I usually leave my video love for the end of these posts, but it’s been a rough week for womankind. We could all use some some serious Awesome in our lives. Enter Sonya Renee at the 2006 Individual World Poetry Slam Finals:
Larry Whiten, a New Mexico hotel owner has forbidden his employees from speaking Spanish (because they might be talking about him behind his back). He also went a step further and made several employees Anglicize their names…
“…for the satisfaction of my guests, because people calling from all over America don’t know the Spanish accents or the Spanish culture or Spanish anything.”
But don’t worry. “It has nothing to do with racism.”
The citations were issued in several different patrol divisions by at least six different officers. One of those officers was responsible for five of the citations, Kunkle said.
The case that led to the discovery of all the others occurred Oct. 2, when Ernestina Mondragon was stopped for making an illegal U-turn in the White Rock area. Rookie Officer Gary Bromley cited Mondragon for three violations: disregarding a traffic control device, failure to present a driver’s license and “non-English speaking driver.”
In that case and perhaps the others, officials said, the officer was confused by a pull-down menu on his in-car computer that listed the charge as an option. But the law the computer referred to is a federal statute regarding commercial drivers that Kunkle said his department does not enforce.
As [the unidentified Latino man] approached the intersection of Division and West Avenues, three white teens hanging out in a nearby parking lot called out to him. Seconds later he was struck in the face, knocked to the ground, and as the teens shouted racial slurs, robbed of cash and other personal items. …. Just another case of “beaner hopping” in Long Island’s Suffolk County.
SAN ANTONIO — The highest-ranking criminal judge in Texas, the woman who presides over the most active execution chamber in the country, sat at a defense table on Monday to face charges of intentionally denying a condemned man access to the legal system.
“To have César Chávez listed next to Ben Franklin” – as in the current standards – “is ludicrous,” wrote evangelical minister Peter Marshall, one of six experts advising the state as it develops new curriculum standards for social studies classes and textbooks. David Barton, president of Aledo-based WallBuilders, said in his review that Chávez, a Hispanic labor leader, “lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others.”
Marshall also questioned whether Thurgood Marshall, who argued the landmark case that resulted in school desegregation and was the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice, should be presented to Texas students as an important historical figure. He wrote that the late justice is “not a strong enough example” of such a figure.
Dwight DeLee was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter for the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Lateisha Green outside the Syracuse party in November because of anti-gay bias. He becomes just the second person in the U.S. convicted of a hate crime that involved the death of a transgender victim. [...]
“We’ve spent months waiting for this day to come,” said Elliot Green, an uncle who spoke on behalf of the victim’s family. “The jury made it clear that any loss of life in this country because of transgender or anti-gay bias is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”
Remember Chrissie Brodigan, the woman who was allegedly assaulted by a NYPD officer who said, “If you’re going to act like a woman I’m going to treat you like a woman”? Well, it looks like allegations of anti-Semitic comments during the incident has resulted in her getting fired.
The New York Post “revealed” a witness (very shortly after Gothamist broke the story) who claims she saw Brodigan yell at Officer Witriol, the city’s first Hasidic officer, “You f—ing Jew, you’re not even human. Jewish people think they own everything.” But Brodigan claims (as do other witnesses) that she said nothing of the sort, yet was fired from her job at Plum TV shortly thereafter. Brodigan says:
I was terminated for “equivocating” in the press. My boss [Chris Glowacki] is threatening to not offer an agreeable severance package, including health insurance, which is crucial because i have cystic fibrosis and he is aware. He’s angry that this is out in the press. I think he made a judgment based on perceived bigotry.
Bolivian President Evo Morales has signed the world’s first law prohibiting the use of both wild and domestic animals in traveling circuses.
This is the first national law to ban the use of both domestic and wild animals in circuses. To date, Croatia, Singapore, Austria, Israel and Costa Rica have all banned wild animals in circuses. Similar bans on animal use in traveling circuses in Costa Rica, Finland and Denmark only prohibit the use of wild animals or certain species.
“I heard this lady, she was like, ‘Uh, what are all these black kids doing here?’ She’s like, ‘I’m scared they might do something to my child,’” said camper Dymire Baylor. [...]
[I]nstead of being put to rest, [Neda's] final, bloody image is being strewn across blogs and Twitter.
Where were all of these interested parties when the dormitories in Iranian universities were raided last week? There were plenty of pictures that were just as jarring and horrific. Neda is not the first person to die in this. She’s not the first person whose death has been captured on video camera, either. But she was young, slender, and pretty, and so Western media images are obsessed with watching her die over and over.
The entire post, and the other post that’s quoted from What Tami Said are excellent reads. I watched some news footage of Neda dying, and the entire thing had blurred out people’s faces (including Neda’s) in order to protect them. Then at that last moment, they unblurred Neda’s face after she was shot. I was horrified because 1) I think it’s disrespectful and voyeuristic to put that out for the world to see, so I really didn’t want to see that, and 2) they were clearly exploiting her bloodied image for their own gain. It pissed me off.
Particularly the fucked up nature of the site Tranny-Alert.com:
I don’t care whether the motivation is about how exotic trans folks are, or exposure of “suspected trannies,” or trying to get some fabulous fierceness rubbed off, or mockery, or fetishization. Unless you are actually informing people that they’re being photographed to go on a “Spot the Tranny” website and getting their consent, this kind of activity is totally immoral on top of threatening. In some cases, it’s actually illegal. [...]
By taking photos of women on the subway or at parties and publishing them as “suspected trannies” on the internet, by posting personal ads from other sites that you think are “trannies,” by making fun of trans people’s clothes and bodies with your “comedic element,” you are pretty much just as bad as that guy who was foolishly messing with Mimi Plastique on the train. I don’t care if you support the biggest federal lobbying group for trans rights that you could find. That doesn’t excuse the bullshit you’re perpetrating on individual women.
