Viola Davis And WIDOWS Is In Theaters Today

A few more details here: 
 https://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2018/06/viola-davis-in-widows.html

CALLING ALL WOMEN!!!

Ruby Dee, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee

Ruby Dee reading her own poem,

"Calling All Women"

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WITH MEGYN KELLY GONE NBC MORNING SHOW RATINGS UP

     Megyn Kelly has been out at NBC's Today for two weeks. Viewers of the show seem to be celebrating the change as the morning show's ratings for the 9 a.m. hour have gone up! 

     The last week of Megyn Kelly Today gathered 2.522 million viewers with 675K in the news demographic. The first post-Kelly week for Today had around 2.649 million viewers on average, with including 752K in the news demographic. This meant the show as up 5 percent and 11 percent in both. 
     Last week (the second post-Kelly week) was down 1 percent over the previous week, but was still above the Kelly average. Her departure as also resulted in an increase for ratings in the fourth hour, hosted by Hota Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford. It is up 7 percent and 11 percent. 

https://shadowandact.com/today-ratings-increase-with-megyn-kelly-out? 

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BARABOO WISCONSIN TO BE ADDED TO THE 2019 EDITION OF THE GREEN BOOK

Just kidding. There is no 2019 edition of The Green Book planned. But maybe there should be based on how things are going in Trump's America lately. * * * * * The photographer of the prom photo below supposedly told the white boys therein to raise their hands. That vague instruction was most of what he supposedly said according to a boy, Jordan Blue, who refused to follow the instruction.

Now, the photographer is either claiming the boys are not doing Nazi salutes or that it was just a joke. I'm not sure what he's claiming except his right to pseudo white outrage at being accused of instigating this latest example of white supremacy.*

*By the way, in case you didn't know: Rabid White Supremacy excludes of a lot of white looking people from whiteness, including Jewish and Latino people-- even though some appear to forget that and go so far as to work for and vote for somebody like Orange Chump.

Look closely at this picture. Many, not all, of the white boys took a very definitive Nazi stance.

And I say the stance is definitive in some cases because if you, me and the rest of the world had never ever heard of a Nazi -- if Nazi's had never come to exist-- that particular pose would not have been anybody's natural response to "raise your hand."

Somebody's lying. All we're talking about now is how big the lie is. And I think the lie is big enough to encompass the entire town.

If "raise your hand" or "say goodbye to the camera" is really all the photographer said, then that entire school and possibly the entire town has a white supremacy / anti-semitism problem -- except the one white boy they've been interviewing who refused to do it (Top right corner, bow tie) and very few others. It's been reported that one of the parents yelled "stop it" as the photo was being taken.
Think about it. A large percentage of white boys (and possibly one black kid) spontaneously did a Nazi salute in response to a vague instruction. Then a grown ass white man saw multiple Nazi poses through the lens of his camera and took the photo anyway.
In my mind, the entire town has a white supremacy problem. I would not feel safe driving through there or staying in a hotel there. I really wouldn't.

Now, take a moment to look at the front center Nazi poser, the one in the light jacket and red vest. Beside him is a boy in a dark jacket and red tie who appears to be making an O.K sign against his leg with his hand. In the last month or so, I've read that this is a white supremacy hand signal.

Read More: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/baraboo-high-school-nazi-salute-prom-photo-wisconsin-students/

People on social media, who live near this town, this school, have said they are not surprised by behavior of this sort from this particular area. So, taken altogether, I'd say Baraboo Wisconsin needs to be in 2019 edition of The Green Book as a place for people of color should avoid when traveling in order to be safe.

* * * * *

Don't know what The Green Book was and should be again? Here's an article:

A Black Motorists’ Guide to America, Newly Relevant

The “Green Book,” a travel manual published between 1936 and 1967 — and now the premise of a film by the same name — feels as necessary as ever.

...In the popular imagination, segregation was a sudden, irrevocable act — one day, white people enslaved black people, and the next, white people enacted Jim Crow. In fact, Jim Crow’s implementation varied from state to state — an attrition of rights afforded by Reconstruction that white people ignored and so were able to convince themselves, after a generation, that it had always been that way. 

There were spaces of safety and freedom and spaces of danger, and it was not clear, unless you grew up there and knew the white people you were dealing with, which was which. 

The first edition of the “Green Book,” published in 1936, was for travelers in the New York metropolitan area. The assumption that safety was guaranteed in the North must be thrown out the window when we discuss black people’s mobility. The “Green Book” began to cover the entire nation (as well as the Caribbean) because demand for it was so high, but also because of how institutionalized racism was across the country.

