Friday, March 31, 2017

TWENTY DOCUMENTARIES ON BLACK WOMEN


DOCUMENTARIES ARE CHEAP AND EASY HISTORY

Please find a few to watch

SOURCE: SHADOWANDACT.COM

1 — “Free Angela & All Political Prisoners” (2013)

2 — Another Shola Lynch film, “Chisholm ’72: Unbought & Unbossed” (2004)

3 — “Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992” (2012)

4 — “Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai” (2008)

5 — “Beah: A Black Woman Speaks” (2003)

6 — “Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun” (2008)

7 — “Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth” (2013)

8 — “Moms Mabley: I Got Somethin’ to Tell You” (2013)

9 — “Queen Nanny: Legendary Maroon Chieftainess” (2015)

10 — “Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise” (2016)

11 — “T-Rex” (2016)

12 — “A Ballerina’s Tale” (2015)

13 — “Iron Ladies of Liberia” (2007)

14 — “The Real Shirley Bassey” (2001)

15 — “Life’s Essentials with Ruby Dee” (2014)


See descriptions of each one here: 
http://shadowandact.com/2017/03/28/15-documentaries-about-black-women-to-watch-as-womens-history-month-comes-to-an-end/


MORE DOCUMENATARIES

16-  Nina Simone:  "What Happened, Miss Simone?"  (Netflix)

I had already put the "Strong Black Woman" stereotype away as far as being something I aspired to. But this really put the nails in Strong Black Woman's coffin for me. I highly recommend watching this one.

17-  Ruby McCollum: "You Belong To Me"  (Amazon Prime)

Though this documentary is far from perfect. I might buy it to add to my black history collection.  
 
McCollum's story takes place during a period not talked about too much in Black History books except for the Black Renaissance. But it would have been better if black women had total control of producing it. I stopped and started it a few times to make sure I had a full picture of what was happening during the police investigation.  However, you'll get the full picture of what happened after this black woman killed a white doctor in a southern town in the 1950s if you know your black history and can read between the lines. You'll also have a better understanding of what black women were/are going through between the end of slavery to the end of The Civil Rights Movement and beyond.

McCollum's son speaks about his mother, in very sexist terms, at the very end of the documentary. But his attempt to defend (the white doctor or his father or men in general)  doesn't take away from the story that's told.  (Last seen on Amazon Prime)

18- Fannie Lou Hamer - "This Little Light Of Mine" (???)

(I've seen a very short documentary on Hamer. I'm pretty sure this is not it. It looks like it's been praised quite a bit and is being sold to schools. If your kid says they're showing it at their school, make sure you go "visit" that day because it's expensive if it's not on Netflix or Hulu.)

19-  "All Jokes Aside: Black Women In Comedy"  (New From VH1)


This features a host of talented ladies—including Martin’s Tichina Arnold and Insecure‘s Yvonne Orji—discussing how they deal with racism, sexism and the lack of representation in the industry. - 
http://people.com/tv/black-women-in-comedy-documentary-vh1/


20- "Venus and Serena"  (NETFLIX)

"Ever since Venus and Serena Williams started playing in tennis tournaments, they've provoked strong reactions - from awe and admiration to suspicion and resentment. They've been winning championships for over a decade, pushing the limits of longevity in such a demanding sport. How long can they last? In Venus & Serena, we gain unprecedented access into their lives during the most intimidating year of their career. Over the course of 2011, Venus grappled with an energy-sapping autoimmune disease while Serena battled back from a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. Neither Venus nor Serena let their adversities hold them back. They drew their greatest strength from each other."
  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2376024/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl


Thursday, March 30, 2017

CHANEL DICKERSON USED HER POWER TO MAKE MISSING BLACK GIRLS MATTER

A repost




Until a few weeks ago Relisha Rudd, the little black girl who disappeared three years ago this month, was the lone black girl on a Washington D.C. Police website for the missing. Now the site has 38 people on the website, mostly black and latino girls. 

Relisha Rudd
This is due to a black police commander named Chanel Dickerson deciding all missing people should receive the same level of police service and media attention. So she made sure that the D.C. police website for critical missings was updated. 
This is when a pattern emerged showing black and brown teens were among the missing, mostly girls. Shortly thereafter citizens in the D.C. area noticed a dozen black girls and latinas all go missing at once, within a few short weeks.

