Calvin Timmons

Scholar, Activist, Nerd

[katalystart-deactivated20241120]

A memoir about my struggle with depression when I was younger and how I fought to live another day. No real names were used in this comic, except for my own. I’m now 21 years old and still dealing with it, but thankfully I’ve been reaching out for support and seeking therapy.

[projectqueer]

7 Ways to Turn Your Anger Over Sandra Bland Into Action In Support of Incarcerated (and Formerly Incarcerated) Black Women -

by Desiree Stevens The funneling of black children through the school-to-prison pipeline is a dangerous trend that pervades society. As a result, black people make up a disproportionately high percentage of the prison population. For young black girls, the… Continue Reading →

[calvintimmons]

Been in 'girl mode' the last few days. Today I feel like I can dress the part! :)

[projectqueer]

(source)

[projectqueer]

These 7 Assumptions About Non-Binary Folks May Be Hindering Your Trans Allyship

So you know that some people are non-binary – but do you know that these common (and harmful) myths about them are false?

[calvintimmons]

Shame and Customer Service pt. 3: Alternatives

It's been a while since I've written on this subject. Since then, I have left my customer service job and joined the Academy...only to face new labor issues. This time respect comes less from those I educate to those I educate with and the expectations of my labor. Because of this new drama, I wanted to return to thinking about Shame and Customer Service once more. Mainly how to address the shame and move past it.

Instead of doing a more narrative description, I want to focus on some quick points and ideas. It is my hope that those reading this can also brainstorm with me and create more alternatives. Here we go!

Respect service workers. This requires empathizing with people who might've gone through the same situation as you. Maybe they're also a peer. Or, maybe you've never done service work--even still--appreciate them as humans. It means so much.

Understand the working conditions. Often times, the conditions of doing service work suck in one way or another. Tell people about them. Try and spread the word. Make a change.

Blog/Write/Do Something. Share the experience of doing service work in some capacity. This will allow you to start unpacking your emotions. This also (potentially) allows for a space to build solidarity.

Change the System. Oppression and the creation of shame in service work is systematic. In order to solve it, the system must be dismantled. Critique it.

I understand that several of these points are risky to service workers. Some employers may even try to bring action against those who resist or question. Do what you can that is safe for you. It is important and vital that we build healthy and supportive working conditions. Know your limits and of others. Support and respect is key!

[ukbp-blog]

UNTITLED KONDABOLU BROTHERS PODCAST #14 is finally available on iTunes (http://bit.ly/SMqaGr) & Libsyn (http://bit.ly/1oB6ZIC). We talk to special guest W. Kamau Bell about white demonry, interracial relationships, white demonry, Bill Maher, white demonry and the power of standup comedy. http://www.kondabolubrothers.com

[diamondsandlemons]

I made this because I felt like it

[adventuretitan-deactivated20141]

everyone’s got daddy issues and everyone’s the daddy that causes the issues

[calvintimmons]

Jasonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn...!

[thedisneyseries]

Lilo & Stitch’ deleted scene that tackled racism & obnoxious tourists

[calvintimmons]

[thepeoplesrecord]

How Trayvon Martin’s death launched a new generation of black activism August 29, 2014 | Mychal Denzel Smith | The Nation

On July 13, 2013, George Zimmerman was found not guilty in the murder of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American 17-year-old walking home from a 7-Eleven. What The Washington Post and other media outlets had dubbed “the trial of the century” was over, with a deeply unsettling verdict. In the fifteen months between Trayvon’s death and the beginning of the trial, people across the country had taken to the streets, as well as to newspapers, television and social media, to decry the disregard for young black lives in America. For them—for us—this verdict was confirmation.

A group of 100 black activists, ranging in age from 18 to 35, had gathered in Chicago that same weekend. They had come together at the invitation of Cathy J. Cohen, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the author of Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics, and her organization, the Black Youth Project. Launched in 2004, the group was born as a research project to study African-American youth; in the decade since then, Cohen has turned the BYP into an activist organization. The plan for this meeting was to discuss movement building beyond electoral politics. Young black voters turned out in record numbers in the 2008 and ‘12 elections: 55 percent of black 18-to-24-year-olds voted in 2008, an 8 percent increase from 2004, and while a somewhat smaller number—49 percent—voted in 2012, they still outpaced their white counterparts. But how would young black voters hold those they had put in office accountable? And what were their demands?

