“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” —
James A. Baldwin (via gorgeousmuslimah)
Just got back from visiting Chicago, gas was jacked up to $4.50 in the hood.
(via kiriamaya)
I’m trying to go see my mom cause she’s been stressed out, so I’m taking an extra day off work for Memorial Day and dropped money (that it later turned out I didn’t quite have) so I can go hug her for a few days. But I overslept and missed my flight and am chillin in the airport listening to awful music (for a minute it was Otis Redding and I had faith in humanity, but now that’s over) and flipping through magazines. But hugging my mom a bunch is gonna rule.
Feds Indict 105 In Tre Bloods Probe -
And if anyone wants to read about what’s going on in my neighborhood and what I’m starting to feel doomed about, here. I don’t like dogs to begin with, never have, but especially when a suburb with its own notorious drug problem (but it’s mostly white kids so we don’t talk about it) has sent a K-9 unit into my neighborhood and the dog is barking outside my window at 5 a.m. while people are being pulled out of bed and I don’t know who they’re going after or why.
The largest-ever federal criminal sweep in Connecticut history netted 35 more alleged crack-dealing New Haven gang members Tuesday, and at least one man was hauled out of bed in a case of mistaken identity.
The fast-paced day began with predawn busts in the Fair Haven and Dwight-Kensington neighborhoods as well as some suburban communities. It continued with dozens of assembly-line appearances in U.S. District Court on Church Street, featured a near-brawl on the courthouse steps, and concluded with the state’s top prosecutor joining federal and local police officials in declaring victory.
“This,” the prosecutor, U.S. Attorney David Fein, said at a 3 p.m press conference, “is the largest federal criminal case in state history.”
The operation is called “Operation Bloodline.” The federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) ran it along with New Haven’s cops. Police from Hamden, North Haven, Milford, Ansonia, North Branford, and Branford took part, too.
It began a little more than a year ago, targeting the group accused of dominating the New Haven crack trade and having a hand in much of the tit-for-tat deadly violence on the streets: the Dwight-Kensington-based Tre Bloods gang.
Building on intelligence gathered by New Haven cops and DEA agents, the investigators had a potent weapon in their arsenal: court-authorized wiretaps on 22 different telephones.
They gathered enough evidence to obtain 105 indictments on charges related to crack and powder cocaine dealing as well as marijuana and oxycodone peddling.
Last Thursday agents conducted a sweep that netted the 32 arrests. (Another 14 defendants were already in court on other charges.)…
Most of those arrested were indicted on charges of taking part in a conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. They face minimum sentences of 10 years in jail, up to life; and up to $10 million in fines. Some face heroin and powder cocaine charges as well as possession with intent to sell narcotics and possession of illegal firearms.
“We put a big dent in the gang violence in this city,” New Haven Assistant Police Chief Archie Generoso declared Tuesday. “We’re going to continue doing that. We’re not going to stop here.”One of my friends who has been stressing about this with me pointed something out: a combination of New Haven police plus several other towns, plus the DEA, got most of these indictments based mostly on wiretaps over the course of a year—but the best they were able to get on the majority of the people was conspiracy. How guilty am I supposed to think anybody is, if the most you can catch over a year of spying is conspiracy?
well put. the neighborhood is one of the last few spots in the city that is close to yale & downtown and is relatively affordable. pike international has been buying up lots and houses left and right and all of their ad’s refer to blocks around here that aren’t even that close to downtown as ‘minutes from yale’, ‘minutes from downtown/shopping districts’, ‘looking for young professionals’. the school of architecture just dropped an incredibly unfitting house down the street thats being advertised as such in yuppie cafe’s and shortly after the house was put on the market, the house next-door was foreclosed on.
it’s pretty clear that land-grabbing, in a city where yale owns 1/4 of the (most expensive land) yet pays no taxes on it is one of the many incentives to the raids happening in this part of town..
The first steps towards “gentrification” are made in combat boots.
This is a pattern that is only becoming solid for me now. I’ve been living in this neighborhood for 5 years now, in 3 different buildings, and they’ve each had some amount of cops running through the place. At the first apartment, it was in the aftermath of immigration raids in town; a year or so after I’d moved out, the building was sold and all the tenants, almost all immigrants, were evicted illegally so the building could be rehabbed and rented exclusively to Yale students.
In my mind the drug raids now and the immigration raids we had a few years ago are pretty similar and connected. So far the difference is that immigrant communities and Latino communities mobilized really strongly and really quickly, and the NHPD passed a general order to not collaborate with ICE. Black communities here are more fractured than that (especially since it was a raid on just one gang). I’d really like to see us step up against raids like this instead of accepting it as what happens—and I think some of us are working on making that happen.