Black and brown residents were horrified as it became apparent that white dominated police and white dominated press were not responding to the disappearances of several black and brown girls the same way they do to missing white women. In fact, some football Jersey got more coverage than the disappearance of the missing black and brown teens

This is not how white women's disappearances are handled. In fact, the dearly missed Gwen Ifill coined the term Missing White Woman Syndrome to describe the response of white run police departments and white run news outlets to one missing white woman.

Since these missing black and brown girls have gotten media attention, the D.C. police said there has not been a spike in black and brown girls going missing. And they've gone further to say that most of the missing girls on the website have been determined to have "walked away."

I'm trying to figure out how you know somebody "walked away" if they're still missing on listed on the website. That is, how can you know somebody walked away for sure unless you've found them?

And I wonder if it matters when somebody 12 to 18 years of age walks away. The 12, 13, an 14 year old cannot take care of themselves no matter where they walked away to. Furthermore, white women who "walked away" with men at bars that weren't even in this country when they did so get a huge police presence and full court press from the media.  

This probably means that the Washington Police still have a problem with how and when they list girls among the critical missing, especially if they are black or brown. 

When white girls go missing, they are assumed to be critically missing or assumed that some foul play might be involved until they are found. I seriously doubt there's a missing persons board in any state in the nation with photos STILL UP ON missing person's boards that are assumed to have "walked away."

So, I'm wondering if skin color is the main thing used to determine that black and brown girls just "walked away" -- and therefore not worthy of an Amber Alert

America's 
Missing
Broadcast
Emergency
Response


Being female, while also black and brown, likely also has an effect on police not taking some of the missing seriously. White girls being considered innocent and fragile (race and gender stereotypes meet) leads to no stone being left un-turned. Black and brown girls being seen as anything but innocent and fragile while also stereotypically flighty and hot-tempered are more likely to be listed as "runaways."

The ever present twin supremacies, white supremacy and male supremacy, are probably behind the missing Amber Alerts.

The black and brown girls missing in Washington D.C. remind me of how missing black women were treated on the opposite coast. 

At the front end of THE GRIM SLEEPER case dozens of black and brown women disappeared while the police did little or nothing.  Behavior similar to that of the D.C. police department is, no doubt, what allowed relatively recently convicted serial killer, Lonnie Franklin to hunt down and kill dozens if not a couple hundred black women and black girls over a twenty year period -- all within a tiny section of Los Angeles.

Still, it could be police are right this time. It could be the girls on the D.C. Police Website "walked away" and are properly characterized as runaways. But we shouldn't take white run police departments word for it.  Ever.

If a photo stays up on their missing websites for so long, the residents in any given area should be putting police feet to the fire. 

The citizens in the area need to find a way to make sure police do not characterize black and brown girls as runaways until the girl has either been

(1) contacted,
(2) returned,
(3) or the police have a witness willing to provide a written statement that the girl ran away.

If the police have any one of those three things, then the photo should come off the website, right? This seems obvious to me.

If not, then an Amber Alert should be issued just like it is for white people, just as fast as it is for white females.

Read, See, and Hear More:


BLACK WOMEN 
MAKE SURE 
BLACK WOMEN MATTER

Chanel Dickerson deserves our thanks.

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

PRESENTING THE MEN TO DECIDE WHICH BENEFITS TO STRIP FROM OBAMACARE TO IN ORDER CREATE TRUMPCARE

There is a familiarity about this photo, and it could have been taken in many boardrooms around the world - men gathered around a table making plans and cutting deals.
But the lack of women here, among a group of conservative Republicans discussing their healthcare bill with the vice-president, struck a particular nerve.
That's because one of the points under discussion was whether the new bill should mandate that health insurance plans provide "essential benefits" including maternity services.


