Just Calm Down And Focus You Got This 👌🏾 @latetothepartay21 - Tumblr Blog

alek wek @ chado ralph rucci fw02

“When I started my musical career, I was a maid,” she told the audience. “I used to clean houses. My parents, my mother was a proud janitor. My stepfather, who raised me like his very own, worked at the post office and my father was a trash man — they all wore uniforms. And that’s why I stand here today in my black and white and I wear my uniform to honor them.”

starsona

Yall better not be pretending that Janelle Monae doesn’t fucking exist

toyotakamri

Embracing my biracial backgrounds. Model ig- @toyota_kamri Photog ig- @jemarble

josefadamu

Josef Adamu in Abuja, Nigeria

Learn As You Go! – [shot by David Ogbe] 🇳🇬

aisselectric

sweet and fruity summer mood board

#looks

anxious-black-hottie

https://www.instagram.com/p/BZ2OXLXHZma/

saturnineaqua

just overheard these two black dudes on a bus

one was surprisingly defending black women.

specifically Venus Williams and Eve.

because the other dude was all “ these famous black women just RUN to white men” and the other dude cut him off, pointed out his white girlfriend ( who was on the bus!! lol) and said :

“ black men been running to anything NOT black since forever, and suddenly you’re mad black women are doing the same?even mathematically it fucking makes sense! besides, the only reason you mad is because when black women marry white dudes, they inherit some shit they marry up, but when you and yours get with white girls all you getting is them same apartments in Bushwick you woulda been getting anyway if they weren’t gentrifying-”

i was so sad when i had to get off the bus. dudes silence was wow

jlbi245

THE TEA!!!

blackbeauties

ninfanaiade

thatnigeriankid

Lupita is so damn fine

thequeenbey

Happy Birthday, Blue Ivy Carter — January 7, 2012

thechanelmuse

Inmates in three NY prisons can no longer receive donated books in the mail from family and community groups. They have to buy books from state-approved vendors with a limited selection.

Instead of inmates being able to receive donated books in the mail from family members and community groups, inmates at three New York prisons now have to purchase books selected by six, state-approved vendors. And the selection is limited. And expensive, activists say.

Novels cost $11.25 from one vendor.

A book about chess costs $29.95 from another.

And about a quarter of the titles are coloring books.

According to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, the directive is in an effort to restrict contraband from entering the prison “through a more controlled inmate package program.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office has made the point that inmates still have access to prison libraries, but some say it’s not enough. “The problem with prison libraries is that [the prisons] control who has access to them,” said Amy Peterson with NYC Books Through Bars. “So people who are in solitary confinement don’t have access to prison libraries.”

Peterson’s group has been mailing books to prisoners all over the country for nearly two decades, with a focus on New York. “We get letters from people saying they had to borrow a stamp in order to write to us. So if these people can’t even afford postage, we don’t know how they’re going to be able to afford buying books from a vendor,” she said.

From the NY Daily News:

Over the past several days, inmate advocates pointed out that the vendors combined offered only five romance novels, 14 religious texts, 24 drawing or coloring books, 21 puzzle books, 11 how-to books, one dictionary, and one thesaurus.

“No books that help people learn to overcome addictions or learn how to improve as parents. No Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, Maya Angelou, or other literature that helps people connect with what it means to be human. No texts that help provide skills essential to finding and maintaining work after release from prison. No books about health, about history, about almost anything inside or outside the prison walls,” advocacy group Books Behind Bars complained in a letter to the governor.

enoughtohold

Actions you can take that I’ve found so far:

Sign this petition from the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee

Send postcards to Gov. Cuomo and Acting Prison Commissioner Annucci

Leave a message about it at Gov. Cuomo’s office (you can follow the script from the postcard link): 518-474-8390

If you’re in NY, contact your State Senator and State Assembly Member

Donate to NYC Books Through Bars

Tell your friends and family to do the same!

lagonegirl

Eyricka Morgan, 26, was a black transgender woman. She was a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She was an activist.

Transgender women of color experience disproportionate levels of hate violence compared to other members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, facing challenges and struggles that are uniquely framed by the intersecting nature of their marginalized identity framework.

Nettles’ friends spoke up against this mistreatment. After Eyricka died, we, her friends, had two options: Speak up or remain silent. As cisgender allies we could choose to do our part to ensure Eyricka’s story was shared, or we could do nothing. But true allies are not absent when they are needed most.

http://www.avp.org/storage/documents/ncavp_transhvfactsheet.pdf

Many trans women of color are fighting just to live, and dream of stopping the onslaught of violence in their lives. Among LGBTQ communities, trans people are most susceptible to police violence; trans women in particular are most likely to be killed by hate violence homicides, according to the advocacy organization the Anti-Violence Project.

“Black trans women should never have to live in fear that today will be their last day,” Elle Hearns, a field coordinator at the LGBTQ advocacy organization Get Equal, told AlterNet. “It is a national emergency that we must pay attention to by taking action to support and sustain the lives of trans women who are under attack.”

Trans women of color need us all to listen to their stories when they are alive so that we are not grief-stricken when they are slain. We could all have fewer occasions to shed tears if we followed the lead of trans women of color in the fight to end trans antagonistic violence now. Eyricka, Tamara, Elisha, Shade, Amber, Kandis, Papi, Lamia, Ty, Yazmin, Taja, Penny, Kristina, Keyshia, London, Mercedes, India, K.C. and so many other trans women of color killed deserve more than silence. It takes self-reflection and determined effort to overcome complacency in a society that often treats those who defy rigid cultural norms — like gender nonconforming and transgender people — as unworthy of respect or safety, but it should not have to take a friend’s death to remind us to speak up.

#ProtectBlackTransWomen