No patience anymore for people who say gentrification isn’t a big deal. This shit is violent. I wasn’t ever skittish in my neighborhood before the way I have been since the raids.
… nevermind, I don’t even want to make up a punchline.
(Alternatively, white-centered feminism is its own punchline.)
Funny, though, how when white women reclaim “slut”/any similar sexuality it’s revolutionary and empowering and we’re clearly stupid if we don’t take part, but when women of color do it they are brainwashed and manipulated and have no self-respect and are too loyal to “our men”?
{my letter to the girlsgetbusy zine, sent in the form of a submission. text below}
hi there. i’m writing to you regarding a recent submission to your blog made by gunmolly depicting a female bodied person of color wearing a slut pride t-shirt. i am imploring you to prevent this image from appearing in the next issue of your zine, retract it from your blog, and write a statement explaining why such a submission is grossly inappropriate
as a woman of color who believes wholeheartedly in the struggle for gender egalitarianism, gunmolly’s submission to your zine offended me on multiple levels.
first and foremost, the relationship between female bodied people of color, word reclamation, and the word slut in particular have a very complicated relationship. the history of female bodied people of color is one of hyper-sexualization and slut shaming, its roots grounded in colonial/imperial practices that reach far and wide. the effects of such understandings surrounding female bodied people of color still persist today. fundamentally, we’ve been called sluts and every synonym akin to it long before slutwalk became a global movement. yet the attention paid to such abuses of our personhood have largely gone unnoticed.
while gunmolly’s picture can be seen as an attempt to acknowledge that complication history and relationship, its a miserably shallow one at best. the depiction in gunmolly’s art is an overly romantic representation between the relationship between female bodied people of color and “slut” reclamation. female bodied people of color wearing a t-shirt saying “slut pride” would not have the same consequences as it would for a white person. when white female bodied people reclaim the word slut, its seen as a revolutionary act. yet when female bodied people of color reclaim the word slut, the world often turns to us as we have finally admitted to a long silently understood truth. the transposing of a white female bodied person’s relationship to the word slut onto that of a female bodied person of color is an unrealistic one, and also a silencing one.
which brings me to my second point. female bodied people of color, regardless of their relationship to the global movement for gender egalitarianism, are perfectly capable of articulating their respective relationships to the word slut via any medium they so choose. by upholding gunmolly’s art as a submission, you are effectively silencing the voices of female bodied people of color while saying its acceptable for white female bodied individuals to take the issues pertinent to female bodied people of color and use them for rhetorical fodder in whatever medium they see fit.
With that being said, I ask that you forgo allowing this submission to make the final cut for your zine. I would also advise soliciting issues related to people of color from actual people of color, and not white people who are willing to co-opt and essentially appropriate our struggles for artistic/rhetorical fodder. In the future, I look forward to seeing productions from this group that are truly inclusive to all those engaged in the struggle to gender egalitarianism, and not ones which simply pay lip service to ideals they have no intention of upholding.
In solidarity and accountability
the womanist behind navigatethestream
For anyone who wants lessons on being a bad-ass.
If any PoC/WoC would like to participate/give their 2 cents please do so! Submissions are open
(Although it’s the Black feminist manifesto, I want it to be inclusive to all non black PoC/WoC! I will probably end up changing the title a bit to reflect that, but right now this gets the point across)
Please spread this around even if you’re not interested maybe your followers might be! If you’re not a PoC but would like to be apart of the discussion just let me know. Be warned this will be a safe space for PoC and I won’t put up with any bullshit.
Follow Black-Feminist-Manifesto on tumblr for updates and to submit your work/drawings/thoughts
if any poc/woc are interested paula’s making a zine and she’s super cooly cools so plz help her out!!! :)
Could this possibly be the answer to my ‘wanting to illustrate for a magazine over the summer’ dream?
Is this….a sign?
*clouds part and a ray of sunshine illuminates my laptop*
This is amazing and so needed!
signal boost!
signal boost! i am still considering but i will let you know soon!
I’m down. This is the kind of stuff I daydream about.
(I wonder how many notes this can get before it’s derailed by “so is being white”)
(it wont take long. because white can be beautiful and pins won’t drop. but soon as brown is beautiful everybody wants to make it rain in this bitch)
Or before it becomes about the fact you said “bitch”, and that is a HUGE DEAL compared to talking about race. (I am being sarcastic.) (I only wish the people who derail in this manner also were.)