Read More: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/t-magazine/green-book-black-motorists-guide.html

A new dramedy called GREEN BOOK is due out in theaters in wide release on November 21, 2018, starring Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen.

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New Age of Slavery

A repost

The New Age Of Slavery - Patrick Campbell. 

Coming to a Smithsonian Near You

POWER - Patrick Campbell

"Bodies hanging in the red stripes of the American flag and cracked stars. Never has a piece of art gripped me so hard and made me gasp.

It was like someone punched me in the chest and let the air out of me at the same time. The New Age of Slavery is the name of the work that has gone viral on the web this week, after the announcement that Eric Garner’s killer would not be indicted. It was especially shocking because Eric was placed in an illegal chokehold by a cop, and his last words (I can’t breathe) and last moments were on tape.

Those of us (me included) who have been calling for body cameras to be placed on cops immediately realized that it would solve very little(although it was just one step). In front of everyone was the indisputable fact that Black people are being lynched by the government, but instead of hanging in trees, we’re laying in the streets. And police are receiving the message loud and clear that they can do it without consequence.

So to see the piece of art was like having a bucket of cold water dumped on my head. It laid out the truth in acrylic and watercolor and it was beautiful in its honesty of an ugly reality. It ached and the paint that dripped down the canvas was crying for the lives of Black men, women and children lost.


http://thegrio.com/2014/12/06/new-age-of-slavery-painting-patrick-campbell/

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THE BILLIE HOLIDAY STORY

Eleanora Fagan 

April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959

A documentary.
Listen to it in the background if you don't have an hour to watch

video

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HOLD BACK THE STARS

Feeling Rebloggy

Individually, Letitia Wright and John Boyega have already traveled to futuristic worlds on the big screen.

Wright is the highlight of Black Mirror’s bleak fourth season, and the genius behind Wakanda’s cutting edge technology in Black Panther. Meanwhile Boyega played the rebellious Finn in the latest Star Wars flicks and an innovative fighter pilot in Pacific Rim Uprising.

But now these two young Hollywood legends-in-the-making are joining their talents and love of sci-fi into one futuristic love story titled Hold Back the Stars.

https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2018/11/john-boyega-letitia-wright-starring-sci-fi-romance-hold-back-the-stars 

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LOVE LETTER TO SELF

“and were you being good to yourself?”

LOVE LETTER TO SELF

i don’t think so.
 but, i forgive you, girl,
who tallied stretch marks
into reasons why no one should get close.

i forgive you, silly girl, 

sweet breath, decent by default.
i forgive you for being afraid.
did everything betray you?
even the rain you love so much
made rust out of your jewellery?

i forgive you, soft spoken girl
speaking with fake brash voice,
fooling no one.
i see you, tender
even on your hardest days.

i forgive you,
waiting for him to call,

i forgive you, the diets
and the cruel friends.
especially for that one time you said
‘i f*cking give up on love,
it’s not worth it,
i’d rather be alone forever’.
you were just pretending, weren’t you?
i know you didn’t mean that.
your body, your mouth, your heart,
made specifically for loving.
sometimes the things we love,
will kill us,
but weren’t we dying anyway?

i forgive you for being
something that will eventually die.
perishable goods,
fading out slowly,
little human,
i wouldn’t want to be in a world
where you don’t exist.

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DAISY BATES AS PROTO-FEMINIST

Feeling Rebloggy

DAISY BATES 
ONE OF MANY 
SELF-MADE 
FEMALE CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS

Born: November 11, 1914, Huttig, AR

Died: November 4, 1999, Little Rock, AR

President of NAACP Arkansas Branch and the co-owner of a newspaper, Daisy Bates was a on the front lines in the fight against segregation.

In 1954, the United States Supreme Court, via Brown v Board of Education,  declared that school segregation unconstitutional in the United States. That legal change on paper had to be challenged in reality. And Daisy Bates was one of those that led the charge.

Little Rock Nine

"In 1957, she helped nine African American students to become the first to attend the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, who became known as the Little Rock Nine. The group first tried to go to the school on September 4.

A group of angry whites jeered at them as they arrived. The governor, Orval Faubus, opposed school integration and sent members of the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the students from entering the school...

Bates’ home became the headquarters for the battle to integrate Central High School and she served as a personal advocate and supporter to the students. President Dwight D. Eisenhower became involved in the conflict and ordered federal troops to go to Little Rock to uphold the law and protect the Little Rock Nine."

