The Urban School

A blog run by The Urban School of San Francisco's Multicultural leadership team

[wethoneydew]

Microaggressions & messages

[wisekelp]

[weasleyolivia]

[ICE Alert]

[Alert]–ICE may be engaging in raids next week (starting July 13) in certain “sanctuary” cities (a sanctuary refers to a city that has established policies prohibiting police officers from enforcing certain federal deportation initiatives, such as immigration raids or reporting arrests to ICE) Cities include- Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco ( see complete list below).

Please share and tell communities to be extra cautious next week. In particular, remind the community that they have rights:

1.Do NOT open doors to any officials unless they have a warrant signed by a judge. If ICE says that they have one, do not open the door to see it, have them pass it under the door.

2. If you are confronted with an ICE agent – remain SILENT. You have the right to remain silent and ICE can use anything that you say against you in your immigration case.

3. do NOT SIGN anything that ICE gives you.

4.If you hear about ICE agents coming to anyone’s door – tell your neighbors. Text and call people to let them know that ICE is in the neighborhood. Tell them not to open their doors and to remain silent.

5.Have a plan of action if a loved one is detained. Have the name of a trusted immigration attorney on hand. Have a plan for who could take care of minor children.

6.Remember that if detained, you may be able to fight your case and get bail.

7.Be especially careful in the morning. In our experience, raids happen more frequently in the morning, e.g. around the time that people go to work.

8.If you have the ILRC red cards, distribute and remind people to use them. ILRC red cards list constitution rights when confronted by ICE agents. http://www.ilrc.org/for-immigrants-para…/red-cards

9. Reach out to community for support

The following is a loose list of cities which have identified in the past as “sanctuaries”, and could be affected:

Bell Gardens, California Berkeley, California City of Industry, California City of Commerce, California Coachella, California Concord, California Cypress, California Davis, California Diamond Bar, California Downey, California Fresno, California Lakewood, California Long Beach, California Los Angeles, California Lynwood, California Maywood, California Montebello, California National City, California Norwalk, California Oakland, California Paramount, California Pico Rivera, California Salinas, California San Bernardino California San Diego, California San Francisco, California San Jose, California Santa Cruz, California Sonoma County, California South Gate, California Vernon, California Watsonville, California Wilmington,

*for folks who havent heard* this case with an undocumented man who shot and killed a white women led to the debate around sanctuary cities and the Trust Act which is suppose to eliminate communication with ICE and local enforcement. Presidential candidates are now having conversations around the (un)safety of undocumented community. 

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/07/us/san-francisco-killing/

[urbanmulticulti-blog]

BOOST

[avianawareness]

(via The Pencilsword: On a plate - The Wireless)

This is amazing.

[ikaricrossinglines]

astoundingly real

[paperandinklings]

[mooseblogtimes]

Black people killed by police in 2015 Bernard Moore 62 Lavall Hall 25 Jonathan Ryan Paul 42 Jamie Croom 31 Terry Garnett Jr. 37 Monique Jenee Deckard 43 Tony Terrell Robinson Jr. 19 Tyrone Ryerson Lawrence 45 Naeschylus Vinzant 37 Andrew Anthony Williams 48 Dewayne Deshawn Ward Jr. 29 Ledarius Williams 23 Yvette Henderson 38 Edward Donnell Bright, Sr. 56 Thomas Allen Jr. 34 Charley Leundeu Keunang, “Africa” 43 Fednel Rhinvil 25 Shaquille C. Barrow 20 Kendre Omari Alston 16 Brandon Jones 18 Darrell “Hubbard” Gatewood 47 Cornelius J. Parker 28 Ian Sherrod 40 Jermonte Fletcher 33 Darin Hutchins 26 Glenn C. Lewis 37 Calvon A. Reid 39 Tiano Meton 25 Demaris Turner 29 Isaac Holmes 19 A’Donte Washington 16 Terry Price 41 Stanley Lamar Grant 38 Askari Roberts 35 Dewayne Carr 42 Terrance Moxley 29 Theodore Johnson 64 Cedrick Lamont Bishop 30 Anthony Hill 27 Terence D. Walke 21 Janisha Fonville 20 Phillip Watkins 23 Anthony Bess 49 Desmond Luster, Sr. 45 James Howard Allen 74 Natasha McKenna 37 Herbert Hill 26 Markell Atkins 36 Kavonda Earl Payton 39 Rodney Walker 23 Donte Sowell 27 Mario A. Jordan 34 Artago Damon Howard 36 Andre Larone Murphy Sr. 42 Marcus Ryan Golden 24 Brian Pickett 26 Hashim Hanif Ibn Abdul-Rasheed 41 Ronald Sneed 31 Leslie Sapp III 47 Matthew Ajibade 22

