So I’m reading an article for my urban politics class, and the message they’re trying to get across is that racially integrating classrooms will allow for higher test scores in urban (high minority percentage) schools. Just let that sink in for a minute. Maybe I’m missing something, but it sounds to me like they’re saying the only way urban schools can succeed is by introducing white people.

sinidentidades: STOP SB1128 & HB1938 Texas Representative Giovanni Capriglione (R) and Texas Senator Patrick (R) have both proposed bills that would essentially end ethnic studies in Texas by September 2013 unless we do something about it.  Sign the Petition Contact your representatives to fight against these bills. Need help finding out who represents you? Click here. Helpful links to keep yourself updated on protests and the progress of the bills: Stop TX SB1128 & HB1938 Stop TX SB1128 & HB1938 Facebook SB1128 Bill Information HB1938 Bill Information
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sinidentidades:

STOP SB1128 & HB1938

Texas Representative Giovanni Capriglione (R) and Texas Senator Patrick (R) have both proposed bills that would essentially end ethnic studies in Texas by September 2013 unless we do something about it. 

Helpful links to keep yourself updated on protests and the progress of the bills:

(via leftistnaija)

Source: sinidentidades

  • Rape Culture: If a woman drinks alcohol and gets raped, it's partially her fault. If you don't want to get raped, you shouldn't be drinking.
  • Men at bars: Can I buy you a drink?
  • Me: No thanks.
  • Men at bars: What the fuck, why not? Come on. Come ON, let me buy you some alcohol. God, I was being nice. Why would you turn down my generous offer? I guess chivalry really is dead. What a bitch.

Source: misandry-mermaid

sustainableprosperity: First County in US Bans Oil and Gas Extraction By Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund Monday the County Commission of Mora County, located in northeastern New Mexico, became the first county in the U.S. to pass an ordinance banning all oil and gas extraction. Drafted with assistance from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), the Mora County Community Water Rights and Local Self-Government Ordinance establishes a local Bill of Rights—including a right to clean air and water, a right to a healthy environment and the rights of nature—while prohibiting activities which would interfere with those rights, including oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing for shale gas. Communities across the country are facing drilling and fracking. Fracking brings significant environmental impacts including the production of millions of gallons of toxic wastewater, which can affect drinking water and waterways. Studies have found that fracking is a major global warming contributor, and have linked the underground disposal of frack wastewater to earthquakes. “Existing state and federal oil and gas laws force fracking and other extraction activities into communities, overriding concerns of residents,” explained Thomas Linzey, Esq., CELDF executive director. “Today’s vote in Mora County is a clear rejection of this structure of law which elevates corporate rights over community rights, which protects industry over people and the natural environment.”   “This vote is a clear expression of the rights guaranteed in the New Mexico Constitution which declares that all governing authority is derived from the people. With this vote, Mora is joining a growing people’s movement for community and nature’s rights,” said Linzey.  “The vote of Mora commission chair John Olivas and vice-chair Alfonso Griego to ban drilling and fracking is not only commendable, it is a statement of leadership that sets the bar for communities across the State of New Mexico,” said CELDF community organizer and Mora County resident, Kathleen Dudley. She explained that the ordinance calls for an amendment to the New Mexico Constitution that “elevates community rights above corporate property rights.” Mora County joins Las Vegas, NM, which in 2012 passed an ordinance, with assistance from CELDF, which prohibits fracking and establishes rights for the community and the natural environment. CELDF assisted the City of Pittsburgh, PA, to draft the first local Bill of Rights which prohibits fracking in 2010. Communities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, New York and New Mexico have enacted similar ordinances. Mora County joins more than 150 communities across the country which have asserted their right to local self-governance through the adoption of local laws that seek to control corporate activities within their municipality. This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/first-county-us-bans-oil-and-gas-extraction-1367418547. All rights are reserved.
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sustainableprosperity:

image

First County in US Bans Oil and Gas Extraction

By Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Monday the County Commission of Mora County, located in northeastern New Mexico, became the first county in the U.S. to pass an ordinance banning all oil and gas extraction.

Drafted with assistance from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), the Mora County Community Water Rights and Local Self-Government Ordinance establishes a local Bill of Rights—including a right to clean air and water, a right to a healthy environment and the rights of nature—while prohibiting activities which would interfere with those rights, including oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing for shale gas.

Communities across the country are facing drilling and fracking. Fracking brings significant environmental impacts including the production of millions of gallons of toxic wastewater, which can affect drinking water and waterways. Studies have found that fracking is a major global warming contributor, and have linked the underground disposal of frack wastewater to earthquakes.

“Existing state and federal oil and gas laws force fracking and other extraction activities into communities, overriding concerns of residents,” explained Thomas Linzey, Esq., CELDF executive director. “Today’s vote in Mora County is a clear rejection of this structure of law which elevates corporate rights over community rights, which protects industry over people and the natural environment.”  

“This vote is a clear expression of the rights guaranteed in the New Mexico Constitution which declares that all governing authority is derived from the people. With this vote, Mora is joining a growing people’s movement for community and nature’s rights,” said Linzey. 