(Source: genderbendingriotqueer, via karnythia)
haakev2 asked: is it ok for me to reblog what you wrote about ebony/shepard fairey?
Sure! Thanks for asking. I generally don’t post anything I wouldn’t be comfortable with people reblogging.
Feds Indict 105 In Tre Bloods Probe -
And if anyone wants to read about what’s going on in my neighborhood and what I’m starting to feel doomed about, here. I don’t like dogs to begin with, never have, but especially when a suburb with its own notorious drug problem (but it’s mostly white kids so we don’t talk about it) has sent a K-9 unit into my neighborhood and the dog is barking outside my window at 5 a.m. while people are being pulled out of bed and I don’t know who they’re going after or why.
The largest-ever federal criminal sweep in Connecticut history netted 35 more alleged crack-dealing New Haven gang members Tuesday, and at least one man was hauled out of bed in a case of mistaken identity.
The fast-paced day began with predawn busts in the Fair Haven and Dwight-Kensington neighborhoods as well as some suburban communities. It continued with dozens of assembly-line appearances in U.S. District Court on Church Street, featured a near-brawl on the courthouse steps, and concluded with the state’s top prosecutor joining federal and local police officials in declaring victory.
“This,” the prosecutor, U.S. Attorney David Fein, said at a 3 p.m press conference, “is the largest federal criminal case in state history.”
The operation is called “Operation Bloodline.” The federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) ran it along with New Haven’s cops. Police from Hamden, North Haven, Milford, Ansonia, North Branford, and Branford took part, too.
It began a little more than a year ago, targeting the group accused of dominating the New Haven crack trade and having a hand in much of the tit-for-tat deadly violence on the streets: the Dwight-Kensington-based Tre Bloods gang.
Building on intelligence gathered by New Haven cops and DEA agents, the investigators had a potent weapon in their arsenal: court-authorized wiretaps on 22 different telephones.
They gathered enough evidence to obtain 105 indictments on charges related to crack and powder cocaine dealing as well as marijuana and oxycodone peddling.
Last Thursday agents conducted a sweep that netted the 32 arrests. (Another 14 defendants were already in court on other charges.)…
Most of those arrested were indicted on charges of taking part in a conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. They face minimum sentences of 10 years in jail, up to life; and up to $10 million in fines. Some face heroin and powder cocaine charges as well as possession with intent to sell narcotics and possession of illegal firearms.
“We put a big dent in the gang violence in this city,” New Haven Assistant Police Chief Archie Generoso declared Tuesday. “We’re going to continue doing that. We’re not going to stop here.”
One of my friends who has been stressing about this with me pointed something out: a combination of New Haven police plus several other towns, plus the DEA, got most of these indictments based mostly on wiretaps over the course of a year—but the best they were able to get on the majority of the people was conspiracy. How guilty am I supposed to think anybody is, if the most you can catch over a year of spying is conspiracy?
EBONY Magazine Commissions Street Artist Shepard Fairey to Illustrate Trayvon Martin - COLORLINES -
I posted this link on facebook today, pointing out that Shepard Fairey has made his career from exploiting work by people of color, that he’s been allowed status as a gallery-worthy artist for doing what is considered vandalism when done by youth of color (and let’s face it, with considerably less talent), and that I’m disappointed that Ebony missed the opportunity to commission a piece by a Black artist. A white dude responded that he understands it’s problematic, but maybe it’s a good thing to make a piece that “transcends racial lines”. I have been on edge with race shit lately, enough that I haven’t been able to write anything. I’ve seriously been race-depressed and feeling like people of color are fucking doomed—my students are proof that we aren’t, but they’re also stressed out with end of the year catching up or giving up, and realizing all that they should be taught but aren’t.
So my roommate made me a cup of coffee and I spit all this out finally in response to the dude on facebook:
————————————
I can see where you’re coming from and appreciate the sentiment, but I think it still misses the point. Heads up though, because I am having an even more race-anxious couple weeks than usual, so this hits a raw nerve for me.
First off, it definitely isn’t the only piece of art I’ve seen about Trayvon; that’s part of why it’s disappointing. Black artists respond to our conditions all the time and are often passed up on commissioned work and other opportunities. Most other magazines (read: white-centered media) doing this wouldn’t faze me, but I would expect better from a magazine like Ebony. There’s actually a portrait of Trayvon in the hallway at the school where I work that a Black girl made for an art assignment, and it’s infinitely more moving than something sterile and disconnected like this. And that isn’t the only piece I’ve seen some of my students make about this, but when they do it they are making art about their own experiences and their communities’ experiences and how disempowered they usually feel in a city like this. Once I get my silk screen stuff set up better, I promised to help some students make “DON’T SHOOT ME” hoodies they designed—that’s what we’ve come to. At the very least I want to affirm their idea that they don’t deserve to be profiled, followed, shot, and then posthumously vilified—something I don’t have to put energy into affirming in my white students, and something that no one had to affirm in Shepard Fairey.