Black people killed by police in 2014 Kevin Davis, 44 Eric Tyrone Forbes, 28 Jerame C. Reid, 36 David Andre Scott, 28 Quentin Smith, 23 Terrence Gilbert, 25 Carlton Wayne Smith, 20 Gregory Marcus Gray, 33 Antonio Martin, 18 Tyrone Davis, 43 Xavier McDonald, 16 Brandon Tate-Brown, 26 Dennis Grisgby, 35 Michael D. Sulton, 23 Thurrell Jowers, 22 Travis Faison, 24 Calvin Peters, 49 Christopher Bernard Doss, 41 Jerry Nowlin, 39 William Mark Jones, 50 Rumain Brisbon, 34 Lincoln Price, 24 Eric Ricks, 30 Leonardo Marquette Little, 33 Tamir E. Rice, 12 Akai Gurley, 28 Myron De’Shawn May, 39 Keara Crowder, 29 Tanisha N. Anderson, 37 Darnell Dayron Stafford, 31 David Yearby, 27 Aura Rosser, 40 Carlos Davenport, 51 Cinque DJahspora, 20 Rauphael Thomas, 29 Christopher M. Anderson, 27 Charles Emmett Logan, 68 John T. Wilson, III, 22 Christopher Mason McCray, 17 Kaldrick Donald, 24 Zale Thompson, 32 Terrell Lucas, 22 Ronnie D. McNary, 44 Adam Ardett Madison, 28 Balantine Mbegbu, 65 Elisha Glass, 20 Qusean Whitten, 18 Vonderrit Myers Jr., 18 O’Shaine Evans, 26 Latandra Ellington, 36 Aljarreau Cross, 29 Iretha Lilly, 37 Lashano J. Gilbert, 31 Miguel Benton, 19 Eugene Williams, 38 Tracy A. Wade, 39 Javonta Darden, 20 Marlon S. Woodstock, 38 Oliver Jarrod Gregoire, 26 Nolan Anderson, 50 Cameron Tillman, 14 John Jolly Jr., 28 Charles Smith, 29 Michael Willis Jr., 42 Briant Paula, 26 Kashad Ashford, 23 Carrey Brown, 26 Ceasar Adams, 36 Ricky Deangelo Hinkle, 47 Elijah Jackson, 33 Darrien Nathaniel Hunt, 22 Shawn Brown, 20 Alphonse Edward Perkins, 50 Naim Owens, 22 Kendrick Brown, 35 Eugene N. Turner III, 28 Ronald Singleton, 45 Jeremy Lewis, 33 Vernicia Woodward, 26 Cortez Washington, 32 Steven Lashone Douglas, 29 Desean Pittman, 20 Roshad McIntosh, 18 Anthony Lamar Brown, 39 Arvel Douglas Williams, 30 Darius Cole-Garrit, 21 Kajieme Powell, 25 David Ellis, 29 Luther Lathron Walker, 38 Andre Maurice Jones, 37 Frederick R. Miller, 38 Michelle Cusseaux, 50 Dante Parker, 36 Corey Levert Tanner, 24 Ezell Ford, 25 Robert Baltimore, 34 Dustin Keith Glover, 27 