Eventually Bates and The Little Rock Nine Prevailed.

http://www.biography.com/people/daisy-bates-206524#little-rock-nine

Daisy put the "fem" in "feminist" before the identity of feminist was recognized. 
Learn More About Her.   


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14563865"

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/daisy-bates-first-lady-of-little-rock/
https://zinnedproject.org/materials/daisy-bates-first-lady-of-little-rock/


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OUR PRESIDENT IS AN ASSHOLE

Feeling Rebloggy

MOTHER JONES, Kevin Jones Article

From the New York Times: In the northern town of Paradise, the ruins of houses and businesses smoldered throughout the day, while in Southern California, tens of thousands of residents fled their homes and jammed onto highways. Exotic lemurs and parrots were packed up and carried away to safety as fires ringed the Los Angeles Zoo in Griffith Park. Officials estimated that the blaze in the north, called the Camp Fire, had destroyed a staggering 6,700 structures — most of them residential. Such vast devastation would make it the most destructive fire in modern state history.

From the Washington Post: Butte County Sheriff Kory L. Honea told reporters at a news conference Friday evening that officials had found nine people who had been killed by the fire: Four were found dead in their cars in Paradise, down from the five officials had spoken about earlier; three outside of houses; and two others, one inside a home, and another near a car.

From the LA Times: Homes and businesses had been reduced to piles of twisted metal. Tall pine trees and utility poles smoldered. According to the California Teachers Assn., at least five of the nine schools in Paradise were destroyed, including Paradise Elementary School. Cars abandoned by fleeing motorists who found themselves unable to escape lay crumpled in the roadways, their tires melted. The bodies of five people were discovered on Edgewood Lane in vehicles overtaken by the fire. Others were found outside their cars and homes. Butte County Sheriff Kory L. Honea said they could not immediately be identified because they were burned so badly.

From the president of the United States, whose political party lost a bunch of seats in California’s midterm elections just a few days ago:

Read More: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/11/our-president-is-an-asshole/?

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THE GRADUAL REALIZATION OF A NEW NORMAL

A repost
2015

Last year or the year before that someone on the news announced that Rhoda, a character on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" was might die of brain cancer.

I hadn't thought of Rhoda, played by Valerie Harper, in years, possibly decades. I couldn't believe it when they said she was over 70 years old. That brought me back to thinking about my own age.

Couldn't believe that either.

All this inability to believe started me thinking about how MANY things that I now consider "normal" simply weren't when I was born. No internet, GPS, or microwaves. As the list of things we didn't have as a kid got longer, longer, and longer still, I re-realized that I was born a decade BEFORE women could easily get credit in their own name!!! 

When I was a girl, I heard about this new law that made women able to get credit on their own. I can just barely remember thinking, "Well yeeeaah....of course!" I was shocked that an actual law had to be written to ensure this. I also remember being desperately glad that I hadn't been born a few decades earlier. 

It's not so surprising that I thought this way, I suppose. 

I grew up watching and listening to feminism in what I considered "common sense" slogans as well as slices of speeches from Angela Davis, Gloria Steinem etc. I thought all this "common sense" already existed. I guess I knew but I didn't REALLY know this "common sense" was...

--in the process of being born 

--in the process of being fought for, of being protected 

--and voted on. 

In the 1970s, when black women were almost entirely absent from television, I didn't know my "normal" was being created and then reinforced by the white women of television, such as Mary Tyler Moore and Sally Struthers, who played Gloria in "All In The Family". I simply didn't know that they were representative of a new way of life for women, a new option. 

I didn't know women making their own money, working at a career, and making decisions that a WHOLE person with equal rights tends to make, sometimes looking for another WHOLE person (a man) to walk through life with - was new. 

After all, my Mom did this for a few years before she married. A lot of black women did, maybe most black women did.

But Mary Tyler Moore's job was not a pit stop before marriage, like my mother's was supposed to be. Mary Tyler Moore's job was important to her and contributed to society like a man's does. She wanted to be good at her career, succeed at it. She wanted a relationship, maybe a husband, but all of her energy and focus was not on getting a husband. 

That was a very different choice to have, one that wasn't there for women of my mother's generation. Or if it was, it was seen as failure. A career was seen as consolation prize for many women and for the people who felt sorry for them.

More importantly, it was seen as a status symbol for a man if his wife didn't have to work -- what the wife did or didn't want, be damned.

