psychological distress” due to their race, color, sex or national origin. A federal judge ultimately struck down large parts of the bill, calling it “positively dystopian”.

DeSantis is not the only soldier in this war. Tucker Carlson, Fox News’ most celebrated anti-woke host, has informed his audience that everything from Black Lives Matter to brown M&Ms are purveyors of evil wokeism. He told his viewers that the threat from the woke was far greater than the threat from Russia, asking: “Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?”

Then there’s Steve Bannon, a mercenary for hire who sympathized with the Russian president in February because “Putin ain’t woke, he is anti-woke”. They have ground support from infantrymen like Vivek Ramaswamy, a Fox News contributor and biotech founder who believes conscious investing is going to destroy America (the New Yorker described him as “the CEO of Anti-Woke Inc”).

Toby Neugebauer, another foot soldier, attempted to start an anti-woke bank this year until he was forced to step down after allegations of workplace misconduct (the bank shuttered shortly after). Elon Musk also signed up when he took over and torpedoed Twitter, declaring: “The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters.” And the movement has found a British ally in Piers Morgan, who rails against Meghan’s “woke war”.

These men are united in their crusade against consciousness. They say they are serving a patriotic ideology that will deliver America from the scourge of Black history, diversity, equity, inclusion, trans rights, homosexuality and women choosing what to do with their own bodies. Just as conservatives managed to turn terms like “political correctness”, “family values” and “religious liberty” into bludgeons with which they can beat back the specter of equality, they successfully redefined “wokeness” by turning it into a pejorative that is synonymous with the demise of everything good and white about America.

It’s a neat trick, really. But it’s nothing new.

Staying woke is predicated on a maxim so common in Black America that the New York Times once simply called it a part of the “Negro idiom”. The first documented use of the phrase “stay woke” occurred in 1938, when Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter ended a song about nine Black men by advising Black people traveling through Alabama to “stay woke … Keep your eyes open.” In 1940, a member of the Negro United Mine Workers promised that the striking members would “stay woke up longer” than their opposition.

When Martin Luther King stood before Morehouse College’s graduating class to deliver the first draft of an address that would serve as his go-to speech for the rest of his life, he knew he was becoming a pariah. By 2 June 1959, the US government had already started a program aimed at “maintaining the existing social order” by “neutralizing individuals perceived as threats”. Long before King warned the students against complacency and racial backlash, the FBI had created what a Senate intelligence report referred to as “labels without meaning” that would eventually convince white Americans that King was an anti-American Marxist hellbent on destroying their beloved country.

On that day, King debuted his Remaining Awake speech, explaining: “There would be nothing more tragic during this period of social change than to allow our mental and moral attitudes to sleep while this tremendous social change takes place.”

But less than a decade later, many white Americans were ignoring the central theme of King’s most consistent message: stay woke. By 1964, a majority of white New Yorkers felt that the civil rights movement had “gone too far”. In 1965, a Gallup poll found that 85% of Americans believed that communists were involved in the civil rights movement. By 1966, only 36% of white Americans believed that King “helped the negro cause”.

My, how the times haven’t changed.

The war against wokeness is an inevitability, one that is either ignored or unknown to those who accept the whitewashed history that the anti-woke warriors seek to preserve. While some see this as part of the backlash to the racial reckoning of 2020, the cyclical effort to stymie progress is as predictable as a pendulum.

Historical precedent

When more than 90% of Black men in the post-civil war south registered to vote, the racial resentment resulted in poll disenfranchisement, Jim Crow, and the Black codes that fed the exploding prison labor industry. After the first world war, more than 380,000 Black veterans returned to the south and began asserting their rights, producing a nationwide lynching epidemic. The integration of the US armed forces created the Dixiecrat movement. Civil rights legislation created a mass migration of southern conservatives from the Democratic Party to the GOP.

And this year, the pro-racist movement convinced its followers to publicly come out against antiracism, empowering “small government” conservatives who were previously whining about the whittling away of their “freedoms” to start demanding that the government regulate reproductive rights, sexual identity and gender expression.

Our nation has always used misinformation as kindling for a bonfire that draws “patriotic” moths to an undemocratic flame. Ultimately, the rise of the anti-woke movement is the latest iteration of the effort to maintain the existing social and political order. It is just another “label without meaning”: a cloak for racism, homophobia, transphobia and all manner of inequality. At its core is the desire to form a less perfect union, establish injustice and dismantle domestic tranquility. It is unpatriotic. To be anti-woke is to be anti-American.