“The vote of Mora commission chair John Olivas and vice-chair Alfonso Griego to ban drilling and fracking is not only commendable, it is a statement of leadership that sets the bar for communities across the State of New Mexico,” said CELDF community organizer and Mora County resident, Kathleen Dudley. She explained that the ordinance calls for an amendment to the New Mexico Constitution that “elevates community rights above corporate property rights.”

Mora County joins Las Vegas, NM, which in 2012 passed an ordinance, with assistance from CELDF, which prohibits fracking and establishes rights for the community and the natural environment. CELDF assisted the City of Pittsburgh, PA, to draft the first local Bill of Rights which prohibits fracking in 2010. Communities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, New York and New Mexico have enacted similar ordinances.

Mora County joins more than 150 communities across the country which have asserted their right to local self-governance through the adoption of local laws that seek to control corporate activities within their municipality.

This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/first-county-us-bans-oil-and-gas-extraction-1367418547. All rights are reserved.

(via cultureofresistance)

Source: nationofchange.org

Obama Sends More US Troops To Mali As Benghazi Whistleblowers Are Set To Testify

As the names of the Benghazi whistleblowers are being revealed, prior to their testimony before Congress this coming week, things are beginning to stir a bit in war-torn Mali. Barack Obama informed Congress back in February that he had deployed US troops to Niger to assist French forces in neighboring Mali. Now, he is sending more troops there.

(via cultureofresistance)

Source: hackr

US okayed Israeli attack on Syria: Iran

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

Iran’s Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi says Israel launched the recent attack against Syria with the US approval.

“The Zionist regime’s (Israel) attack against this country (Syria), which was launched with the US green light, unmasked the connection between the mercenary terrorists and their supporters and the Israeli occupying regime,” Vahidi said on Sunday. 

The Syrian state television reported earlier on the day that Israel has attacked the Jamraya research center, located northwest of the capital, Damascus. The center had been targeted by another Israeli airstrike back in January. 

The Sunday attack came shortly after Tel Aviv confirmed that its warplanes had hit another target in Syria on Friday. 

On Saturday, US President Barack Obama said the Israeli regime had the right to launch airstrikes on Syria. 

(via progressivebrittania)

Source: fuckyeahmarxismleninism

seppius:

Because some of you are a stupid as fuck: 

  • Rape is rape. 
  • A man forcing a woman to have sex with him is rape. 
  • A woman forcing a man to have sex with her is rape. 
  • A woman forcing a woman to have sex with her is rape. 
  • A man forcing a man to have sex with him is rape. 
  • Rape is rape no matter the gender of the victim. 

There’s nothing hot about it. It’s a disgusting act performed by a disgusting individual. 

(via i-am-changingtheworld)

Source: darkarchers

Surprisingly, Islam is now condemned for not giving women their rights, but in the past it was blamed for a totally opposite reason. Riffat Hassan (2007, p. 162) argues that “propaganda against Islam and Muslims is nothing new in the West. It is as old as the first chapter of Islamic history, when the new faith began to move into territories largely occupied by Christians.” Europeans always constructed Islam as a civilizational adversary and the religion, an antithesis of European values. Accordingly, during the medieval period, when women in Europe were denied many basic human rights which Muslim women had enjoyed since the seventh century, Islam was denigrated for being gender egalitarian. Previously in the West, women did not have property, inheritance and many other basic rights. In places such as Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi in the US, women’s property rights were restricted up until the 1960s and 1970s. Interestingly, the first American states “to grant women inheritance rights were Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico, all of which were once under Spanish control,” for which Fernea (2000) credits the Islamic influences on Spain. Parliament in Malta passed divorce laws only on 25 July 2011 (“MPs in Catholic Malta”). In other words, until recently, Maltese men and women have been barred from seeking divorce in the Catholic country. In Britain, women did not have the right of equal pay to equal work until the enactment of the Equal Pay Act of 1970 (enforced in 1975 and amended in 1984). The elite club of Britain’s Conservative Party, the Carlton Club, was established in 1832 and barred women from becoming full members and from attending or voting at general meetings until May 2008, although in 1975 it granted “honorary” membership to Margaret Thatcher (“Carlton Club,” 2008). Conversely, to be fair to the religion, Islam has granted women rights to inheritance, ownership, equal pay, engagement in public life and to initiating divorce since the seventh century. The Qur’ān declares: “Men shall have the benefit of what they earn and women shall have the benefit of what they earn” (4:32) and “From what is left by parents and by those nearest related there is a share for men and a share for women” (4:7). Furthermore, the very reason of women’s economic empowerment in Islam caused
the Christian medieval world to wonder: “What kind of religion would allow women to inherit?” (Fernea, 2000). This amazement is identical to what the Arabs had exclaimed following the Qur’ānic revelation regarding women’s right to inheritance. Some of them rushed to the Prophet and asked: “O Messenger of God! Are women really entitled to half of the property though they can neither ride horses nor defend themselves?” (Rahman, 2008, p. 32).

