US: Philadelphia Mayor to sign landmark LGBT protection bill into law -
“The Mayor of the US city of Philadelphia is to sign a city-wide ordinance offering protections, and benefits for LGBT citizens into law, in a ceremony on Thursday.”Go read the whole article
It’s not just focusing on gay and lesbian partnership rights anymore
I mean look at this
“It will make city forms gender neutral, and makes it easier for transgender residents to request gender markers on some records, and name changes. Gender-neutral bathrooms are also required in city-controlled buildings, as well as access to buildings based on gender identity.
“Healthcare discrimination against non-union transgender city employees will also be banned, and the legislation ensures that employees in Philadelphia will be able to dress in accordance with their gender identity.”
No one’s ever cared before and now it is just like “here is a windfall of unexpectedly amazing things now go live your life in happiness”
Way to go Philly!
WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THIS.
GET ‘EM, MIKE!
love this
and i like and appreciate that the discourse is changing from the dismissive “idc who somebody sleeps with” to a whole gang of aspects of life discriminated against/made harder by one’s sexuality/gender
(via panasonicyouth)
[video]
FBI to add Assata Shakur to Most Wanted Terrorist List; Doubles reward for her capture to $2 million
May 2, 2013Forty years ago today, the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper led to the imprisonment and conviction of Black Panther Party member & revolutionary Assata Shakur.
Assata currently lives in exile in Cuba.
To commemorate this “anniversary,” the FBI will announce today that Assata Shakur has been added to the Most Wanted Terrorist List; and that reward for her capture has doubled, from $1 million to $2 million.
Why the Assata Shakur case still strikes a chord
Published in 1987, the autobiography chronicles Shakur’s emergence as an activist at the center of America’s racial conflict. She ultimately affiliated with the Black Panther Party and the black liberation movement in the 1960s. Her case and her bouts with the criminal justice system recall all of the angst and murkiness within which the battles for black freedom were fought in the mid-20th century: brutal prison conditions, falsified evidence, conflicting statements, frenzied media panic, and violent racists posing as officers of the law.
In spite of these at times unlawful and regularly dehumanizing experiences, Assata Shakur has been living in exile with asylum in Cuba since 1984.
‘She Who Struggles’
Assata – whose name means “she who struggles,” was implicated in the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper on May 2 1973. Today marks 40 years since that day.
While little detail is available as to how Ms. Shakur was ferreted away to freedom from the maximum security wing of the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey in 1979, the “facts” of her case, or rather, the state’s case against her are shaky at best. By her supporters’ accounts they are institutionally designed to falsely prosecute and imprison her.
For more info on her case and details of her experiences go here.
As recently as 2005, the U.S. government issued a one million dollar bounty for information leading to her capture and/or extradition from Cuba. Her name, as well as her government name, Joanne Chesimard, has been on the FBI’s most wanted list since before most Americans had ever heard of Osama Bin Laden.
’20th Century Escaped Slave’
Assata refers to herself as “a 20th century escaped slave” and her experiences with the criminal justice system and the verve with which the U.S. government prosecuted and persecuted her suggest that this reference is not exaggerated in the slightest.
She has occasionally given interviews and or written from somewhere inside of Cuba, but it is unlikely that our government will ever be able to come to terms with its own role in the violent racial conflicts of its immediate past, and thus unlikely that Assata will ever be able to live freely in her country of origin – these United States.
Assata’s status, the government’s case against, her and the moment out which all of this emerged, are signal reminders to many of us that not so long ago, members of the Black Panther Party were considered the greatest threat to the United States government; that revolutionary activists like Assata Shakur, were considered this nation’s most feared terrorists.
We can only hope that as the fight against terror creeps through the beginnings of a new century, that this nation will fight to uphold the tenets of justice above and beyond its xenophobic and racialized history.
Here is a free e-book version of Assata’s autobiography. Read & share this with everyone you know. Everyone should know Assata’s story & about her struggle.
(via panasonicyouth)
(Source: coolnessgraphed, via zaclittle)
Manga Therapy: Down in the Dumps of Happiness -
If there’s one mantra that’s always told to everyone, it’s that money can’t buy happiness. There is some truth to all of this. An interesting article I read at World of Psychology focused on garbage pickers who are very optimistic about life despite their living standards. Folks who go…
[video]
Power Structure of Oppression
TP deniers, if they’re smart enough to live in a general state of reality, will tend to concede that fat people experience the bottom level.
They absolutely refuse to believe that a vast majority of fat people experience level 2, 3 or 4.
And of course, that vast majority knows the truth, whether thin people choose to acknowledge it or not.
(Source: mycypherkeepsmoving, via writingfail)
[video]
why would you even drop acid? people are gonna slip on it and hurt themselves!
only drop the acid if you can neutralize it by dropping the base
(via vincentvangodot)