This group, coming together under the banner Black Youth Project 100 (“BYP100” for short), was tasked with figuring that out. As with any large gathering, people disagreed, cliques were formed, and tensions began to mount. The organizers struggled to build consensus within this diverse group of academics, artists and activists. And then George Zimmerman was acquitted. The energy in the room changed.

“A moment of trauma can oftentimes present you with an opportunity to do something about the situation to prevent that trauma from happening again,” said Charlene Carruthers, one the activists at the conference.

Carruthers, a Chicago native, has been an organizer for more than ten years, starting as a student at Wesleyan University. She has led grassroots and digital campaigns for, among others, the Women’s Media Center, National People’s Action and ColorofChange.org. She heard all types of sounds emanating from the people in the room that day, from crying to screaming. “I don’t believe the pain was a result, necessarily, of shock because Zimmerman was found not guilty,” Carruthers said, “but of yet another example…of an injustice being validated by the state—something that black people were used to.”

Some members of BYP100 went into the streets of downtown Chicago and led a rally. Others stayed behind and drafted the group’s first collective statement. Addressed to “the Family of Brother Trayvon Martin and to the Black Community,” it read in part: “When we heard ‘not guilty,’ our hearts broke collectively. In that moment, it was clear that Black life had no value. Emotions poured out—emotions that are real, natural and normal, as we grieved for Trayvon and his stolen humanity. Black people, WE LOVE AND SEE YOU.”

The group recorded a reading of the letter and released the video on July 14, one day after the verdict. “That was the catalyst,” Carruthers said, “that cemented [the idea] that the people in that room had to do something collectively moving forward.”

…

The demise of the Black Panther Party in the mid-1970s left a void in black political organizing. The Panthers weren’t without problems (the sexist nature of their leadership was a big one), but they represented the last gasps of a national black organizing that combined radical political education, direct action, youth engagement and community services. In the years since, racial-justice groups have struggled to effect change as profound as they managed to achieve during the heyday of the civil-rights and Black Power movements. The Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network is mostly visible to the extent that Sharpton is able to leverage his own platform and personality for the causes he cares about. The same is true of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow PUSH Coalition. Until Benjamin Jealous took over as president in 2008, the NAACP—the nation’s oldest civil-rights organization—was battling perceptions of irrelevance. Under Jealous’s leadership, the NAACP changed course, but the question lingered as to whether it was equipped to fight the new challenges faced by black America. The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement has existed since 1993 without much fanfare; the National Hip-Hop Political Convention, started in 2004, fizzled. “The times we live in,” Carruthers said, “call for a resurgence of national black-liberation organizing.”

This past May, I traveled to Chicago for the “Freedom Dreams, Freedom Now!” conference, hosted by a number of organizations, including BYP100, on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago. The conference was intended as an “intergenerational, interactive gathering” of scholars, artists and activists commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Freedom Summer and discussing contemporary social-justice organizing. The opening plenary featured a keynote address by Julian Bond, a co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and former board chair of the NAACP. He presented a history of Freedom Summer, the SNCC-led movement to register voters and get black people to the polls in Mississippi, before a premiere screening of the PBS documentary Freedom Summer, directed by Stanley Nelson.

But the aim of the conference wasn’t just to reminisce. It was a precursor to Freedom Side, a collective that includes members of BYP100, the Dream Defenders and United We Dream, an immigrant-youth-led organization, as well as more established groups like the NAACP and AFL-CIO. Before the conference, as part of the Freedom Summer celebration, the Dream Defenders hosted “freedom schools” throughout Florida, talking to young people about criminalization, mass incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline. Voter registration drives were also held across the country.

