as the dash moves back to normal, please don’t let this be the end of your activism. this wasn’t just a trend, these are real lives. continue to further your understanding, get educated, listen to black people, and be an active ally.
here you can find donation links, petitions, how to educate yourself, etc.
if you can afford to donate:
official george floyd memorial fund here
minnesota freedom fund here
stephen lawrence charitable trust here
the NAACP legal defense fund here
black lives matter here
petitions you can sign:
justice for george floyd here, here & here
get the officers charged here
reclaim the block — minneapolis here
justice for breonna taylor here, here & here
justice for ahmaud arbery here, here & here
pass the georgia hate crime bill here
**if you are international and aren’t able to sign, here are some zip codes to use:
90015 — los angeles, california
10001 — new york city, new york
75001 — dallas, texas
text or call:
text “JUSTICE” 688366
text “FLOYD” to 55156
get in contact with the district attorney and minneapolis mayor. leave a message demanding that 4 officers including derek chauvin (badge #1087) and tou thao (badge #7162) be arrested for the murder of george floyd.
minneapolis mayor’s office, jacob frey: (612) 673-2100
minneapolis district attorney, mike freeman: (612) 348-5550 OR [email protected]
minneapolis PD emails: [email protected][email protected][email protected]
you can find the email template here
breonna taylor was murdered in her sleep by policemen (jonathan mattingly, brett hankison and myles cosgrove) who raided the wrong house and shot her 8 times. call the louisville mayor’s office and police department to demand that the police be fired and charged.
louisville mayor’s office, greg fischer: (502) 574-2003
louisville metro police department: (502) 574-7111
undercover cop, jacob pedersen of the st. paul PD was seen smashing windows as the catalyst to many of the riots that occurred in minneapolis. email the st. paul PD and report his actions.
st. paul PD email: [email protected]
proof of smashing windows here
proof it was pedersen here
want to learn more?
i strongly recommend the book “Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race” by reni eddo-lodge. you can find an extract here.
list of resources:
black lives matter google doc here
black lives matter carrd here
elle osili-wood on twitter here
description: You had always figured that this was your future. It was something out of a fairy tale. They said absence only makes the heart grow fonder. You call bullshit.
You’d always hated the cold. It was miserable and seemed to seep in through all the cracks, through the stitching of your clothes and underneath your bedroom door. As winter approaches, all the once blooming flowers in your front garden begin to wither, with petals falling from the dying stem. You thought it fitting. You could never understand the people who revered the coldest months - preferring to hibernate until the sun decided to show itself again. He had tried to change that - you remembered countless days where he had taken you by the hand and dragged you out from your warm cocoon of blankets and to a public park, where the trees glistened against the cool air , strung up with fairy lights in every possible colour you could imagine.
You spent hours there on those days, sitting on the damp grass with your head on his shoulder, singing softly along to a song only the two of you knew. There was never a good melody, and to anyone else it sounded off-key and pitchy, but to you it was perfect. It was heaven. He was an angel to you. You remembered how the yellow glow lit up the dark sky and you found yourself wondering how on earth you managed to deserve someone like him.
Those were the times that you didn't truly ‘hate’ winter. His smile just seemed to chase away the bitter cold and warmed you up from the inside, like your very own personal sun. Those were the best days, because you always woke up to a vice-grip around your waist with legs intertwined, hair in your mouth and a ridiculous number of blankets piled on top of you both. You fought gently against the limbs that caged you tightly to a warm chest - freeing yourself only after replacing your body with a pillow that had been banished to the floor during the course of the night. The cool flooring nipped at your bare feet as you sleepily shuffled to the kitchen, and tried your level best to quietly maneuver the cocoa powder from its hiding place at the back of the cupboard. Strong arms would always envelope your frame, and a gentle kiss would be pressed to the crown of your head in lieu of a verbal greeting. These were the hours you treasured - before Felix had to leave the peaceful environment you shared and left to spend another day in the studio, creating masterpieces to be seen by one or two at most. However, he seemed to take the warmth with him, for as he left the building, all the cold air seemed to take advantage of your vulnerable state and come rushing back in.
Now, you were sitting on a park bench. In the cold.
This time however, you welcomed the frigid air gladly, thankful for the icy fingertips that crawled up your arms and into your body. It helped to distract from the small pains in your chest - your icy fingertips tracing small swirls in the early morning frost that had settled on the arms of the old wooden bench.
You didn't know when it had started.
You had no idea when your honeymoon-like reality, your golden mornings and loving smiles turned to brief and infrequent sidehugs before a mad dash out the door - when the nights became longer and colder without him by your side to keep you warm.
When those eyes that once sparkled like stars held dark bags underneath them, when the once soft, fluffy hair that you used to toy with and run your hands through on a lazy afternoon became sparser - having been tugged out by the very hands that had once comforted you in the dark of night during a thunderstorm. Felix had taken it upon himself to cover the two of you with a blanket and made you watch the most cringe-worthy shows he could find on Netflix until the last clap of thunder had passed. You had not complained.
Now your apartment was empty when you returned home - nose red from the bitter cold and eyes for another reason - there was no one there to scold you for foregoing a coat, nor hug you softly and rock you side to side as you cried. So, you canted yourself towards the floor, and stumbled over your own limbs as the near empty bottle of alcohol slipped from your numb fingertips. The liquid sloshed out of the narrow bottleneck and onto the floor.
Any other day, you would have panicked and wondered if it would leave a stain on the wooden floor, but at that moment, you couldn't bring yourself to care. It seemed, when Felix had left that morning, he had taken with him your last shred of sanity. For now, all that was left was a broken shell and dull eyes, a red nose and numb hands from the cold. You really did hate the cold. All the blankets had vanished from the bed.
It seemed Felix was hellbent on prolonging your suffering.
He spoke about how you two had drifted apart. That you weren't putting in as much effort to the relationship as he was, that he didn't want to have something so wonderful with a person who wasn't invested for the long run. He spoke about how the video chats became less frequent and phone calls became shorter and the texts became harsher and more formal. The relationship felt clinical, he said.
After he left, you scoured your messages. You discovered subtle differences that you originally hadn’t, or didn't want to before. Punctuation, spelling mistakes going unnoticed and unmocked. It started to read like bad fanfiction, too much emotion or not enough. The conversations read like they were forced, two incompatible characters that never should have been paired together in the first place.
He had been away on tour.
You never realized what the end impact would be as you sent him out the door with a smile that day. He was going to fulfill his dreams with the eight bodies you had grown so fond of and watched grow. You never realized how you did not fit into his future, an extra puzzle piece that added nothing to the final picture. A laugh on your lips, a crease at the corner of your eyes and a few tears were the only words needed as you shared a small, sweet kiss goodbye, before he moved away. He stopped only to wave one more time, before he turned his back on you for the last time. You couldn't have been more proud.
That was a different pain in your chest. It was the emotion of loving someone too much, too fast and altogether at once - not enough. You felt the emotions of a thousand years sitting on your lungs, and yet you smiled because you could feel the love and the happiness engulfing you. This was your paradise. He was your paradise. Felix was your paradise. You guessed you weren't his.
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. You call bullshit.
germansingergirl
titsay
gummygunk
janainaart
dailybridgerton
origamiaround
jacobvanloon
theartofmadeline
snowghoul