Eddie Davis, 67 Michael Brown, Jr., 18 Michael Laray Dozer, 26 John Crawford III, 22 Daniel Row, 37 Jacorey Calhoun, 23 Anthony Callaway, 27 Patrick Small, 27 Harrison Carter, 29 Vamond Arqui Elmore, 37 Donovan Bayton, 54 Charles Leon Johnson, II, 29 Briatay McDuffie, 19 Jonathan L. Williams, 25 Eric Garner, 43 Dominique Charon Lewis, 23 Michael Reams, 47 Lawrence Campbell, 27 Kenny Clinton Walker, 23 Tyshawn Hancock, 37 Charles Goodridge, 53 Cedric Stanley, 35 Ennis Labaux, 37 Warren Robinson, 16 Christopher Jones, 30 Icarus Randolph, 26 Jacqueline Nichols, 64 Jerry Dwight Brown, 41 Nyocomus Garnett, 35 Rodney Hodge, 33 Paul Ray Kemp Jr., 40 Dennis Hicks, 29 Samuel Johnson, 45 Lavon King, 20 Antoine Dominique Hunter, 24 Samuel Shields, 49 Juan May, 45 Denzell Curnell, 19 Ismael Sadiq, 30 Devaron Ricardo Wilburn, 21 John Schneider, 24 Jason Harrison, 38 Frank Rhodes, 61 Roylee Vell Dixon, 48 Broderick Johnson, 21 David Latham, 35 Lonnie Flemming, 31 Steven Thompson, 26 Thomas Dewitt Johnson, 28 Frank McQueen, 34 Sandy Jamel McCall, 33 Quintico Goolsby, 36 Dominique Franklin, Jr., 23 George V. King, 19 James Renee White Jr., 21 Devante Kyshon Hinds, 21 Pearlie Golden, 93 Jerome Dexter Christmas, 44 Armand Martin, 50 Dontre H. Hamilton, 31 Joe Huff, 86 Emmanuel Wooten Matthew Walker, 55 Daniel Christoph Yealu, 29 Adrian Williams, 29 Gregory Towns, 24 Jameel Kareem Ofurum Harrison, 34 Zikarious Jaquan Flint, 20 Raason Shaw, 20 DeAndre Lloyd Starks, 27 Douglas Cooper, 18 Winfield Carlton Fisher III, 32 Deosaran Maharaj, 51 Daniel Martin, 47 Emerson Clayton Jr., 21 Rebecca Lynn Oliver, 24 Treon “Tree” Johnson, 27 Gabriella Monique Nevarez, 22 Marquise Jones, 23 Kenneth Christopher Lucas, 38 Keith Atkinson, 31 Yvette Smith, 45 D’Andre Berghardt Jr., 20 Stephon Averyhart, 27 Anthony Bartley, 21 Earnest Satterwhite, Sr., 68 Anneson Joseph, 28 Alton Reaves, 31 McKenzie Cochran, 25 Cornelius Turner, 19 Eldrin Loren Smart, 31 Henry Jackson, 19 Jordan Baker, 26 Gregory Vaughn Hill Jr., 30 Paul Smith, 58 Jeffrey Ragland, 50 Kendall Alexander, 34