The day after the conference ended, BYP100 hosted an organizer-training event at the University of Chicago. Early on, the attendees were split into two groups, and the two sides engaged each other in a call-and-response chant that referenced historical greats like Nat Turner, Angela Davis, Ida B. Wells, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Fred Hampton. But even as they paid homage to their history in song, these young activists had their eyes on the future. Members led sessions on personal narratives in organizing, how to handle interactions with police officers, and building political power.

Read full article here

[thepeoplesrecord]

10 intriguing female revolutionaries that you didn’t learn about in history class August 24, 2014

We all know male revolutionaries like Che Guevara, but history often tends to gloss over the contributions of female revolutionaries that have sacrificed their time, efforts, and lives to work towards burgeoning systems and ideologies. Despite misconceptions, there are tons of women that have participated in revolutions throughout history, with many of them playing crucial roles. They may come from different points on the political spectrum, with some armed with weapons and some armed with nothing but a pen, but all fought hard for something that they believed in.

Let’s take a look at 10 of these female revolutionaries from all over the world that you probably won’t ever see plastered across a college student’s T-shirt.

Nadezhda Krupskaya Many people know Nadezhda Krupskaya simply as Vladimir Lenin’s wife, but Nadezhda was a Bolshevik revolutionary and politician in her own right. She was heavily involved in a variety of political activities, including serving as the Soviet Union’s Deputy Minister of Education from 1929 until her death in 1939, and a number of educational pursuits. Prior to the revolution, she served as secretary of the Iskra group, managing continent-wide correspondence, much of which had to be decoded. After the revolution, she dedicated her life to improving education opportunities for workers and peasants, for example by striving to make libraries available to everyone.

Constance Markievicz Constance Markievicz (née Gore-Booth) was an Anglo-Irish Countess, Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil politician, revolutionary nationalist, suffragette and socialist. She participated in many Irish independence efforts, including the Easter Rising of 1916, in which she had a leadership role. During the Rising, she wounded a British sniper before being forced to retreat and surrender. After, she was the only woman out of 70 to be put into solitary confinement. She was sentenced to death, but was pardoned based on her gender. Interestingly, the prosecuting counsel claimed that she begged “I am only a woman, you cannot shoot a woman”, while court records show she said “I do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me”. Constance was one of the first women in the world to hold a cabinet position (Minister for Labour of the Irish Republic, 1919–1922), and she was also the first woman elected to the British House of Commons (December 1918)—a position which she rejected due to the Sinn Féin abstentionist policy.

Petra Herrera During the Mexican Revolution, female soldiers known as soldaderas went into combat along with the men although they often faced abuse. One of the most well-known of the soldaderas was Petra Herrera, who disguised her gender and went by the name “Pedro Herrera”. As Pedro, she established her reputation by demonstrating exemplary leadership (and blowing up bridges) and was able to reveal her gender in time. She participated in the second battle of Torreón on May 30, 1914 along with about 400 other women, even being named by some as being deserving of full credit for the battle. Unfortunately, Pancho Villa was likely unwilling to give credit to a woman and did not promote her to General. In response, Petra left Villa’s forces and formed her own all-woman brigade.

Nwanyeruwa Nwanyeruwa, an Igbo woman in Nigeria, sparked a short war that is often called the first major challenge to British authority in West Africa during the colonial period. On November 18, 1929, an argument between Nwanyeruwa and a census man named Mark Emereuwa broke out after he told her to “count her goats, sheep and people.” Understanding this to mean she would be taxed (traditionally, women were not charged taxes), she discussed the situation with the other women and protests, deemed the Women’s War, began to occur over the course of two months. About 25,000 women all over the region were involved, protesting both the looming tax changes and the unrestricted power of the Warrant Chiefs. In the end, women’s position were greatly improved, with the British dropping their tax plans, as well as the forced resignation of many Warrant Chiefs.