Never had a period.
Never scraped together change to get the cheapest pads possible, or just wadded up some tissue and prayed you could make it home before your pants were ruined.
Never sweated that the condom broke, because the majority of the burden would fall on you.
Never worried that their antibiotic might have interfered with their birth control.
Never put shots in their stomach 6 times a day to stimulate their follicles.
Never vomited in the parking lot of HEB.
Never agonized over the decision to end a pregnancy for a wanted child.
Never lost a baby.
Never agonized over the decision to end a pregnancy due to sexual assault.
Never lost more than one baby.
Never birthed a child.
Never birthed a child with complications.
Never had a near death experience during childbirth.
Never died during childbirth.
Never told your breastmilk is helping/hurting/not enough.
Never told your breastmilk is never coming in.
Never pumped in a bathroom stall while people defecate in the next stall.
Never had someone go over their meeting reservation in the only room "set aside" for pumping.
Never had their breasts ache and leak.
Never got a fever or thrush on your nipples from not pumping enough (because you want them to know you are still ambitious).
Never pumped on a client call, holding the attachments with one hand and the phone with the other.
Never cried when you pumped less and less each day in the days after you came back to work.
Never left your baby at 2 days or 2 weeks or 2 months because you are the breadwinner and your family needs you.
Never worked a 14 hour day and only slept in 90 minute increments because baby is going through a growth spurt.
Never woke up with night sweats during the change.
Never had a doctor ask if they had a husband to explain this to?
Never received a mammogram.
Never chewed nails at the prospect of not getting medicaid to cover having that other breast removed because it would be safer that way.
Never cried when they said it was back in the other breast and there was nothing more they could do.
Never wondered if they were a man/white/straight/cisgendered, would their concerns would be taken more seriously? Would they be in charge of their own health?
Never been us.
We are owed representation.


Sunday, March 26, 2017

ERIC GARNER'S MURDERER IS STILL GETTING PAID MORE THAN 100K A YEAR

Feeling Rebloggy 

 A REPOST
On July 17, 2014, NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo choked Eric Garner to death for allegedly selling loose cigarettes. It was a hold that had been outlawed by the NYPD.
On December 3, 2014, a grand jury decided not to indict Pantaleo.
Before he put Garner in the chokehold, he had seven disciplinary complaints and 14 individual allegations lodged against him.
  • A ThinkProgress analysis of available CCRB data found that only 1,750 current NYPD officers — or around 4.9 percent of the force — have received eight or more complaints, as Pantaleo has.
No matter the disposition of the charges, if as officer gets three complaints in a year, they are supposed to be on performance monitoring. Pantaleo received three complaints in the course of two months in 2012.”


In December 2015, the NYPD completed its internal investigation, but would not take disciplinary action until the Justice Department completes its own probe, which continues. As of September 2016, Pantaleo was on desk duty without a firearm. Awaiting his fate, he received a raise last year. His 2016 salary was $119,996 — a 14 percent increase from what he was making when he killed Garner 
.

An employee of the Civilian Complaint Review Board leaked Panaleo's records; [that] employee was forced to resign.

The head of the Justice Department is America's top cop, the Attorney General Jeff Sessions.  I wouldn't hold my breathe waiting for a reasonable outcome from the Department of Justice.

https://thinkprogress.org/daniel-pantaleo-records-75833e6168f3#.qh3eeg8b2

Saturday, March 25, 2017

SECRET SERVICE ASKS FOR 60 MILLION DOLLAR BUDGET INCREASE TO PROTECT TRUMP AND MELANIA



The agency recently requested an additional $60 million in spending for fiscal year 2018, according to a Washington Post report on Tuesday. Nearly $27 million of that was to be earmarked for security at the president’s private residence at Trump Tower in New York, where first lady Melania Trump lives with their 11-year-old son.

The Secret Service also said it needed another $33 million to cover travel costs incurred by “the president, vice president and other visiting heads of state.”  


It appears the White House refused the request

Read More:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/secret-service-funding-trump-family_us_58d2b5ede4b02d33b747ca5f 


BlackChickRocked.Blogspot.Com

Friday, March 24, 2017

Kerry Washington's SIMPSON STREET will produce PATROL for ABC

Feeling Rebloggy
From Aug. 2016



Olivia Pope just got a lot busier. Kerry Washington is currently developing her own drama with ABC: Patrol, which the Emmy nominee will executive produce. Although she might be best known for her role in Scandal, Washington made her debut as an executive producer ...[last year] with HBO’s Confirmation, which she also starred in.


Patrol will follow four female officers—former classmates at the police academy—who re-unite “after a high-stakes, traumatic secret returns to haunt them,” according to Variety. (Would it be an ABC show without a dark secret?) As with Confirmation, Washington will produce Patrol under the banner of her fledgling production company, Simpson Street, Variety reports.