But about making it more palatable for white audiences (who are specifically NOT the audience of Ebony, and it’s rare to pull off media that isn’t implicitly geared toward white audiences), I think that’s really dangerous and disrespectful. Black people need space to mourn and defend ourselves and take care of each other. I spend way too much time fretting over my brother and my students and my neighborhood and all the ways they are targeted for this kind of violence. Trying to make race less a part of the telling of Trayvon’s story is dishonest. It doesn’t even make sense. It isn’t a story that transcends race, because it isn’t a story that would happen to just any youth regardless of race. Racial profiling isn’t a universal experience, and neither is the picture the media tried to paint of him being a “thug.” None of that would have happened to a white kid, and pretending it does is an insult to what youth of color deal with.
If white people need to be eased into respecting, understanding, and listening to Black people’s lived experiences, then go ahead and do the work of easing them into it, but don’t expect us to tell our stories dishonestly to make them easier to swallow—we don’t have the luxury of toning shit down when we’re living it. It honestly scares me that we’ve internalized white people’s desire for us to whitewash and tone down our stories so much that we’re now doing it in our storytelling to each other in our own media.
I’m kind of unsure about the thing about Fairey’s Obama posters being iconic. Of course they are, but Obama means lots of complicated things for Black people that he doesn’t for white people. Again, not feelings and experiences that are going to transcend racial lines. You might have said more than you realized by choosing the word “iconic”—these are more than icons to Black people. (ETA: I’m pretty grumpy about Obama personally, but again, it’s way more complicated than an icon can be and I can understand Black people who support him for equally complicated reasons.)
And it’s specifically because of Fairey’s race politics (or lack thereof) that I don’t respect him as an artist. You can read a whole lot more on Fairey’s exploitation of people of color’s art and histories here: http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm
Federal agents and DEA just came through my neighborhood and arrested over 100 people, almost all black men, including some I know. Yale and its real estate interests are literally demolishing Black kids’ playgrounds and Black families’ houses to make condos. My students are at the point in the school year where they’re realizing just how much they’ve been denied by the school system and learning how to point out the whitewashing of their textbooks (well, if we had the money for textbooks). This is the shit I’m losing sleep over. I can’t guarantee my students that they will be safe from racial violence, since many of them have experienced it already, or that our school will value their lived experiences as young people of color, but I’m at least not going to be dishonest with them and pretend we’re not talking about race when we are, that we’re not talking about violence when we are, or that we need to put anything on hold for white people’s idea of what’s polite and palatable and slowed down enough. Our shit is way too urgent for that.
i have to find another partner.
i’m infinitely too affectionate for just one person, and it doesn’t help my only other gf has other partners too.
but what good is it when i don’t meet people i want to be around very often at all?
#queerwomenofcolorproblems
hell i would at least like to find ONE partner who shows up to a date on time sans track suits
but hey i guess i’m reaching for stars right now
reaching for stars
I’m not one for LOLing at the internet but omg holy cow, TRACK SUITS.
nor is there discussion about how this is a growing happening in other countries like Canada, where I’m at.
The only stats you find are about white girls and white women. Only research you find has very little to do with black women and girls interaction with the criminal justice system, legislation and penalties. The connections and intersections to be made and spoken of are missing like i don’t even know what.
i hope to do more research on this focusing on Black women because we are the top growing group of people being incarcerated at an increasing rate. and as someone who has experienced this shitty system, it is very personal for me.
Resistance Behind Bars by Victoria Law is on my summer reading list, and I’m reading Assata currently.
(Source: sonofbaldwin)
popca replied to your post: Camille’s summer to-do list
omg whaaat about that third point i am very interested in what’s going on there
Check this out & let’s go together!
Welcome to APOCalypse – a national Anarchist People of Color Convergence
Posted on January 4, 2012
Survival Strategies for the New Millennium
July 12th – 15th, 2012
New Orleans, Louisiana
I feel like that’s enough.
No hope for humanity: I wore this homemade shirt to work today and didn’t get a single compliment. ………………… Was everyone just intimidated by its awesomeness?? Kids, come one, when was the last time your teacher showed up in a unicorn shirt?