Lakshmi Sehgal Lakshmi Sahgal, colloquially known as “Captain Lakshmi”, was a revolutionary of the Indian independence movement, an officer of the Indian National Army, and later, the Minister of Women’s Affairs in the Azad Hind government. In the 40s, she commanded the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, an all-women regiment that aimed to overthrow British Raj in colonial India. The regiment was one of the very few all-female combat regiments of WWII on any side, and was named after another renowned female revolutionary in Indian history, Rani Lakshmibai, who was one of the leading figures of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Sophie Scholl German revolutionary Sophie Scholl was a founding member of the non-violent Nazi resistance group The White Rose, which advocated for active resistance to Hitler’s regime through an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign. In February of 1943, she and other members were arrested for handing out leaflets at the University of Munich and sentenced to death by guillotine. Copies of the leaflet, retitled The Manifesto of the Students of Munich, were smuggled out of the country and millions were air-dropped over Germany by Allied forces later that year.

Blanca Canales Blanca Canales was a Puerto Rican Nationalist who helped organize the Daughters of Freedom, the women’s branch of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. She was one of the few women in history to have led a revolt against the United States, known as the Jayuya Uprising. In 1948, a severely restricting bill known as the Gag Bill, or Law 53, was introduced that made it a crime to print, publish, sell, or exhibit any material intended to paralyze or destroy the insular government. In response, the Nationalists starting planning armed revolution. On October 30, 1950, Blanca and others took up arms which she had stored in her home and marched into the town of Jayuya, taking over the police station, burning down the post office, cutting the telephone wires, and raising the Puerto Rican flag in defiance of the Gag Law. As a result, the US President declared martial law and ordered Army and Air Force attacks on the town. The Nationalists held on for awhile, but were arrested and sentenced to life in prison after 3 days. Much of Jayuya was destroyed, and the incident was not fairly covered by US media, with the US President even saying it was “an incident between Puerto Ricans.”

Celia Sanchez Most people know Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, but fewer people have heard of Celia Sanchez, the woman at the heart of the Cuban Revolution who has even been rumored to be the main decision-maker. After the March 10, 1952 coup, Celia joined the struggle against the Batista government. She was a founder of the 26th of July Movement, leader of combat squads throughout the revolution, controlled group resources, and even made the arrangements for the Granma landing, which transported 82 fighters from Mexico to Cuba in order to overthrow Batista. After the revolution, Celia remained with Castro until her death.

Kathleen Neal Cleaver Kathleen Neal Cleaver was a member of the Black Panther Party and the first female member of the Party’s decision-making body. She served as spokesperson and press secretary and organized the national campaign to free the Party’s minister of defense, Huey Newton, who had been jailed. She and other women, such as Angela Davis, made up around 2/3 of the Party at one point, despite the notion that the BPP was overwhelmingly masculine.

Asmaa Mahfouz Asmaa Mahfouz is a modern-day revolutionary who is credited with sparking the January 2011 uprising in Egypt through a video blog post encouraging others to join her in protest in Tahrir Square. She is considered one of the leaders of the Egyptian Revolution and is a prominent member of Egypt’s Coalition of the Youth of the Revolution.

These 10 women are but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to female revolutionaries. Let us know who you’d like to see in a list of female revolutionaries.

Source

[adventuretimeconspiracies]

I love mythology, and while watching adventure time I always loved the ice king although i couldnt quite lay my finger on why. And then It hit me. You see in russian mythology there is an immortal ice wizard with a huge beard that kidnaps women to be his bride...

[calvintimmons]

Prince$$ look at this!

[thepeoplesrecord]

A group of Ferguson protesters releases list of demands, calls for national walk out August 25, 2014

A coalition of Ferguson protesters met with reporters Friday to announce a list of demands related to the investigation of the shooting death of Michael Brown and to call for college students to participate in a national “Walk Out” from classes on Monday.

The group says it doesn’t yet have a name, but those involved include members of the Organization for Black Struggle and Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment. Meetings are held at Greater St. Mark’s Missionary Church near Ferguson.

Taurean Russell of St. Louis said this is the first time the group has issued an official statement.

“We are the core, and we’re mostly youth. We have demands, counter demands. Actions if demands are not met,” Russell said.

The list includes:

A swift and impartial investigation by the Department of Justice into the Mike Brown shooting, and expanded DOJ investigation into civil rights violations across North St. Louis County.