Read More

Thursday, March 23, 2017

WHITE HOUSE WORD OF THE DAY: NEPOTISM


NEPOTISM (noun) - the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs.

Feeling Rebloggy
Ivanka Trump’s power behind the scenes in the White House is about to become official — unofficially. Trump is getting her own office in the West Wing, a security clearance, and a government-issued phone, according to Politico. She won’t be paid a salary or be sworn in. The role is described as “unofficial,” but it sounds official in all but name. 
Her appointment is pure nepotism: There is nothing on her résumé that suggests Ivanka Trump is qualified, by any traditional definition of the term, to advise the president of the United States. But for President Donald Trump she has two qualities that likely outweigh any others — she’s a Trump, and she’s going to be loyal to him.

~VOX.COM
..
Read More:





Trump's daughter Ivanka sitting next to
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
Merkel's face says, "What is she doing here. And why is she talking?

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

SHOTS FIRED premieres on FOX on MARCH 22 2017

UPDATE: FIRST EPISODE IS FREE ON AMAZON
If the talent they've collected for this mini-series is any indication, SHOTS FIRED should be excellent


Feeling Rebloggy 

The 10-episode limited series by Gina Prince Bythewood (Love and Basketball, Beyond The Lights) centers on the story of two racially charged murders. 

The series is first introduced with the slaying of a white college student, killed at the hands of an African-American police officer. 
As the investigation of the case unfolds, a second murder case is introduced — that of a black teenage boy at the hands of a white police officer.  It's a case that was never investigated.
The cases are investigated by Ashe Akino (Sanaa Lathan), an expert investigator, and Preston Terry (Stephan James), a special prosecutor sent to the town by the Department of Justice...


How Fox’s 'Shots Fired' Is a "Mirror of America"

Read More on how the Trayvon Martin case inspired Gina and her husband Reggie to create SHOTS FIRED

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/shots-fired-creators-cast-preview-987461 


Official Trailer

 * * * * *




Check out the director's list!

In addition to Bythewood herself, Kasi Lemmons (
Eve's Bayou) is directing an episode, Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, Manchurian Candidate) Malcom D Lee (The Best Man movies)



Millicent Shelton
Millicent Shelton, recently having directed episodes of ROSEWOOD and SCANDAL, will direct the final episode. 

Read More on Cast and Crew

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5093452/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

TO LET TRUMP DESTROY PBS IS TO LET HIM DESTROY ONE OF THE FEW MIRRORS AMERICA HAS




Trump's budget communicates his desire to reduce or destroy Meals On Wheels, after school programs that feed poor kids, Pell grants for poor college students,  Planned Parent Hood, PBS and the National Endowment For The Arts.

This post is about the cut that seems like it's the least important: The cuts to PBS and the National Endowments for the Arts.

* * * * *

I started learning about my place in this country before I even went to kindergarten. By the time, I went to kindergarten, I knew the policeman was not MY friend from my parents and catching glimpses of the regular evening news.

Learning words and how to spell and count on Sesame Street aside, by the time I was in 5th or 6th grade I was watching black history segments on PBS. Even when I was in junior high school, I knew PBS News went into more depth on a story than any network television news show was going to go into.
PBS NEWS is almost the anti-thesis of FOX NEWS. There is an attempt to be objective and present both sides of an issue. News as education is presented on PBS. And, nowadays, teachers use PBS shows to actually teach in their classrooms....for free

PBS would bring EYES ON THE PRIZE into my living room...for free.

This multi-episode documentary was an extensive free education on THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT. I recorded that show and watched in on my VCR every single February for years. Mamie Till, Emmett's mother, became more than just a name for me because I used what I learned in that documentary to do more reading.
PBS filled my head and set my curiosity on fire and sent me searching for books to read more than once.

PBS telling the truth about white supremacy in this country, every now and again, is PBS providing America a reflection it cannot do without -- that white America, in particular cannot do without.



As an adult I fell in love with Ken Burn's documentaries. 

