ff

 {photo & tweet from dante barry}

 

* from michael brown to assata shakur, the racist state of america persists - angela davis 

{angela davis in the guardian}

 

and also:





 

* what ferguson means for black women - chaedria labourier

 

{...}

 {chaedria labourier in elle}

 

(i am so glad to be seeing a piece like that in a major fashion magazine. it is what i hope for but not what i expect.)

 

this has been a very hard week. spread the voices of those at the front of this movement. please please let it have an effect.

today i read

{tweeted by anonymous}

 

{a beautiful awful not funny at all 'today in tab' - by bijan stephen}

{...}

{chronicle of a riot foretold - by jelani cobb}

{teaching our sons to be afraid is not the answer to cops who shoot children - by latoya perterson}

{the parable of the unjust judge or: fear of a nigger nation - by ezekiel kweku} 

i was a sensitive kid, am a sensitive adult.
rioting never made sense to me. destroying the place where you live - i never understood that rage and recklessness.
learning about the riots of 1968, although i understood the reasons, i could never get my head around the acts. the thought of it filled me with terror.

i am no longer afraid of the rioters.
nothing scares me more than guns except for white men.
i am no longer confused by the burning down of cities.

take it from my sight

{from here}

if you are not following what is happening in ferguson, start right this second. this one is a big one. this is one we will remember.

if you are not heartbroken and furious, you are not paying attention.

my heart is broken. that country is broken.

i have been sitting up these last few nights, and last week, watching. suppressing the desire to throw up. not able to suppress the tears. i am thinking about the brother from ragtime... he wanted to say... every day i wake up knowing what you've lost and what is owing...
yeah, i know i'm comparing it to a musical, i know, i know. but it is so fucking sad, that's all i can handle. we are all coalhouse. we are all michael brown.

say goodbye to music, say goodbye to light.

forgive me the cheesiness. it's all way too much without it.

i read the second autopsy and couldn't stop weeping.
that was an 18 year old boy.
arms up.
head hanging.

and left. laying there.

(someone on twitter pointed out the tragic poetry in the medical examiner being the same man who reviewed the autopsies of jfk and mlk jr.)

we'll never get to heaven till we reach that day...

you do not shoot an unarmed human person six times. you don't. you don't you don't. not for jaywalking or for shoplifting. not for anything.

(and FUCK you for that narrative, as if shoplifting could ever come close to a motive - ignoring that the cop didn't know that michael was suspected. find me a teenaged white girl who never shoplifted a lipstick, a pair of earrings... i honestly can't handle that there are people out there who thought that saying this human, this BOY, wasn't an innocent victim because of fucking shoplifting? or any other bullshit character assassination. it wouldn't matter if he was a total piece of shit. that's not the point. the point is. unarmed. unarmed. no. furious.)

you do not threaten to shoot a reporter when you are supposed to be de-escalating a rage built up by and boiled over by the unjustifiable and obscene shooting of a human person. you do not dress up in military grade armour and call people animals when one of yours has murdered one of theirs.

it is all so very far gone beyond wrong.
a day of peace, a day of pride, a day of justice: we have been denied. let the new day dawn, oh lord i pray...

{from the daily mail}