Contrary to the claims of those who profess to know “what MLK would have wanted”, King spoke more about being woke than he did about dreams or mountaintops. His Remaining Awake speech contradicted the conservative assertion that institutional racism is a myth and dispelled any notion that the US is not a racist country. In his 1964 address to Oberlin College, King called racism a “national problem”, explaining that “everyone must share in the guilt as individuals and as institutions”. Anti-woke activists would have hated his 1966 lecture at Southern Methodist University, when the speech included a version of history that began in 1619 as the “first Negro slaves landed on the shores of this nation … against their will”. That sounds a lot like critical race theory. Maybe he was trying to teach people how to be an anti-racist.

On 31 March 1968, King decided to sprinkle a few Bible verses into his trusty speech for a sermon at the National Cathedral in Washington DC. In the church called the “spiritual home for the nation”, King gave the most complete version of Remaining Awake Through a Revolution. It was longer than the I Have a Dream and I Have Been to the Mountaintop speeches combined. King explained that battling injustice would cause some Americans to lash out against those fighting to live in a free country. Still, he admonished the worshippers to stay woke, while he offered what still stands as the clearest explanation for the entire phenomenon.

“I say to you that our goal is freedom, and I believe we are going to get there because however much she strays away from it, the goal of America is freedom,” King preached, before revealing the reason why he believed the beta version of the anti-woke movement was doomed.

“If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery couldn’t stop us, the opposition that we now face will surely fail … however dark it is, however deep the angry feelings are, and however violent explosions are, I can still sing We Shall Overcome.”

Four days after he assured the nation that “we shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”, an anti-woke warrior fired a bullet into Martin Luther King’s face.

So was King wrong?

Maybe the moral arc of the universe is just part of a circle that bends towards whiteness. Perhaps the lesson of 2022 is those who refuse to teach America’s true history have doomed us to repeat it. Or maybe it is a lesson in physics – for every positive action there is an equal and opposite backlash. Emancipation, then mass incarceration. Reconstruction, then segregation. The civil rights movement begat the states’ rights movement. The 1619 Project spawned the 1776 Project. LGBTQ+ pride produced “don’t say gay”. The response to critical race theory was the “great replacement theory”. Black Lives Matter spawned White Lives Matter. And when the murder of George Floyd opened the eyes of people who say they “don’t see color”, the racial reckoning resulted in an equal and opposite white backlash that morphed into the anti-woke movement.

On 5 April 1968, the president of the United States joined an estimated 4,000 mourners to remember King at the church where he delivered his last sermon. As a bell tolled and worshippers exited, a group of white children standing outside began singing We Shall Overcome.

This, my friend, is the oxymoron of America. And that is the lesson for 2022. The only reliable thing in America is the recurring racial backlash; everything else is sermon and song. Progress is fragile. Momentum is fleeting. This country is not a pendulum; it is a metronome. And King was right: we shall overcome. He was also correct when he told the audience at the National Cathedral that “truth, crushed to the ground, will rise again”.

2022 was about the crushing.

[tuulikki]

From a discussion of Fredrik deBoer and his book, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement, written by David Leonhardt:

Radical and Practical

The most successful political movements tend to share a few features. They start with activists whose goals can seem so audacious as to be unrealistic. (Otherwise, there would be no need for a movement.) Over time, the movement’s leaders make careful decisions about how to accomplish at least some of those goals. They appeal to public opinion. They collaborate with unlikely allies. They work the system to change the system.

It was true of the civil rights movement, which combined radical aims with patriotic symbols and nonviolent protest. More recently, the gay rights movement accomplished rapid change partly by emphasizing traditional values like marriage and military service. The lessons also apply to the political right: Abortion opponents spent decades patiently taking over the Republican Party and making the case that voters have a right to choose their own policies, state by state.

Recent progressive movements have tended to be less strategic, explains deBoer, a self-described leftist. Occupy celebrated its lack of structure, including its lack of concrete goals. “Demands are disempowering since they require someone else to respond,” one Occupy protester told The New York Times in 2011. Black Lives Matter refused to name leaders, contrasting its approach with the old top-down civil rights movement. #MeToo, befitting its hashtag, never quite became an organized movement.

None of the three created a mass organization with a long-term plan — as labor unions, civil rights groups, evangelical Christians and other successful movements did in past decades.

Occupy and Black Lives Matter also allowed unpopular positions to shape their public image — and weaken them. For instance, polling shows that most Black Americans support major changes to policing but not less policing. Much of Black Lives Matter, however, focused on cutting police funding. One organizer wrote a Times Opinion article titled “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police.”

The recent movements have instead had more success changing elite institutions that tend to be filled by fellow liberals. The winners of prestigious cultural awards have become more diverse. Media organizations now capitalize Black when describing somebody’s race. President Biden has made Juneteenth a federal holiday. Universities emphasize identity in their curriculums.