The immediate arrest of Officer Darren Wilson

County prosecutor Bob McCulloch to stand down and allow special prosecutor to be appointed.

The firing of Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson.

Accountability for police practices and policies, including effective civilian review of shootings and allegations of misconduct.

The immediate de-escalation of militarized policing of protestors to protect constitutional rights.

The immediate release of individuals who have been arrested while attending a protest.

If demands are not met, Russell said his group would continue to protest. If Officer Wilson is not indicted, Russell says protestors will turn to boycotts and other walk outs.

“We have nothing but time on our hands,” Russell said. “We’re not going to stop until we get justice, not only for Mike Brown. For everybody, until the whole system understands that we’re people, and everyone needs equality.”

Members said they are calling for college students to walk out of their classes on Monday in honor of Michael Brown.

“Back in the ’60s, they were blessed with the pleasure to exercise their rights by sitting in,” said St. Louis rap artist and coalition member Tef Poe. “We want to exercise our rights by calling for a walk out.”

Source Photo

[revolutionarykoolaid]

Michael Brown is being laid to rest today. The family has asked for a day of peace without protest during the funeral proceedings. #staywoke #insolidarity

Watch Live

[thepeoplesrecord]

Rest in power, Mike.

[returnthegayze]

DarkMatter – a queer South Asian artist and activist collaboration — spent the majority of Summer 2013 in Palestine (both the West Bank and ’48). We were hosted by alQaws, a queer Palestinian organization that focuses on cultural and social change around gender and sexuality in the context of the Palestinian liberation struggle. With alQaws, we conducted writing/performance workshops around gender, sexuality, and imperialism, and performed in various cities across West Bank and 48.

The original intention of our trip was to advance broader conversations around the ways in which Western queer solidarity work in Palestine is dominated by white queer bodies and ideologies. We were both concerned by how many queer people of color we organized with in the United States did not have access to an analysis of Palestine, let alone transnational imperialism/colonialism. We trace this to a carefully curated strategy to de-radicalize racial justice in this country by curtailing it as a domestic issue. Thus the racial distribution of solidarity activists is not innocuous but results from the dynamics of white supremacy and imperialism in the state, NGOs, and media

In this first thought piece we want to unpack how white supremacy has influenced solidarity work around Palestine and how that negatively impacts movements for Palestinian liberation. We use white supremacy to signify a form of privilege built from legacies of colonialism, enslavement, genocide, and other acts of terrorism and oppression committed by people with access to whiteness against other peoples. White supremacy includes psychic, cultural, economic, and social supremacy.

We trace the domination of Western queer solidarity work with Palestine by white people to four major roots in the material and social realities of White supremacy:

As a result of (settler-) colonialism and systems of enslavement, white people dominate most material resources and institutions in the West. They frequently have the most access to capital, time, and networks to participate in solidarity work abroad.

White bodies are generally less scrutinized by states, police, and settlers (including Zionist settlers).  They are more easily able to pass through airports and other borders and to be visible without fear of racialized state violence.

The impulse of white people to ‘help’ the foreign Other comes from a long legacy of a colonial mentality. The ‘white savior complex’ is prevalent throughout social sector work, especially global development and NPIC (non profit industrial complex) work.

White folks (and folks with access to various white privileges) frequently displace systems of oppression and power struggles to the non-West, ignoring the struggles—in which they are more materially complicit—in their domestic spaces. We believe North American queer solidarity work with Palestine, for example, is bankrupt without both an analysis of the histories of settler-colonialism and indigenous genocide in North America, and of criminalization and exploitation of black people and people of color through institutions like the prison.

Furthermore, the work that white queer bodies do (by their very presence) is reinforcing the notion that queerness most genuinely ‘belongs’ to Whiteness. This is in the political context of a gay and lesbian movement that increasingly serves the needs of elite white gay men in the West. Over the past decade we’ve also witnessed unprecedented support for a global LGBT rights movement. Several prominent Pride parades have made ‘WORLD PRIDE’ the theme of the week — discussing the rampant homophobia occurring across the world in Uganda, Iran, Vietnam, Russia, etc. The Obama Administration has allocated millions of dollars to the US State Department to fund emerging LGBT social movements abroad. Hilary Clinton declared to the United Nations that “Gay Rights are Human Rights.”