At 10 to 12 years of age, I hadn't grasped the fact that I wasn't considered as capable as or as equal to a male child either. (Well...most of the time I didn't) But somehow, I DID know that I was considered less-than as a person because of my black skin...by the majority of people in the country. 

Racism, somehow, I knew this practically from birth. 


As sheltered as I was in some ways, I had eyes. Newspaper headlines shouted white supremacy at me daily, no matter what my parents tried to keep from seeing. And I couldn't walk past a television, without seeing a white cop sic a big dog with huge teeth on black people or take a fire hose to them.

As far back as kindergarten those were the images that flashed in my head the day Show-and-Tell featured a white police officer talking about how 'a policeman is your friend' ('Oooh no-No-NO! not MY friend!!!' I thought to myself.)

The racism-sexism knowledge gap (read: chasm) is another train wreck for another time. The point I'm trying to make here is that I was taught nothing about the parallel issue of sexism.

As a girl-child born in the land of the free and the equal, I thought Mary Tyler Moore and the rest of these characters were representing "normal" people with "normal" desires. Eventually, a lot of people came to see them that way...having laughed a little by the end of each episode.


Maybe the writing was special, like some like to believe it was. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" made the new, more feminist(?) world seem mundane. I don't know for sure. I simply cannot remember what I was thinking at the time then rehash something I really didn't notice to begin with.

But when I heard that Rhoda was sick? Maybe dying? That was when I remembered that women didn't always have..

• the same ability to keep a job. A woman in her 20s could be fired because it was assumed she'd want to have a baby, soon or within a few years.
• the same ability to get credit, and before that - the same ability to own property
• the same right to vote.

These changes didn't just change by magic. 

It wasn't the "something special in the writing" of these television shows that created these changes in society. These shows only reflected what was already in the process of happening. But shows like "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" blew little more air on a fire already burning, a fire that had been burning for more than a century

That air was important. 

But more important are the women that sacrificed and died advocating 'for women's rights on the grounds of that women should have political, social, and economic equality to men'--which is THE definition of feminism.

Did you know that some of the women who started one of the most important feminist organizations in the country, the National Organization for Women or N.O.W., were black?

I didn't until a few years ago.

A number of black women had a meeting after the meeting that was known as "The March On Washington" Why? Because black female civil rights leaders like Dorothy Height and Diane Nash were not allowed on stage to speak, deliberately not allowed to speak 

...by black men I was taught to worship as a child.

The story goes, having forgotten their be-seen-and-not-heard place, Gloria Richardson, Rosa Parks and other black female civil rights leaders were sent back to the local hotel in a cab. And they were in that cab while Martin Luther King was giving his "I Have A Dream" speech. They listened to it on the radio. (It was all Lena Horne's fault. Earlier in the day she had spent some time trying to introduce Rosa Parks to the foreign press.) 

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/27/civil_rights_pioneer_gloria_richardson_91





So, while too many people have let this word "feminism" be redefined by the status-quo loving / cowering-in-the-face-of-change opposition (and pro-feminist extremists too for that matter) I refuse to let anyone else redefine "feminism" FOR ME. I refuse to let them define it as something as silly as who should open the door for who OR something as ass-i-nine as "man-hater." 

-- in much the same way as I refuse to let some white people redefine "African American" as someone who is more loyal to Africa than America simply because the word "Africa" comes first. 

-- in much the same way as I refuse to let some blacks redefine "blackness" as being loyal to anything and anyone in black skin.

So I deeply believe in feminism even though: 

1) I do not believe in ALL the positions that the official feminist organizations believe in (Abortion as a form of birth control method no matter how far along the pregnancy is, is just one example. Time limits are a discussion female lawmakers need to have with one another) 

2) I do not believe the words "sexual objectification" are meaningless at the very same time that I do know women need more "sexual freedom."
3) I know that white feminists have put themselves first at the same rate of speed, or faster, that black anti-racists have put black men first. And in my patriarchy-soaked brain, women are supposed to be "better than that." 

4) etc 

And even thought I know all this heavy feminism baggage exists, what I ALSO know is that all of us ought to be grateful for "The New Normal." 

And I mean ALL of us, men and women. I know I am.


And I, for one, can't WAIT to see what feminism inspires next!

Can you? 