And that`s not all, and there will be more, i guess….

[chillvibesandnaturalhighs]

This has my heart beating so fast

[youwish-youcould-deactivated201]

Look at this fucking list

[milas-universe]

If you guys could please donate and/or share this to help this woman out. She lost her eye, her job and her home during the protests in Ferguson and just gave birth to a baby girl. Let’s take some of the burden off of her? Just reblogging could make a world of difference. I’ve seen it happen.

https://life.indiegogo.com/fundraisers/1334314

[blackness-by-your-side]

Detroit Cops Killed Two Black Children

On Wednesday Detroit Police car has casually rammed into multiple children during the pursuit. Patrol car refused to stop and continued the chase. Two kids were killed, they were - Michaelangelo Jackson and his sister Makiah, ages 6 and 3. They and the rest kids were playing in front of the house when the cars appeared nearby and plowed them. I understand that chase of criminals on cars must be very hard work, but cops should be professionals! How could they just keep chasing the criminal after runover into the children? That’s an example of criminal negligence! True bastards.

full story

[theloneookami]

What in gods name?!? I’m fucking livid these are children!

[scandalbayoubeauty]

My heavens….

[deeperthots]

This weekend, activists in Uganda - a country where homosexuality is punishable by death - held their first Pride. 

This is the epitome of courage. I have no other words. 

[stayingwoke]

Five black churches were set on fire this past week. #staywoke

June 22 - College Hills Seventh Day Adventist Church, Knoxville, Tenn.

June 23 - God’s Power Church of Christ in Macon, Ga.

June 24 - Briar Creek Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C

June 24 - Fruitland Presbyterian Church, in Gibson County, Ten (waiting for the fire investigation to rule this fire as arson)

June 26 - Glover Grover Baptist Church, in Warrenville, S.C

June 26 - The Greater Miracle Apostolic Holiness Church in Tallahassee, Fla.

[michaellapratts-deactivated2016]

[urbanmulticulti-blog]

In today’s episode of white people denying the realities of poc actresses - and even cutting them off in the process - queen of everything Viola Davis handles the situation perfectly. x

[creativeactionnetwork]

Another beautiful tribute from Nikkolas Smith. #Charleston9 #WeAreOne

[shesyonkers]

🙏🏾

[fiercetransgirls]

Lebanon Just Did a Whole Lot More Than Legalize Being Gay

LGBTQ rights supporters rejoiced on Thursday with news that homosexuality is no longer illegal in Lebanon. A court ruling abolished a case against an unnamed transwoman – accused of having a “same sex relationship with a man” – stating that homosexuality can no longer be considered a crime because it is “not unnatural.” Lebanese law …

trans woman helps decriminalize homosexuality in Lebanon

let’s not forget about the trans contribution to gay rights!

[buttastic]

this case didn’t just legalize homosexuality it also officially recognized gender variance and self-identification

[pipistrellus]

:D !!!

[aci25]

Why U.S. Latinos Need To Get Loud About The Dominican Republic

Antiblackness runs deep in the Latino community. We can’t afford to let it go unnoticed.

As the Dominican Republic begins what has been called a “vicious, slow-motion pogrom” on black Dominicans and Dominicans of Haitian descent — stripping them of their citizenship and rounding them up for deportation en masse — I think of writer Gloria Anzaldúa’s words about living in the shadow of a border that crosses identities and shatters lives: “you are the battleground / where enemies are kin to each other; / you are at home, a stranger.”

These are still days of conceptual lines that become political lines, which are then militarized: the lines across which battles of life and death play out, now in slow motion, suddenly faster than a bullet. These lines crisscross our geographies and identities; they are both porous and razor-sharp, always unforgiving.

The Dominican government’s fear of blackness dates back to its Spanish colonizers and became a matter of policy under the dictator Rafael Trujillo, who murdered tens of thousands of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic in 1937 and displaced hundreds of thousands more. Anti-Haitian sentiment became a rallying cry for some Dominican nationalists, a way to distinguish the supposedly more “European” Dominicans from their Haitian neighbors. That prejudice survived Trujillo’s genocide, however, and is now manifesting in the revocation of citizenship from anyone deemed by the state to be of Haitian ancestry, which translates to anyone viewed as black. As mass detention centers are set up, antiblack mob violence has been on the rise, including beatings, burnings, and lynchings. And since history does indeed rhyme, we must see these actions for what they have always historically been: the run-up to a massacre.

As I write, government buses are taking to the streets of Santo Domingo to detain and deport black Dominicans. With 1.5 million residents in the U.S., Dominicans make up the fifth largest Latino population in the country and the largest immigrant group in New York state. But some Latino news sites were slower even than mainstream outlets to acknowledge the ongoing crisis facing hundreds of thousands of Dominicans. And while a few Latino writers have spoken out (notably Junot Díaz and Julia Alvarez), Latino celebrities have for the most part remained entirely silent.