I watched hours and hours about black contributions to this country that I didn't have that much interest in to begin with. I painted my living room and decorated a new home while listening to Ken Burn's JAZZ. 
Years later, I would watch Ken Burn's THE WAR. 
  • It was infinitely interesting and educational to hear about what was going on at home during WWII, for various ethnic groups including blacks.  
  • I was surprised to find out that the United States, being inexperienced at waging war, would accidentally killed dozens of its own soldiers. I would listen to a man talk about hiding in a fox hole in the dark, praying that some wounded man that was moaning  somewhere  off in the distance, crying for his mother, would just go ahead and die and stop torturing him and the rest of the men -- only to find out the moaning man that finally did die was his best friend.
This documentary would confirm for me just how separate the military's job is from the job of the voter and/or the citizens that remain at home. It is the military's job to fight who the politicians say fight. It is voter's job to make sure we elect politicians that won't send the troops into danger unnecessarily nor for greed and profit.

PBS provides America a reflection it cannot do without.

Gwen Ifill of PBS
 In 1999, she became
the first African American woman 
to host a nationally televised
U.S. public affairs program with
Washington Week in Review
.
In addition to seeing content from around the world, PBS has helped me to know who I am as a black person and as an American. There hasn't been nearly enough black content on PBS. But the small amount of black history that has been on PBS has been nearly 1000% better than what I learned in grade school. 

Actually, what I learned about what it is to be an American is nearly 1000% more clear than what's taught in grade school as well. That probably says more about how bad our school curriculums are than how good PBS is -- because I was lucky enough to go to highly rated public schools. But this still says that PBS is absolutely necessary.

White supremacy and ignorance have put unqualified person in charge of the United States. To allow the nationalistic white supremacist Ignoramus of the Century and his budget to destroy PBS is to spread more ignorance than the America can sustain.

PBS provides America a reflection that it cannot do without.

Sometimes I think that more outlets like PBS would mean less room on the airwaves for news programs like that mess that is Fox News  --even the white supremacists would be less virulent due to being less ignorant. 





  

REKIA BOYD 5 YEARS LATER

In March of 2012, Servin, while off-duty, Servin was driving near Douglas Park when he encountered a group of people, including Boyd. After a verbal altercation with the group, the officer fired an unregistered weapon over his shoulder into the group, striking Boyd in the head and another man, Antonio Cross, in the hand. Servin alleged that Cross had a gun, but it was revealed he was merely holding a cell phone. Boyd died shortly after the incident. 
The emails, released thanks to a public records request from the Sun-Times, show a now-familiar pattern of conflicting stories from police and witnesses at the scene, as well as an extremely slow process of prosecuting Servin for killing Boyd. Servin was eventually charged with involuntary manslaughter and reckless discharge of a weapon—a full year and eight months after the incident.Charges which were thrown out by a judge for “failing to prove Servin acted recklessly.”




Monday, March 20, 2017

White men don’t have to reach a bar of excellence; the bar will find white men wherever they already are.

A repost
Before you read the excellent article below. Let me explain a two or three things that happened a couple of weeks ago.


I

A white co-worker of mine said something to me not long before Trump's speech that I've heard other white people say about him. These white people look sad then say "He has no filter." What these white people are inadvertently telling me is, "I am like Trump. I don't say it out loud. And I think all white people are like me and Trump. We just know better than to say it out loud." 

White people like this are comfortable saying such things directly to my black face because they think protesting racism and simply mentioning race at all are the same as the white racism they have against THOSE PEOPLE echoing in their own heads.

So I think I understand what "Trump sounds more presidential" means when it comes out of a white face.

II

Trump managed to keep much of his white ethnoracism behind his teeth for a whole 20 minutes, whatever the duration of his first speech to congress was.  He was able to do it because he was reading it and did not deviate (sounds like)

After that one speech he was applauded and called "more presidential" by white run news outlets everywhere. The press's retreat into normalizing that thing in the White House made my stomach contents start to rise...had to cover my mouth and run to the bathroom.
Believe me. I understood that the bar for white men is low before this year. But now I know understand that bar to be on the ground, below sea level, buried in dog crap and mud.

III

Trump, Affleck, ‘La La Land’ And The Unendingly Low Bar For White Men


by David Dennis Jr. at StillCrew.com

  • "Here’s what the La La Land crew, Casey Affleck and Donald Trump have in common: they found the most basic ground-levels of human decency and are waiting for society’s bar to take the elevator down to meet them."



