In Alabama, three hospitals are preparing to stop delivering babies. Some families (mostly Black) will have to drive 35-100 mi to get to a labor & delivery unit. Why? Because Ob-Gyns are leaving the state as they fear getting arrested for doing their job, which can involve ending a pregnancy to save a woman's life.
Alabama has the highest maternal mortality in the U.S. & the 3rd highest infant mortality. That will go up.
In April 1832, the Mexican government closed a loophole allowing settlers to reclassify their human chattel as indentured servants. This finally outlawed slavery, full stop.
For Stephen Austin, this was the last straw. “Texas must be a slave country,” he wrote a friend, “circumstances and unavoidable necessity compels it.”
The suffragettes burned down a pavilion. They burned down mansions. They killed people.
Unions gave and received a LOT of violence in the process of getting us the weekend and the 40-hr work week.
I want you to remember this the next time someone argues that African-Americans are "undermining their own cause" with violence and/or vandalism at BLM protests.
Should women give the right to vote back because they "undermined their own cause" with violence and vandalism?
Both Tyree Nichols & Breonna Taylor were born 30 years ago today—-June 5, 1993.
They were real life human beings who led vibrant lives and, like all of us, had families and friends who adored them.
This is a reminder of how much we’ve lost. When police officers abuse their power and engage in violent behavior, it undermines ALL of society because the principles of justice, fairness, and equality are fundamental to democratic society.
Today in Labor History October 15, 1966: The Black Panther Party was created by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, in Oakland, California. One of their early core practices was open-carry armed citizen’s patrols monitoring abusive police behavior. They also implemented free breakfast programs and community health clinics, and advocated for revolutionary class struggle. The FBI sabotaged the Panthers through its COINTELPRO and participated in the assassination of Panthers, like Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. In 1969, the Panthers officially declared sexism to be counterrevolutionary and ordered its male members to treat women as equals. In 1970, Huey Newton expressed support for the Women’s Liberation Movement, and the LGBTQ Liberation Movement which, he correctly noted, were subject to much of the same police brutality as were African Americans.
I just wanted to take a moment to remember Ahmaud Arbery, who was murdered 4 years ago today at the age of 25 while simply jogging through a neighborhood in the middle of the afternoon.
His death shook me more than George Floyd, I’m kind of used to the police murdering people. I’m was NOT used to inbred hillbillies murdering people in the middle of the afternoon in residential neighborhoods, and then the police not bothering to arrest them for months.
Today in Labor History October 26, 1892: Ida B. Wells published “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases,” which led to threats against her life, and the burning down of her newspaper’s headquarters in Memphis. Wells, who was born into slavery, was a journalist, educator, feminist, and early Civil Rights leader who helped found the NAACP.
The vast majority of violence around #BLM protests was perpetrated by the same kind of people who stormed the Capitol.
94% of protests in the first year were peaceful, but 26% of those that were counter-protested by RW militias turned violent. And the cops, who did much of the rioting, used force against BLM twice as often as with other peaceful protests.
Hard to have a democracy with a large coalition that's completely untethered to reality. #fascism#propaganda
Most of the violence surrounding #BLM protests was perpetrated by furious RW bigots. Same folks who sacked the Capitol on Jan 6.
"The demonstrations, largely peaceful, continued for weeks, and the number of drivers plowing into protesters multiplied. The New York Times reported in July 2020 that there had been 66 such attacks in the roughly six weeks after the killing of Mr. Floyd."
“Come on — adults know what slavery really involved. It involved rape. It involved torture. It involved taking a baby from their mother. It involved some of the worst examples of depriving people of humanity in our world. How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities, that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?" ~ VP Kamala Harris #BLM#Florida#News#Politics#ElectionsMatter#Education
Current and former prisoners in Alabama filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday arguing that the state’s prison labor system amounts to a “modern-day form of slavery” that violates the U.S. and Alabama constitutions.
The complaint, brought with the support of labor unions, alleges that Alabama profits to the tune of more than $450 million a year through coerced work, and that fast food companies and other private corporations benefit from an unlawful “labor trafficking scheme.”
I grew up in Memphis, TN. When my friends and I were old enough to drive, we loved exploring the decrepit, boarded-up stretch of South Main St. It was like a ghost town then, except for the still-in-use but severely neglected Amtrak train station and the vintage 1950s Arcade Restaurant.
About a block away, at 450 Mulberry St, stood the low-slung Lorraine Motel. The phrase "it had seen better days" was somehow both appropriate and inappropriate. We knew that was the place where the Rev. Martin Luther King had been assassinated.
That balcony. Everyone knew.
We would slow-roll past it and sometimes pause, to stare at that place, that balcony, and imagine the horror.
In 1991, a few years after I moved away, the Lorraine Motel transformed into the National Civil Rights Museum.
If you ever travel to Memphis, make sure to prioritize a visit to this museum. I experienced more emotion in that museum than any other. And I have visited museums throughout the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia, so that's saying something.
Some of the exhibits haunt me to this day. The dark, dog-house-sized replica of the space where a slave sat chained, unable to straighten their body, for months at sea. With the audio. Of the clanking chains and the screams of pain and suffering.
MLK's motel room, preserved in time, just as it was on that day.
The National Civil Rights Museum does it right. It fills you with horror, as it should. For me, that building always did.
Hey there. Just your typical #Liberal#Atheist outdoorsy single dad living in deep red rural Georgia. Love #RetroTech, especially classic #Macintosh. I am owned by a rescue #Cat and do a lot of hiking so expect a lot of cat and nature pics. I am an #LGBTQ and #BLM ally and vehemently anti-fascist. Figured I’d move to beige.party since that’s where all the cool folks seem to hang out. 😂
#BlackLivesMatter tweets vanishing 10 years after hashtag started (www.axios.com)
35% of #BlackLivesMatter tweets created between 2013 and 2021 are no longer available on Twitter, report finds.