While such support might seem ‘progressive,’ with further scrutiny we realize that a global, homogenous, delocalized gay movement does not serve the needs of most sexual and gender minorities (who are not white, not financially privileged, etc). And actually, such a ‘global gay’ identity further distracts from Western imperialist and racist violence. We saw a connection here between the radical queer people of color activist movements we aligned ourselves with in ‘North America’ and queer Palestinian activism not in our shared oppression but rather our shared resistance to a white supremacist neocolonial agenda. Indeed, such a movement actually serves the interests of the colonizers: in Palestine Israeli settlers on Palestinian land and in North America white and brown settlers on Native American land.

Among Israel’s colonial strategies is ‘pinkwashing’, in which the state of Israel uses gay rights (everything from Prides to advertisements for asylum to gay tourism campaigns) as a distraction from its occupation. The result of the overrepresentation of whiteness in Palestine solidarity work has a few effects on the efficacy of anti-pinkwashing and queer solidarity work:

Pinkwashing is about defining a consolidated queer/gayness as a ‘modern’, ‘progressive’ artifact from the West in comparison to the backwards Rest. The overrepresentation of white US queers in anti-pinkwashing movements perpetuates this narrative.

The colonial impulse to ‘save’ queer Palestine is one that reinscribes the victim narratives about queer Palestinians that actually service pinkwashing.  Further, it makes pinkwashing appear as a single-issue device (that only oppresses queers), where in fact pinkwashing is a tactic of occupation that oppresses all Palestinians, of all genders and sexualities.

Anti-pinkwashing is not a ‘queer issue’; it is an issue of Palestinian liberation. We wanted to envision and practice a transnational queer solidarity that is not dominated by white people, is also not complicit in single-issue politics, and is self-reflexive about the racial and class violences that operate in solidarity activists’ domestic contexts (for us, the United States). The erasure of race and class violence and suppression of race and class warfare by gay rights is not an Israel-only phenomenon. Ultimately, though, the goal is to shift the focus away from white and Israeli settler queer bodies, even as ‘allies’, towards sexual and gender justice for all currently and formerly enslaved and colonized peoples.­

[calvintimmons]

Response from Senator Maria Cantwell

So, Maria Cantwell responded to my e-mail a while ago regarding her support of the Israeli military (yeah, that thing in Gaza is still happening). I also think it's apt in light of the recent public viewing of the militarization of police in Ferguson and the murder of Michael Brown. Now posting it:

Dear Mr. Timmons,

Thank you for contacting me regarding the Middle East peace process. I appreciate hearing from you about these important matters.

On July 30, 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced the resumption of peace negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, representing the first such talks in five years. However, negotiations were put on hold earlier this year because the parties were unable to reach agreement on key issues.

On June 30, 2014, three kidnapped Israeli teenagers were confirmed dead by the Israeli government, which blamed the deaths on Hamas. After the killing of a Palestinian teenager on July 6, 2014, rocket attacks on Israeli population centers were launched from Gaza. The Israeli military responded by launching combat operations in Gaza on July 8, 2014 to destroy tunnels between Gaza and Israel and to stop Hamas rocket attacks. I am deeply saddened by the ongoing violence and the loss of innocent lives especially those of children.

As you may be aware, Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) introduced the Stand with Israel Act (S. 2265) on April 29, 2014. If enacted, this legislation would prohibit aid to the Palestinian Authority until such time as all parties within the Palestinian Authority acknowledge Israel's right to exist, renounce terrorism, purge individuals with terrorist ties from their security services, and other requirements. The Stand with Israel Act has been referred to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where it is currently awaiting further review.

I strongly support a return to the peace process. Ultimately, there must be a two state solution to the Israeli – Palestinian conflict. All people in the region deserve to live without violence. The United States should support efforts to work towards a lasting peace.

Thank you again for contacting me to share your thoughts on this matter. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can be of further assistance.

Sincerely, Maria Cantwell United States Senator