Avant-Garde

It’s alright, I’m not dangerous. When you’re...

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:46:26 -0400

It’s alright, I’m not dangerous. When you’re mine, I’ll be generous. ✨

Who’s going to DC pride this year? Hit meeeee! I wanna plaaaay!

Mon, 20 May 2013 15:51:25 -0400

Who’s going to DC pride this year?

Hit meeeee! I wanna plaaaay!

Saturday . 💁💯

Sat, 18 May 2013 12:14:53 -0400

Saturday . 💁💯

💫🌠✨

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:30:40 -0400

💫🌠✨

#clutch 😘 @mimiwanders ✨

Mon, 13 May 2013 14:43:41 -0400

#clutch 😘 @mimiwanders ✨

THEE apple of my eye 💫 😘

Sun, 12 May 2013 19:06:51 -0400

THEE apple of my eye 💫 😘

#REpost of course✨ my man, 💯 grand, my lover, my blood, my...

Sun, 12 May 2013 17:26:52 -0400

#REpost of course✨ my man, 💯 grand, my lover, my blood, my favorite, my BESTEST friend! & I love him. ☺😘

Summertime, fine . ✨😎💁☀

Sat, 11 May 2013 16:32:59 -0400

Summertime, fine . ✨😎💁☀

“I mean I’m winnin, but I’m still...

Fri, 10 May 2013 17:50:12 -0400

“I mean I’m winnin, but I’m still bored!” @ayemacmillion

Pensive . 👀💥

Thu, 09 May 2013 03:54:17 -0400

Pensive . 👀💥

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Mon, 06 May 2013 21:50:24 -0400

whataqueerblog: janetmock: fyqueerlatinxs: TW: sex work,...

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:41:49 -0400

whataqueerblog:

janetmock:

fyqueerlatinxs:

TW: sex work, anti-LGBTQ violence, drug use, rape

Trans Afrolatina Monica Beverly Hillz talks about her life prior to entering RuPaul’s Drag Race

“I had a lot of friends around me that did [escorting]. To me it was just like, ‘Who wouldn’t want to go out with a guy. He can pay you all kind of money. It’s fierce.’ First it started off with a sugar daddy, then when the sugar daddy gives up then it starts off with a trick then one trick turns into to two tricks. Then, ‘Ohhh I’m going to stop this week.’ And then you’re doing it, and you’re doing it to get all this money to get high. None of this is making sense. Something has got to give…I have a huge then where I don’t really like to talk about it because the more I talk about it I start to relive it again. I just want it to go away. I don’t want to keep thinking about it. I’ve learned from it. There was a point, a time in my life where I didn’t even love myself. I was really in a bad bad place. And I didn’t care what would happen to me. I could care less. I gave up everything. I lost everything. Most importantly I lost myself.”

-Monica Beverly Hillz, sharing the truth behind engaging in survival sex trade/work as a young trans woman of color. Thanks for sharing yourself with us and also offering safety tips to other trans women on “surviving in this world.”

she fine as shit doe

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Mon, 06 May 2013 21:36:46 -0400

youngblackandvegan: Need this on a wall in my future home

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:34:53 -0400

youngblackandvegan:

Need this on a wall in my future home

deafmuslimpunx: thedailyballet: Judith Jamison. Photo credit...

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:34:27 -0400

deafmuslimpunx:

thedailyballet:

Judith Jamison.

Photo credit Jack Mitchell.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre Company

stvincentinexile: If you are part of a privileged group and have to constantly demand that somebody...

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:31:53 -0400

stvincentinexile:

If you are part of a privileged group and have to constantly demand that somebody in an oppressed group say “not all (insert privileged group here) are like that”

what you are really demanding is that they reassure you that you’re not like that and you’re not being held accountable

which is a cowardly thing to do and also shows the great lengths you will go to in order to avoid examining your role in a toxic system

kanaya-maryammm-or-fmmm: it’s okay to be genderfluid but usually a girl it’s okay to be genderfluid...

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:28:44 -0400

kanaya-maryammm-or-fmmm:

it’s okay to be genderfluid but usually a girl

it’s okay to be genderfluid but usually a boy

it’s okay to be agender one day and bigender the next

it’s okay to not identify as any specific gender

it’s okay to keep your gender to yourself

your gender is your own goddamn business

thepeoplesrecord: FBI billboards not about Assata Shakur; it’s...

