1. #RememberingTrayvon. Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, “whose extrajudicial murder sparked a global movement to demand an end to state-sanctioned violence against Black people. Trayvon — who was profiled, stalked, and killed in his neighborhood of Sanford, FL, by vigilante George Zimmerman — is remembered by his family and friends as kind and gentle. Zimmerman’s acquittal and the subsequent police murder of Michael Brown and public uprising in Ferguson, MO, catalyzed the Movement for Black Lives and the Black Lives Matter Global Network.” This post shares links to educational resources and ways that we can continue to help support this movement. In related news, Remember Trayvon?
2. ‘Get Out’ movie controversy? Film called ‘anti-white’ and ‘racist’ by some viewers. I can’t wait to see this film, which has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes — unheard of. When I shared the link to this article on Facebook yesterday, I included the caption: They say “anti-white” like that’s a bad thing. We should all be “anti-white” and if we aren’t we need to investigate what whiteness actually means. In related news, Chance the Rapper hosted a Q&A about the movie.
3. Native Nations Rise, which has all the information you need about the upcoming Native Nations March on Washington, including how to donate.
4. Intro to Body Image Work from Isabel Foxen Duke.
5. How Long You Can Freeze Everything, In One Chart. A very helpful graphic.
6. Google Just Dropped $11,000,000 to Make Sure #BlackLivesMatter.
7. Fluidified. Years ago there was a streaming station called “Beach House Radio” that I loved so much. This YouTube channel totally reminds me of it, playing “chilled, deep and atmospheric electronic music. Genres include chillout, downtempo, garage and others.” In related news, Moby Has Just Released Four Hours Worth Of Free Music Designed For Yoga And Meditation.
8. An entire Manhattan village owned by black people was destroyed to build Central Park.
9. A moment that changed me: lashing out at a man who opened the door for the newly thin me.
10. Losing Alberta: Gentrification in Northeast Portland. A really good short documentary.
11. Stop Using Women And Girls To Justify Transphobia. “The safety of women and girls is at risk, but certainly not because of trans people.” In related news, Transgender 101: A Guide to Gender and Identity to Help You Keep Up with the Conversation.
12. Recipes I want to try: New England Clam Chowder, and 30-Minute Chocolate Donuts (Vegan + GF).
14. Pages Matam performing his poem “Black Joy, Uninterrupted.” Holy wow.
15. This Agency Created an Obstacle Course to Show People What It’s Like to Be ‘Black at Work.’
16. The Rise of Roxane Gay. “A career decades in the making, Gay’s literary stardom looks more sudden than it is.”
17. Day 22 of Investment in Black Lives: The Ferguson Response Network. Michael Moore just launched a website to keep traction of actions happening around the country — problem is, Leslie Mac and the Ferguson Response Network have already been doing the exact same thing for three years now. Black women were already doing the work, and what Michael Moore should have done is: 1. his research, and 2. give the credit where credit is do and direct people to the resource that ALREADY exists instead of building a copy. As Leslie Mac herself said, “research before you build.”
18. Why work doesn’t happen at work, a great TED Talk I recently rewatched. “Jason Fried has a radical theory of working: that the office isn’t a good place to do it. He calls out the two main offenders (call them the M&Ms) [**Spoiler Alert!!!**: managers and meetings] and offers three suggestions to make the workplace actually work.”
19. The only bookstore in the Bronx.
20. 34 Books by Women of Color to Read This Year.
21. To America, written and performed by Danielle Ate the Sandwich, featuring videos submitted from fans across America.
22. This Day in History, a really fun page from The History Channel.
23. Author: ‘Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat.’ An interview with Stephanie Covington Armstrong, author of an important memoir, Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat. I just finished it, and it was so good. As far as I know, this book was the first of its kind: a memoir about disordered eating written by a black woman.
24. Fake News, Misinformation, and Propaganda. A guide from the Harvard University Library, that “offers a brief introduction to the spread of misinformation of all kinds and tools for identifying it, and reading the news with a more informed eye.”
25. Why Donald Trump Doesn’t Understand Black Life.
26. 13 Empowering Photos Show There’s No ‘Right’ Way To Be A Boy.
27. Documentaries about amazing women: Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, and Toni Morrison Remembers, and Alice Walker: Beauty In Truth.
28. Write Unafraid, Without Fear Of Failure from Chuck Wendig. Also from Chuck, The Many-Headed Hydra Of Republican Hypocrisy.
29. School Asks Teachers To Take Down Pro-Diversity Posters, Saying They’re ‘Anti-Trump.’
30. What Ever Happened to all the Old Racist Whites from those Civil Rights Photos?
31. A Town Hall with Constituents but No Senator.
32. A Guide to the Basic Anxiety of Life.
33. When Society Breaks Your Heart from Lodro Rinzler.
All of this is made more precious, not less, by its impermanence. No matter what goes missing, the wallet or the father, the lessons are the same. Disappearance reminds us to notice, transience to cherish, fragility to defend. Loss is a kind of external conscience, urging us to make better use of our finite days. As Whitman knew, our brief crossing is best spent attending to all that we see: honoring what we find noble, denouncing what we cannot abide, recognizing that we are inseparably connected to all of it, including what is not yet upon us, including what is already gone. We are here to keep watch, not to keep.
35. When A Woman Deletes A Man’s Comment Online. “To be able to take issues fundamental to the health and safety of millions of people and turn them into sport where winners and losers are decided by talking points requires some level of insulation from the negative impacts of the outcome in order to enjoy participating.”
36. On Dylann Roof and the Expectation of Black Forgiveness.
This range of emotion — grief, horror, rage, forgiveness given or withheld — ought to be woven into how we tell the story of one of America’s darkest days in living memory. It isn’t only Roof who’s on trial. It’s also America’s sense of itself. We can’t afford to write off this crime as an unfortunate but exceptional incident. History has taught us that this isn’t that — that it’s never been that.
38. Don’t Burn Out or Numb Out: On Pacing Myself for Long-Haul Resistance from the always amazing Jena Schwartz.
39. US Holocaust Museum’s “early warning signs of fascism” sign is going viral.
40. President Trump’s First Month Approval Survey. I will absolutely be filling this out, and you should too.
41. Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, And The Normalization of Slave Rape Narratives.
42. Love for Graeme and Jasmine. These women do good work, and they need some help as they find the next place and way they’ll continue doing that.
43. How Dieting Makes You Gain Weight. “The diet industry doesn’t want you to know it (because it would mess with their bottom line), but scientific research has proven it.” And **Spoiler Alert!!!*** “Chronic dieting actually increases your weight over time.”
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 