Herstory

Black Live Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors coined the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag. (photo via laweekly.com)

Hannah Reynolds was believed to have died while still a slave, but records now indicate she survived until after Lee surrendered to Grant

A frightening look at what happens when LGBTQ women of color refuse to accept street harassment and other violence

The many stereotypes of black women are used to justify violence and aggression against them.  Because black women are mythologized as gold-digging, angry, physically strong, provocative shrews some black men assume (and this is something that having a mama, a auntie, a grandmother who raised you, or your own damn daughters doesn’t change) that if/when black women are hit, they asked for (or deserved) it.  At the end of the day many men empathize with other men and instead of vilifying any act of violence, physical or otherwise, against anyone, especially a woman, they attempt to justify it.  They put themselves in the shoes of the aggressor, but not the victim, and see themselves as blameless and reactionary, rather than violent and misogynistic.

Grace Lee Boggs, 99, is a Chinese American philosopher, writer, and activist in Detroit with a thick FBI file and a surprising vision of what an American revolution can be. Rooted for 75 years in the labor, civil rights and Black Power movements, she challenges a new generation to throw off old assumptions, think creatively and redefine revolution for our times.

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Below is a remarkable commercial in which a white woman is told that if she buys Pampers, the company will donate vaccines to children in other countries.

Slavery, the value of chastity, and laws that favored men all made it difficult for women to find justice during the chaos of war.

So much in American Horror Story depends on the suspension of disbelief that it seems like lunacy to investigate the “true stories” on which it’s based. As in the more familiar forms of folklore, the story itself is less the point than the manner of the telling.

In May of this year, I talked to Deon Haywood, Executive Director of Women With A Vision in New Orleans about her approach to organizing. WWAV scored a significant grassroots legal and political victory in the last year with the NO Justice campaign, which removed hundreds of cis and trans women from Louisiana’s registered felony sexual offender rolls. Deon is a longtime activist in the city of New Orleans, with a history of organizing low-income women of color around reproductive justice, harm reduction, and human rights.

...We are not all in the same boat. And if we keep playing like we are, we’re not really going to make the kind of change we’d like to see. Because the women I work with are never going to be able to jump into the sex workers’ rights movement. They don’t feel like that movement is for them.

“ “Untitled” by Nick Knight [x] ”