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:28:26 -0400

thepeoplesrecord:

FBI billboards not about Assata Shakur; it’s about repressing the black community
May 5, 2013

Following the ludicrous announcement that the Obama administration has placed Assata Shakur on its “most wanted terrorist list”, the FBI has erected billboards in Newark, New Jersey announcing its recently increased $2 million dollar reward. However, any critically thinking person knows that these billboards are not about capturing Assata Shakur but sending a message to the rest of us. Interestingly, perhaps just a coincidence or not, Newark, New Jersey is the place where a theater co-owned by Shaquille O’Neil, recently reneged on an agreement to show a popular independent film about the life of another former member of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Is Assata Shakur in New Jersey? No, she is not and the FBI and the Obama administration know exactly where she is, in Cuba where she has lived since being granted political asylum by its government in 1979 after escaping from prison.

This is not about Assata Shakur, it is about sending a message to the Black community and those that live within it who stand up to police violence, oppression and murder of residents, one of the very reasons for the formation of the Black Panthers. It is about the political repression of those who advocate on the behalf of the many political prisons being held by the United States government often in torturous conditions. It is about sending a message to anyone who would take up arms in defense of life, liberty and true freedom in a country that is home to the largest prison population in the world which the federal government and various corporations use as slave labor. It is about sending a message to those that would dare stand up and point out that the US government is the most violent entity on the planet and one that commits acts of terrorism against non-white people and nations on behalf of maintaining the American imperialist status-quo.

Why else would the U.S. government seek to name Assata Shakur as a domestic terrorist after all these decades? We are talking about a woman who was shot twice while attempting to give herself up to police who were co-operating with Federal authorities to target and assassinate or otherwise eliminate members of the Black Liberation movement just as they had done and admitted in a civil lawsuit to doing to Martin Luther King Jr.

The FBI and its corporate media wing fail to report the details of the sham case built against Assata Shakur after failing to win convictions on other trump up charges. The corporate media is failing to point out that a police officer, a state witness against Assata Shakur for the murder of another police officer, has recanted his testimony and admitted to lying on the stand. Medical personnel stated that because of nerves severed by a bullet, Assata Shakur would have been physically prevented from firing a weapon and it was also stated that her wounds indicate her hands were raised when she was shot consistent with her claim that she was giving herself up.

Just as Assata Shakur has pointed out that COINTELPRO utilized and received full cooperation from the corporate media to demonize and alienate freedom fighters from the people who supported them, corporate media today is still fulfilling that role. The concept of a free and independent press in America has always been a fraud and it remains so today.

Source

Read more about Assata Shakur & find a link to her autobiography here.

thepeoplesrecord: An open letter from Assata Shakur – posted...

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:27:29 -0400

thepeoplesrecord:

An open letter from Assata Shakur – posted May 3, 2013
May 6, 2013

My name is Assata Shakur, and I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government’s policy towards people of color. I am an ex-political prisoner, and I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984.

I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one. In the 1960s, I participated in various struggles: the black liberation movement, the student rights movement, and the movement to end the war in Vietnam. I joined the Black Panther Party. By 1969 the Black Panther Party had become the number one organization targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program. Because the Black Panther Party demanded the total liberation of black people, J. Edgar Hoover called it “greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and vowed to destroy it and its leaders and activists.

In 1978, my case was one of many cases bought before the United Nations Organization in a petition filed by the National Conference of Black Lawyers, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, exposing the existence of political prisoners in the United States, their political persecution, and the cruel and inhuman treatment they receive in US prisons. According to the report:

The FBI and the New York Police Department in particular, charged and accused Assata Shakur of participating in attacks on law enforcement personnel and widely circulated such charges and accusations among police agencies and units. The FBI and the NYPD further charged her as being a leader of the Black Liberation Army which the government and its respective agencies described as an organization engaged in the shooting of police officers. This description of the Black Liberation Army and the accusation of Assata Shakur’s relationship to it was widely circulated by government agents among police agencies and units. As a result of these activities by the government, Ms. Shakur became a hunted person; posters in police precincts and banks described her as being involved in serious criminal activities; she was highlighted on the FBI’s most wanted list; and to police at all levels she became a ‘shoot-to-kill’ target.’

I was falsely accused in six different “criminal cases” and in all six of these cases I was eventually acquitted or the charges were dismissed. The fact that I was acquitted or that the charges were dismissed, did not mean that I received justice in the courts, that was certainly not the case. It only meant that the “evidence” presented against me was so flimsy and false that my innocence became evident. This political persecution was part and parcel of the government’s policy of eliminating political opponents by charging them with crimes and arresting them with no regard to the factual basis of such charges.