 
I’ve spent the last eight years pretty confident that George W. Bush would be the dumbest president I’d see in my lifetime. His sartorial blunders, which seem pretty tame now, were legendary and pop culture cornerstones for years. The “fool me once” bit or the “put food on your family” quotes struck America as much as, oh, say, faking reasons to start a disastrous war or ignoring floating black bodies in New Orleans.

Bush, however, resurfaced last week with some quotes about the current administration, lambasting Trump for his racist policies, Muslim ban and attacks on the media. One quote, however, stood out to me the most:
“I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy.”
One word stayed with me.
Indispensable....
This caused me to go back and look at George W. Bush’s speeches. And for as dumb as we’ve pretty much accepted him to be, he sounds infinitely more qualified to be president than Donald Trump. The same Donald Trump who, on Tuesday, blamed former President Obama for current White House leaks, Jews for anti-Semitic abuses and soldiers for their own demise...  

I read this whole thing thinking. "Yes. Yes. Yes. Me too."
So read more
 https://stillcrew.com/trump-affleck-la-la-land-and-the-unendlingly-low-bar-for-white-men-3027225600bb#.7awifcsq2 




Sunday, March 19, 2017

A SERMON TO WHITE AMERICA


A Dr. Michael Eric Dyson Interview

 

12 minutes



On Dyson's book: TEARS WE CANNOT STOP

"Written in only 188 pages, Dyson incisively takes “beloved” (white people) through the 360° lesson on race and understanding it from a black person’s point of view. He leaves no stone unturned. He demystifies whiteness in exactitude and with unflinching truth. Yes it’s uncomfortable, which he states right from the beginning, but it’s necessary. Dyson utilizes pop culture, expressions, lyrics, tv shows, famous people, and most of all real examples from his own life. He uses all of this to demonstrate white America’s inability to accept their part in racism still exiting so strongly today. Despite sounding negative, Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America is not all gloom and doom."




Michael Eric Dyson and Cornell West
in better days

Saturday, March 18, 2017

TYRESE BASHES BLACK WOMEN FOR BUYING THE LONG STRAIGHT HAIR HE ADORES ON WOMEN





Years ago, I read about Tyrese Gibson (of FAST AND FURIOUS movie fame) helping a black male friend choose a bunch of women for that friend's music video.

They didn't seem to be picking any black women at all. Once these two black "men" had picked a dozen or so, some black women said, "Hey! What about us?"

As I recall Tyrese said something like, We're only picking the most beautiful. "No special favors."

In other words, white and light bright = beautiful. Black women need special favors to be chosnen placed among the most beautiful.

Correction: White and maybe latina = beautiful for Tyrese because I don't think he even chose light-skinned women. I could be wrong as I only saw the chosen women in a photograph taken from some distance. But if any of the women were black, they were that pale.

Tyrese was 10 minutes into his career when he said, 'No special favors.' So, I've pretty much always read him for trash.

The only difference between Tyrese and other black men who talking out of both sides of their mouth, running down black women about their weaves is that Tyrese is ever so slightly dumber.


Somebody should tell Tyrese and his hotep cousins that the color of their skin isn't fooling anyone either. You can't be down for black folk and ONLY be down for black men only.

Please tell non-feminist black women to stop listening to black men who try to tell black women how to be black women. Tyrese and Steve Harvey are successful because they fell into careers that are mostly based on luck, not intelligence.  And Ben Carson has proved intelligence is over-rated.

So there's no reason to listen to any black man on how black women  should perform black womanhood. Any man that tries should be looked upon as suspect and told that he needs to check himself.
Let us all keep in mind that every group, including black men, have problems enough of their own to keep them busy for a couple of centuries or more.
 
* * * * *

from LisaAlamode.com

“YOUR WEAVES AREN’T FOOLING MEN” TYRESE BLASTS BLACK WOMEN FOR TRYING TO EMULATE THE FEATURES HE FINDS ATTRACTIVE


Read More:
http://lisaalamode.com/2017/03/18/weaves-arent-fooling-men-tyrese-blasts-black-women-trying-emulate-features-finds-attractive/

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

MALE MARINES UNITED TO PROTECT THEMSELVES AND THEMSELVES ONLY

MARINES UNITED was the name of a facebook page that male marines used to prove they have no honor and that they only only respect and protect other male marines, leaving female marines to fend for themselves.