Md. Mahmudul Hasan, “Feminism as Islamophobia: A review of misogyny charges against Islam”

(via decaire)

(via theblackcommunist)

Source: ducaire

socialrants:

barbrastreisandvision:

coco chanel was a nazi

i say this with no hyperbole whatsoever

she literally worked for the nazis and benefitted from jewish shareholders in chanel being sent off to concentration camps when their share came into her possession

parisian consumers actually refused to buy a lot from her own ranges after 1940 because she was an infamous collaborator but british and american consumers kept on buying them and continue to glorify her

 

Source: kategrice

The Largest LGBT Donors Are Drone Manufacturers

setfabulazerstomaximumcaptain:

navigatethestream:

by Hannah Kapp-Klote

In the 1960s and 1970s, queer liberation (what we now call “LGBT equality”) was seen by its advocates as an all-inclusive movement intrinsically bound to other social justice movements: there could be no justice for queer people without justice for people of color, women, workers, those in other nations, etc. Accordingly, queer activistsworked hard to build coalitions with all those determined to fight for justice. 

Nowadays, the LGBT movement does more branding than coalition building. 

Steven W. Thrasher, who has been nationally recognized for his LGBT journalism, called out national LGBT nonprofits and advocates, colloquially referred to by some as the glitter industrial complex, in aGawker article, contending that the LGBT activists and nonprofits “have been bought, paid-for and sold to the highest bidder.”

It’s true: corporate America runs the LGBT movement, or at least the part of the LGBT movement that gets press time and donors. Their sponsorship keeps the LGBT movement from addressing the issues that matter most for the LGBT community and beyond.

Thrasher highlights that many of the biggest donors to the Human Rights Campaign, the multi-million dollar nonprofit that receives the bulk of donations for LGBT issues, aredrone manufacturers. These donors profit off of the United States’ use of drones to killcivilians,including children, with little oversight or accountability. Drone manufacturers are far from the only ethically dark gray to black donors to LGBT advocacy organizations: a brief perusal of any major LGBT organization’s list of donors reveals thatcorporate black hatslike Bank of America,BP,Coke, andNikeall provide major cash to LGBT nonprofits.

And it must be acknowledged that these corporate dollars do some good:  programs that encourage the leadership development and empowerment of LGBT young people, the election of LGBT public officials, and advocacy for greater research into LGBT issues would be practically impossible in the modern economy without significant corporate donations. Yet there is something antithetical about a movement for equality and justice funded by the forces in the world most responsible for widespread economic and social inequality. 

When the LGBT community is not united with social movements that address the issues facing the most marginalized LGBT people, with racial justice proponents (proportionally more people of coloridentify as queer), with those fighting against systemic poverty, with pacifists, are we really making any progress? Or has the LGBT movement been kidnapped by power elites advocating for their own interests?  The dilemma is reminiscent of an image circling some corners of the web: a white gay male couple superimposed over the Human Rights Campaign red equality symbol that dominated Facebook during the gay marriage Supreme Court hearings.

“We’re just like you: racist, homophobic, and sexist,” reads the caption. All that’s missing is “market driven” and “war profiteers.”

Of course, claiming that the agendas of nonprofit executives and corporate leaders are the agenda for the entire LGBT movement is just as misleading claiming that gay marriage is the deciding issue of the LGBT movement. Queer activists around the country, from radical groups likeSoutherners on New Ground (SONG),andQueers for Economic Justice, are connecting the dots between queer liberation, pacifism, and economic and racial justice. Countless more groups and activists, with or without 501c3 status, are fighting to make sure that queer liberation — not LGBT equality — is tied up with justice for all oppressed groups around the world.

Progress for queer people means nothing if it comes at the expense of others also marginalized and fighting for justice. Gay advocacy paid for by companies that poison the land, treat their workers unfairly, and assist in the killing of children from other nations is worthless in the long run. If we truly want a world where LGBT people are equal, we have to recognize that such equality is contingent upon justice for all people.

Not when health care is provided to every same-sex couple, but where health care is accessible to all; not when violent homophobia is eliminated, but when violence based on hatred of any group is eliminated. It might sound Utopian, and it might not be achieved through high profile fund raising dinners. But the alternative, inequality and corporate exploitation draped in a pride flag, is neither progressive nor equal.  

 

cue to a shot of me howling with diabolical laughter. 

not because drones are funny

but because for all the equality red signs i had to stomach, for all the insufferable cis straight people who refuse to apply a critical lens to their “allyship”, for all the horribly constructed arguments supporting the HRC i’ve listened to not only this year, but in past years

congratulations! your desire and push for equality is intersectional in the worst way possible. 

now not only does the HRC screw over people (anybody who is not upper middle class, white, gay cis male), but the companies who back the HRC screw over people WITH DRONES. on top of their other shitty corporate policies because WHO HAS EVER MET A FRIENDLY ETHICAL CAPITALIST?! NOT I! 

i chuckle in your face

i chuckle long, i chuckle hard, and i chuckle loudly

So I think I’m going to throw up

Because I’m not surprised by any of this

Good job Gay Inc.

Good

Fucking

Job

I fucking

Hate

You.

(via leftistnaija)

Source: navigatethestream