On May 2, 1973 I, along with Zayd Malik Shakur and Sundiata Acoli were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike, supposedly for a “faulty tail light.” Sundiata Acoli got out of the car to determine why we were stopped. Zayd and I remained in the car. State trooper Harper then came to the car, opened the door and began to question us. Because we were black, and riding in a car with Vermont license plates, he claimed he became “suspicious.” He then drew his gun, pointed it at us, and told us to put our hands up in the air, in front of us, where he could see them. I complied and in a split second, there was a sound that came from outside the car, there was a sudden movement, and I was shot once with my arms held up in the air, and then once again from the back. Zayd Malik Shakur was later killed, trooper Werner Foerster was killed, and even though trooper Harper admitted that he shot and killed Zayd Malik Shakur, under the New Jersey felony murder law, I was charged with killing both Zayd Malik Shakur, who was my closest friend and comrade, and charged in the death of trooper Forester. Never in my life have I felt such grief. Zayd had vowed to protect me, and to help me to get to a safe place, and it was clear that he had lost his life, trying to protect both me and Sundiata. Although he was also unarmed, and the gun that killed trooper Foerster was found under Zayd’s leg, Sundiata Acoli, who was captured later, was also charged with both deaths. Neither Sundiata Acoli nor I ever received a fair trial We were both convicted in the news media way before our trials. No news media was ever permitted to interview us, although the New Jersey police and the FBI fed stories to the press on a daily basis. In 1977, I was convicted by an all- white jury and sentenced to life plus 33 years in prison. In 1979, fearing that I would be murdered in prison, and knowing that I would never receive any justice, I was liberated from prison, aided by committed comrades who understood the depths of the injustices in my case, and who were also extremely fearful for my life.

The U.S. Senate’s 1976 Church Commission report on intelligence operations inside the USA, revealed that “The FBI has attempted covertly to influence the public’s perception of persons and organizations by disseminating derogatory information to the press, either anonymously or through “friendly” news contacts.” This same policy is evidently still very much in effect today.

On December 24, 1997, The New Jersey State called a press conference to announce that New Jersey State Police had written a letter to Pope John Paul II asking him to intervene on their behalf and to aid in having me extradited back to New Jersey prisons. The New Jersey State Police refused to make their letter public. Knowing that they had probably totally distort the facts, and attempted to get the Pope to do the devils work in the name of religion, I decided to write the Pope to inform him about the reality of’ “justice” for black people in the State of New Jersey and in the United States. (See attached Letter to the Pope).

In January of 1998, during the pope’s visit to Cuba, I agreed to do an interview with NBC journalist Ralph Penza around my letter to the Pope, about my experiences in New Jersey court system, and about the changes I saw in the United States and it’s treatment of Black people in the last 25 years. I agreed to do this interview because I saw this secret letter to the Pope as a vicious, vulgar, publicity maneuver on the part of the New Jersey State Police, and as a cynical attempt to manipulate Pope John Paul II. I have lived in Cuba for many years, and was completely out of touch with the sensationalist, dishonest, nature of the establishment media today. It is worse today than it was 30 years ago. After years of being victimized by the “establishment” media it was naive of me to hope that I might finally get the opportunity to tell “my side of the story.” Instead of an interview with me, what took place was a “staged media event” in three parts, full of distortions, inaccuracies and outright lies. NBC purposely misrepresented the facts. Not only did NBC spend thousands of dollars promoting this “exclusive interview series” on NBC, they also spent a great deal of money advertising this “exclusive interview” on black radio stations and also placed notices in local newspapers.

Like most poor and oppressed people in the United States, I do not have a voice. Black people, poor people in the U.S. have no real freedom of speech, no real freedom of expression and very little freedom of the press. The black press and the progressive media has historically played an essential role in the struggle for social justice. We need to continue and to expand that tradition. We need to create media outlets that help to educate our people and our children, and not annihilate their minds. I am only one woman. I own no TV stations, or Radio Stations or Newspapers. But I feel that people need to be educated as to what is going on, and to understand the connection between the news media and the instruments of repression in Amerika. All I have is my voice, my spirit and the will to tell the truth. But I sincerely ask, those of you in the Black media, those of you in the progressive media, those of you who believe in truth freedom, To publish this statement and to let people know what is happening. We have no voice, so you must be the voice of the voiceless.

Free all Political Prisoners, I send you Love and Revolutionary Greetings From Cuba, One of the Largest, Most Resistant and Most Courageous Palenques (Maroon Camps) That has ever existed on the Face of this Planet.

Source

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Mon, 06 May 2013 21:22:24 -0400