~DebLynn


BLACKCHICK.ROCKED.COM

TRUMP'S EMBOLDENED WHITE RACISM AIMED AT BLACK WOMEN JOURANLISTS

Feeling Rebloggy

"President Trump has made no secret of his contempt for reporters, whom he calls “fake news” and “enemy of the American people.” He’s also had unkind things to say about women and people who are African American. "

‘What a stupid question’: Trump demeans three black female reporters in three days

This week, he hit a trifecta, singling out three African American women who are journalists. The women — Abby Phillip, April Ryan and Yamiche Alcindor — earned his contempt apparently just for asking him questions. 

Trump called one of Phillip’s questions “stupid,” described Ryan as “a loser” and brushed off Alcindor, saying her question was “racist.”
Phillip, a CNN reporter and former Washington Post journalist, drew Trump’s wrath on Friday, after she asked whether he hoped Matthew G. Whitaker, Trump’s appointee as acting attorney general, would “rein in” special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe of Trump’s presidential campaign. 

“What a stupid question that is. What a stupid question,” Trump snapped. He didn’t answer the allegedly “stupid” question, but he did pour more contempt on Phillip. “I watch you a lot,” he said. “You ask a lot of stupid questions.” 

He suggested he was considering pulling other reporters’ press credentials to cover the White House, as he did with CNN reporter Jim Acosta on Wednesday. Among those he brought up in that context was Ryan....

Read More:  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/what-a-stupid-question-trump-demeans-three-black-female-reporters-in-two-days/2018/11/09/272113d0-e441-11e8-b759-3d88a5ce9e19_story.html?utm_term=.e1f497203078

AT LAST

A different kind of ballroom dancing

Three minutes

So lovely
Don't miss it

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MICHELLE OBAMA AUTOBIOGRAPHY HITS SHELVES NEXT WEEK

And she's on tour too. 

She's at The Forum in Los Angeles the day after her book is released. Grab one at a Barnes and Noble near you.

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IF WE LEFT, THEY WOULDN'T HAVE NOBODY

Feeling Rebloggy

A repost from 2015

"The staff at the Valley Springs Manor left when they stopped getting paid — except for cook Maurice Rowland and Miguel Alvarez, the janitor.  

"There was about 16 residents left behind, and we had a conversation in the kitchen, 'What are we going to do?' " Rowland says. 

"If we left, they wouldn't have nobody," the 34-year-old Alvarez says.

Maurice Rowland and Miguel Alvarez - originally from NPR.ORG and STORYCORPS.ORG

Their roles quickly transformed for the elderly residents, who needed round-the-clock care."I would only go home for one hour, take a shower, get dressed, then be there for 24-hour days," says Alvarez.

Rowland, 35, remembers passing out medications during those long days. He says he didn't want to leave the residents — some coping with dementia — to fend for themselves.

"I just couldn't see myself going home — next thing you know, they're in the kitchen trying to cook their own food and burn the place down," Rowland says. "Even though they wasn't our family, they were kind of like our family for this short period of time."

For Alvarez, the situation brought back memories from his childhood.

"My parents, when they were younger, they left me abandoned," he says. "Knowing how they are going to feel, I didn't want them to go through that."

Alvarez and Rowland spent several days caring for the elderly residents of Valley Springs Manor until the fire department and sheriff took over.

The incident led to legislation in California known as the Residential Care for the Elderly Reform Act of 2014.

http://www.canhr.org/publications/newsletters/Advocate/FrontArticle/adv_2014Q1.htm 

"If I would've left, I think that would have been on my conscience for a very long time," says Rowland."

~NPR / STORYCORPS 

CLICK HERE FOR ORIGINAL STORY 
AND FROM NPR.ORG and STORYCORPS.ORG

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DOJ JEFF SESSIONS REPLACED BY SOMEONE WITH PLAN TO STARVE RUSSIA INVESTIGATION OF MONEY

feeling rebloggy

For nearly as long as FBI special counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating Russian election meddling, activists have been planning mass protests in the case that Donald Trump interferes with the probe. 

Today (Nov. 7), those fears were realized when Trump asked attorney general Jeff Sessions for his resignation. Sessions, who had recused himself from the investigation, will be replaced by Matt Whitaker, a former US Attorney who has opposed the Russia investigation from the start. Whitaker is reportedly taking control of the probe from Rob Rosenstein. the deputy attorney general. 

Hundreds of protests across the US, organized by MoveOn in combination with 100 other activist groups, will take place at 5pm tomorrow, local time, organizers said, “to demand Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker recuse himself immediately from overseeing the Russia investigation.”

Quartz

Read More: https://qz.com/1252396/protests-are-planned-if-rod-rosenstein-is-removed-from-the-russia-investigation/

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