"Marines United" was the name of a now-defunct men only facebook page where United States Marines shared nude photos of women without the women's consent. Apparently the photos were hacked from various places the individual women owned or boyfriends own.There were also nude and suggestive photos of the men's ex-girlfriends that were shared in a revenge porn sort of way. 




I am not surprised, not with judges so worried about a rapist's future that he sends him to six months after he shoved a foreign object into his victim that it left dirt behind. This latest military sexual harassment scandal is just the top of a very large iceberg


Last week I was listening to a public radio broadcast where a woman said that a tag that male marines used to identify female marines is "WM" which stands for "walking mattresses." That doesn't sound like much. But it says volumes about the men in marines and how women are seen in general. Furthermore, it's not like the marines have had problems over and over again with sexual harassment and sexual assault.

PFC LaVena Johnson was in the army but their reputation isn't much better. Johnson's body was sent home in 2005 after she reportedly committed suicide with a very long rifle considering the small frame she had to go along with her 5 foot 1 inch height. Suspicious, her pathologist father examined her body when it returned home only to find that the body had gloves glued on to cover severe burns-- that nobody could explain at the time. It took a FOIA request and a lot of time to Army to come up with a story that explained the burns -- but never the abuses her body seemed to have suffered.  A number of reporters who saw the second autopsy thought it was possible that Johnson was raped and murdered.

"Johnson's death was officially ruled a suicide by the Department of Defense.[3] However, her father became suspicious when he saw her body in the funeral home and decided to investigate. The Army initially refused to release information, but did so under the Freedom of Information Act after Representative William Lacy Clay, Jr. raised questions about it at the congressional hearings over Pat Tillman's death.[4]
The autopsy report and photographs revealed Johnson had a broken nose, black eye, loose teeth, burns from a corrosive chemical on her genitals, and a gunshot wound that seemed inconsistent with suicide. Several reporters have suspected that the chemical burns were to destroy DNA evidence of a rape.[2][4][5][6]
...Christopher Grey, chief of public affairs for the U.S. Criminal Investigative Command for the Army has said that the case remains closed as far as they are concerned.[7] "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_LaVena_Johnson

http://thesource.com/2014/01/21/justice-for-lavena-johnson-raped-murdered-or-suicide-the-evidence-says-one-thing-u-s-military-says-another/


Not so long agao, during the last years of the Iraq War, a friend of mine told me that she came across a man who worked at a nearby Veteran's Hospital. They got to chatting while riding the bus. He told her that the news covered the dead but barely mentioned those physically maimed, mentally scarred for life, and dozens and dozens of female rape victims  -- not raped by the enemy but raped by their fellow United States Serviceman. 


So no, this latest sexual harassment accusation against thousands of male marines that were members of that MARINES UNITED facebook page is not a surprise to me


Last weekend, news broke that the Marines were investigating a stomach-churning violation of trust in the ranks: personnel were found to have shared [nude and suggestive] photos and personal information of female Marines and veterans, without their consent ― in a Facebook group with over 30,000 members. The photos have garnered 2,500 comments and ratings in what amounts to a breathtaking demonstration of entitlement, exercised in this case via technology. For a month, hundreds and possibly thousands of pictures of female service women have been posted and commented on. The comments are specific and contain details about residence, rank, and contact information. Some comments included encouragement of specific acts of violence against specific women. The private Facebook group is limited to male Marines, Navy Corpsman and British Royal Marines, according to Thomas Brennan, a Marine veteran and journalist who first reported on the photo-sharing scandal.
Against a backdrop of persistently high rates of sexual assault and sexual harassment in the military, these postings indicate that the policies of zero tolerance have failed to be applied or enforced. There are no current consequences sufficient to deter harassment and misconduct within the armed forces.

These accusations are just the latest proof that military men in power have found a myriad ways to protect rapists and men that violate women by refusing to impose consequences on those that commit "boys will be boys" type offenses. Every time a woman complains, each men in charge must think that's just natural behavior she's experiencing. Every time a woman is raped, it's an abberation instead of a natural consequence of the behavior the military refuses to stop normalizing.

Inside the military and out, we need to come up with a new criminal charge for revenge porn and sneaking nude pictures to post online. Something like "non-physical sexual assault" ought to do it.