Symbols over substance

These are real changes, but deBoer notes that they have little effect on most people’s lives. They instead reflect what the political philosopher Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò calls the “elite capture” of social justice campaigns. “Today,” deBoer writes, “left-activist spaces are dominated by the college-educated, many of whom grew up in affluence and have never worked a day at a physically or emotionally demanding job.” For that reason, these spaces prioritize “the immaterial and symbolic” over “the material and the concrete,” deBoer argues.

DeBoer’s writing can be withering, as the best polemics often are, and few people will agree with all of his arguments. But his central point is important, whether you’re part of the political left, center or right: Calling out injustice isn’t the same as fighting it.

“The spirit of 2020 was always a righteous spirit, and the people and organizations that powered that moment had legitimate grievances and moral demands,” he writes. “What we need is practicality, resilience and a plan.”

[beardedmrbean]

The 25-year-old translator by day and trans drag performer by night felt overwhelming panic and anxiety when several thousand demonstrators gathered and marched Sunday in Turkey to demand a ban on what they consider gay propaganda and to outlaw LGBTQ organizations.

The Big Family Gathering march in the conservative heart of Istanbul attracted parents with children, nationalists, hard-line Islamists and conspiracy theorists. Turkey's media watchdog gave the event the government's blessing by including a promotional video that called LGBTQ people a "virus" in its list of public service announcements for broadcasters.

"We need to make all our defense against this LGBT. We need to get rid of it," said construction worker Mehmet Yalcin, 21, who attended the event wearing a black headband printed with Islam's testimony of faith. "We are sick of and truly uncomfortable that our children are being encouraged and pulled to this.

Seeing images from the gathering terrified Willie Ray, the drag performer who identifies as nonbinary, and Willie Ray's mother, who was in tears after talking to her child. The fear wasn't misplaced. The Europe branch of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association ranked Turkey second to last, ahead of only Azerbaijan, in its most recent 49-country legal equality index, saying LGBTQ people endured "countless hate crimes."

"I feel like I can be publicly lynched," Willie Ray said, describing the daily sense of dread that comes with living in Istanbul. The performer recalls leaving a nightclub still in makeup on New Year's Eve and hurrying to get to a taxi as strangers on the street called out slurs and "tried to hunt me, basically."

Sunday's march was the biggest anti-LGBTQ demonstration of its kind in Turkey, where civil rights for a community more commonly referred to here as LGBTI+ — lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and other gender identities and sexual orientations — have been under assault in the years since an estimated 100,000 people celebrated Pride in Istanbul in 2014.

In a visible sign of the shift, the anti-LGBTQ march went ahead without any police interference. Conversely, LGBTQ groups have had their freedom to assemble severely curtailed since 2015, with officials citing both security and morality grounds.

Police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse the Pride march planned for that year. Government officials have since banned the event. Activists have tried to gather anyway, and more than 370 people were detained in Istanbul in June.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's views also have grown more stridently anti-LGBTQ over time. Before the 2002 election that brought the Justice and Development Party (AKP) he co-founded to power, a younger Erdogan said at a televised campaign event that he found mistreatment of gay people inhumane and legal protections for them in Turkey a "must."

"And now, 20 years into this, you have an entirely different president that seems to be mobilizing based on these dehumanizing, criminal approaches to the LGBTQ movement itself," said Mine Eder, a political science professor at Bogazici University in Istanbul.

Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu has called LGBTQ people "perverts." In 2020, Erdogan defended the head of religious affairs after he claimed homosexuality "brings disease and causes the generation to decay." While championing his long-held belief that the identities of women are rooted in motherhood and family, the Turkish leader last year urged people to dismiss what "lesbians schmesbians" say.

Turkey also withdrew from a European treaty protecting women against violence, after lobbying from conservative groups that claimed the treaty promoted homosexuality.

The country could become more unwelcoming for the LGBTQ community. The Unity in Ideas and Struggle Platform, the organizer of Sunday's event, said it plans to push for a law that would ban the alleged LGBTQ "propaganda" that the group maintains is pervasive on Netflix and social media, as well as in arts and sports.

The platform's website states it also favors a ban on LGBTQ organizations.

"We are a Muslim country and we say no to this. Our statesmen and the other parties should all support this," said Betul Colak, who attended Sunday's gathering wearing a scarf with the Turkish flag.

Haunted by "the feeling that you can be attacked anytime," Willie Ray thinks it would be a "total catastrophe" if a ban on the LGBTQ organizations that provide visibility, psychological support and safe spaces were enacted.

