Reading about the history of cocaine intersects so much with the history of the post-Civil War working class, our police state, our race relations, and even our labor relations.
Category Archives: To Export
The Obama Diary has a lineup of tweets concerning racial harassment of a Philadelphia Barnes & Noble patron by management, as reported by HuffPost Live’s Dr. Marc Lamont Hill:
Everyone knows you can hang out at Barnes & Noble for hours, not buy anything, and not be harassed or have the cops called. That’s pretty much what a lot of high school kids do with their Saturdays. But hey, not for Black people, right? The injustice never ends.
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Professor john a. powell: “Black Lives Matter, A Year After Ferguson”
Strictly 4 My Blerds
Here’s an idea, perhaps for fanfiction: bring all the best-known African-American nerds and geeks from television, film and comics together under one roof. To solve a mystery, to find love, to save the world (or some other planet, like America), to go Hunger Games on each other, to break out of a dystopian neighborhood/school together, to do a heist of somebody’s dream, I dunno.
I just want to see all the black nerds (blerds) and geeks to get together in an alternate universe. For once, they won’t be sidekicks and best friends, but the center of the story.
I’ll flesh this out more later.
President Obama still has yet to visit a top number of sub-Saharan African countries as President. With his stop in Ethiopia in the next few days (the first-ever U.S. presidential visit to Ethiopia), he will have visited 6 countries as the U.S. president (Ethiopia 2015, Kenya 2015, Senegal 2013, Tanzania 2013, Ghana 2009).
By comparison, George W. Bush visited 10 countries (Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, Liberia all in 2008; Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda, Nigeria in 2003), and Bill Clinton visited 8 countries (Nigeria and Tanzania in 2000; Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Botswana and Senegal in 1998).
The first to have visited an independent African country was Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1943 trip to Liberia, followed by Jimmy Carter’s visits to Liberia and Nigeria in 1978, and George H.W. Bush’s visit to Somalia in 1992-93.
My Video Chat w/ The Circle on G+ Hangouts
So its very important that some questions be answered! I am making this blog post to ask our LGBT activists, organizations and LGBT media to be that loud voice asking several questions of several people.
1. What are State Representative Allen Peake’s views on the legislation? Does he support it? Will he vote for its passage?
2. Will State Representative Allen Peake abstain from voting for this legislation and realize the conflict of interest because his business will be affected by the new law if it passes.
3. IF State representate Allen Peake does support this legislation and votes for its passage, what are the views and what would the course of action be by any of the parent companies that franchise restaurants to Allen Peake’s company, C&P Restaurants.
Oregon: A State for Women
Two things I noticed today:
- Kate Brown became Oregon’s 38th governor today. She is the second woman in Oregon history and first openly-LGBT person in United States history to take office as governor (Jim McGreevey of New Jersey came out as gay in his announcement of resignation after two years in office).
- In November 2014, Oregon passed a state-level Equal Rights Amendment, becoming the 22nd state (since California in 1879) to pass a constitutional amendment banning discrimination on the basis of sex.
I find it gratifying that women in Oregon are making such strides, particularly to enshrine such “equality under the law” on the basis of sex into their constitution.
Unfortunately, even after the unsuccessful fight for the federal ERA in the 1970s and after so long since the Nineteenth Amendment’s passage in 1920, these 22 states (and their various extensions of protection from mere employment to full equality under the law) stand alone out of so many states which have not constitutionally-enshrined gender anti-discrimination law. We don’t have such protection which could greatly benefit the future of half the U.S. population enshrined into the majority of constitutional documents in this country.
Why can’t we in the other 28 states spell out equality in the sexes to our states’ residents through the second highest laws of our states? Why are we so reticent to spell out gender equality? Do we even believe in the government recognizing our equality, or are we still ruled by people who represent the interests and privileges of half the population of our states?
And then we wonder why New Hampshire can’t bring forward a constitutional amendment to define equality for all sexual orientations?
Our collective mindset is our most potent enemy. We must change that mindset at all levels.
Congrats to Oregon and Gov. Kate Brown!
McEwen believes — and has often been able to prove or link together — deliberate attempts by rightwing groups to twist facts, mischaracterize scientific studies and malign LGBT people in the process.
“They say they are standing on God’s principles and God’s law,” he said. “Okay, if you’re doing that, why do you have to lie? Why do you have to do all these other things?”
Exposing the right’s hypocrisy and their intentional efforts at discrimination defines nearly all of McEwen’s passion and citizen journalism. He’s challenged some of the biggest names on the right, and even got one to admit the truth, he said.
“I had a conversation with Robert Knight,” McEwen recalled of the man who has worked with Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council, two of the nation’s largest anti-LGBT groups. “I asked him about how he used junk science. He said, ‘Yeah, we use it. So what?’”