Sadly, we can’t be surprised by this silence. Antiblackness has run deep in the Latino community as long as there’s been a Latino community. Much like the wider American mythology of a glorious melting pot, we love waxing faux-etic about the multilayered fabric of our identity: We are a tapestry; we are a taco, a mofongo, a paella — so many flavors! In truth, we are a shattered family, a house deeply divided by white supremacy and colorism. It’s as true in Latin America — yes, even Cuba — as it is in the United States.

Watching the news can make you feel like racism against blacks worldwide is on the rise, but what we’re really seeing is the hard work of dedicated activists demanding that the world pay attention, often for the first time, to ongoing legacies of police violence, cultural appropriation, mass displacement. There is nothing new about state violence against black life. And these are truths we all need to address directly in order to heal and move forward.

Meanwhile, we’re still stuck saying “black and Latino” as if they are mutually exclusive categories. Almost every facet of Latino culture that has exploded as a global pop culture phenomenon — from tango to mambo, cha cha cha, and salsa to bachata and reggaeton — has been rooted in black culture, even if the faces we associate with them aren’t usually black ones.

In the white mainstream imagination, the default setting for Latinos is white/light brown, a comfortable, neither-here-nor-there exotic that allows the diversity box to be checked without the perceived threat of blackness. Panel after panel of Latinos in the Media, Latinos in Literature, Latinos in Lo Que Sea come and go with nary a black face in the mix. This is why I have learned to be explicit with publishers about what characters look like, from skin color to hair: If I don’t, history has proven that they will be whitewashed or lightwashed in the name of appearing more “universal,” a word that we have rendered meaningless from so much misuse in the justification of ongoing Eurocentricism.

For those of us who are Latino and not black: What progress we have made within this nation, which was not built for us, comes in part because we are benefactors of a system that has kept our black brothers and sisters down. It’s for us to own that. In this broken world — where the cliché of rugged individualism pervades our notion of success, survival, and humanity — privilege is a finite resource. Today as yesterday, the system determines our worth by our proximity to whiteness. Our complicity in this ongoing American horror story is not a point to become paralyzed with guilt over; guilt leads to silence, and silence is what got us here. But it is a rallying point, a reason to be brave, outrageous, and humble, as we move forward into the uncertainty of what’s to come.

“We must fight for your life as though it were our own—which it is,” James Baldwin wrote to Angela Davis as she awaited trial, “and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.” Indeed, the legislation that the Dominican state is today inflicting on its own people is not such a far cry from some of the Republican immigration “solutions.” They are not one and the same, and they are both different from the specific struggle Baldwin speaks of here. The differences matter, as do the connections. We cannot scream for justice here while allowing injustice to be carried out in our name, by the complicity of our silence, elsewhere.

Across the country, Latino artists are making strides and letting our voices be heard. We are loud and unapologetically us, and I love us. And amid this renaissance, we must also be unapologetically honest about who we really are, who we have been, how we have broken, and how we can heal. Flavia Dzodan once wrote: “My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.” I’ll close with a respectful remix of this truism: My Latin pride will be rooted in the unequivocal truth that Black Lives Matter, or it will be bullshit.

Article by: Daniel José Older from BuzzFeed.com

[justice4mikebrown]

On the early morning of June 27, activists in South Carolina gathered to take down the confederate flag flying above the Capitol before the funerals for 3 of the victims of the Charleston massacre begin. There is also supposed to be a “defend the flag” action later today.

A black woman identified as Bree climbed the flag pole and took the flag down herself. She was arrested shortly after climbing back down with the flag.

Check fergusonaction on twitter for more updates.

[beyond-the-label]

#Blackout Trans Pioneer: Marsha P. Johnson

An influential transgender gay rights activist (1944 – 1992). One of my eternal sheroes. She played a major role in the “Gay” Rights Movement early on and was highly involved with the Stonewall Riots. For decades her work has been talked over and erased, but she lives on in many a young queer heart! <3

Read more about her here.

[commongayboy-deactivated2018082]

Mexico legalized same sex marriage too! #LoveWins