Eder, the professor, said it would be "simply illegal" to close down LGBTQ civil society based on ideological, Islamic and conservative norms — even if Turkey's norms have indeed shifted to "using violent language, violent strategies and legalizing them."

The Social Policy, Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Studies Association, a nongovernmental LGBTQ advocacy and outreach organization in Istanbul commonly known as SPoD, is among the LGBTQ groups that stopped posting their addresses online after receiving threatening calls.

"It's easy for a maniac to try and hurt us after all the hate speech from state officials," said SPoD lobbyist Ogulcan Yediveren, 27. "But these security concerns, this atmosphere of fear, doesn't stop us from work and instead reminds us every time how much we need to work."

Gay activist Umut Rojda Yildirim, who works as SPoD's lawyer, thinks the anti-LGBTQ sentiments on view Sunday aren't dominant across Turkish society, but that the minority expressing them seem "louder when they have government funds, when they're supported by the government watchdog."

"You can just shut down an office, but I'm not going to disappear. My other colleagues aren't going to disappear. We'll be here no matter what," Yildirim said.

[mogai-sunflowers]

learning about Bayard Rustin is pretty hearbreaking. i’m not going to comment on Black intracommunity issues, so i’m not like..... criticizing anyone or anything, or criticizing King or others for doing what they thought was best for their liberation at that time. but it’s just a bit horrifying to see the contributions of an openly gay Black civil rights leader erased. i’m definitely going to be making a post solely dedicated to him because the fact that i never learned about him in any way, never even heard his name, in school, is pretty fucking outrageous.

[tma293uploads]

Online Response #5

11/28/22

Similarities between I am Not Your Negro and Paris is Burning

Despite each documentary covering distinctly separate topics, I am Not Your Negro (a social critique film directed by Raoul Peck, using James Baldwin’s words as a framework/commentary to support the film’s organization and narrative), and Paris is Burning (a chronicle of NYC ball culture and the African-American, Latino, gay, and transgender communities involved in it) share an obvious similarity in that they both seek to provide insight, and perhaps even empowerment, for marginalized groups. Beyond the surface analysis of minorities in America, however, the two films also share some similarities in narrative structure and their nuanced portrayals of imagined communities.

I am not your Negro takes a video-essay approach: it explores the history of racism in the US through a series of “chapters,” following Baldwin’s recollections of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr, as well as his personal observations of American History. Paris is Burning is far from an essay–but it also provides structure by following the development of involved characters (in this case Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, Angie Xtravaganza, and Willi Ninja, to name a few) while also separating scenes by vocabulary topics (e.g, voguing, houses, “mother,” “shade,” reading,” “legendary”).

Both films are portrayals of imagined communities. While Benedict Anderson uses the term “imagined communities” to discuss the spread of nationalism, this concept can be applied to communities of any size or self-identification. He describes nations as “imagined communities” because it allows us to identify with others in the nation-community, despite not ever knowing these other people as individuals. In I am not your Negro, Raoul Peck is speaking to African-Americans currently living in the United States. In Paris is Burning, Livingston observes, in particular, the ball culture of NYC—but in doing so, also provides insights on the larger US LGBT community as a whole. 

Each film director is also deliberate in their nuanced portrayal of the communities at hand. The directors advocate for the better treatment of each marginalized group, while also showing each community's internal challenges and controversies. They highlight human dignity, rather than choosing to pedestal or make their subjects “model minorities.” For example, in I am Not Your Negro, Baldwin takes no stance on which civil rights leaders had the “best” or “right” approach to eventual black liberation. In Paris is Burning, Livingston doesn’t shy away from the differing views on gender reassignment surgery, as well as the commonality (and consequences) of shoplifting and sex work within ball culture. 

Additionally, each film highlights the history and ongoing struggles of each group, while also acknowledging the relative, ever-changing structure of these communities. In Paris is Burning, Both Pepper and Dorian, long-time “legends” of the ball scene, comment on how ball culture has experienced significant changes during their involvement, and will continue to change as time progresses. In I am Not Your Negro, Baldwin talks about race as a social construct, and how the distinction of a “Negro”, in opposition to the “white” race, in itself will always be a barrier to full equality (e.g.: “What white people have to do is try to find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a ‘nigger’ in the first place. Because I am not a nigger, I am a man! But if you think I’m a nigger, it means you need him. [...] I am not the nigger here, and you the white people invented him, then you’ve got to find out why.”)

At the end of the day, any imagined community is well, imagined. Our social structures are only as objective and real as the people who collectively say they are so. However, as each film shows, the effects that imagined communities can have on the people involved in them—a sense of belonging, empowerment, and kinship—are undeniably real.