.black man f.l.u.f.f.

ya know they took the "n" word out of Huckelberry finn, right?

2011-01-07T23:35:00.000-08:00

This below post is an excerpt copied from an email that I sent to a Compañera*, who saved my butt! [lots of love to her!]

So ya know they took the "n" word out of Huckelberry finn, right? It made big news.

I haven't really formed an opinion on it....(yet....) ... but when I do I'm sure it will be extreme! :)

..but here are some comedians take on it on twitter, the ones I thought were funny or kinda funny:

@StephenAtHome Stephen Colbert

It's great that they took the N-word out of "Huckleberry Finn." Now get to work on "Moby D-Word."

@ApocalypseHow Rob Kutner
Just ordered my copy of Mark Twai's Huck Fi from Amazo.com

@mileskahn mileskahn
I've replaced all the racist words in Huck Finn with "Boehner." Reads much better now.

@jasonmustian Jason Mustian

In related news, Michael Richards is editing his copy of Huckleberry Finn to contain nothing BUT the N-word.

ChelseaVPeretti Chelsea Peretti Scientists! Look at what's right in front of you. The dead birds were killed by Mark Twain's ghost. He's lashing out bc he loves the n word

Love ya all!
Love for the people,
-T

Remembering a Revolutionary Mujer
Compañera Magdalena Mora
(The following is the introduction to the pamphlet Raíz Fuerte que no se Arranca, which pays homage to the life of Magdalena Mora. This pamphlet was produced in 1981 by Editorial Prensa Sembradora, Inc.)

Writing this introduction was both an honor and a challenge. An honor because Magdalena affected the lives of so many people; a challenge because by now everything that could, and perhaps should, be said about Magdalena has been said. This little pamphlet was produced as an honor to her memory and example. It was prepared as a labor of love by friends who want very much to see other Magdalenas among our youth. In these lines I will afford myself the pleasure of saying those things about Magdalena which those who knew her only in academic or political life have a right to know.

She was a woman... not only because she espoused women's rights, but more importantly because she embodied that combination of tenderness and strength that always seems to elude men.

She was a compañera... not only because we shared organizational affiliation, but because she understood that helping another Mexicano was her historical duty. Her loyalty and self-sacrifice will never be forgotten, and someday repaid. She enjoyed being called a comrade or compañera, especially by those she admired for their talent and dedication. [Read More]Remembering a Revolutionary Mujer
Compañera Magdalena Mora(The following is the introduction to the pamphlet Raíz Fuerte que no se Arranca, which pays homage to the life of Magdalena Mora. This pamphlet was produced in 1981 by Editorial Prensa Sembradora, Inc.)
Writing this introduction was both an honor and a challenge. An honor because Magdalena affected the lives of so many people; a challenge because by now everything that could, and perhaps should, be said about Magdalena has been said. This little pamphlet was produced as an honor to her memory and example. It was prepared as a labor of love by friends who want very much to see other Magdalenas among our youth. In these lines I will afford myself the pleasure of saying those things about Magdalena which those who knew her only in academic or political life have a right to know.
She was a woman... not only because she espoused women's rights, but more importantly because she embodied that combination of tenderness and strength that always seems to elude men.
She was a compañera... not only because we shared organizational affiliation, but because she understood that helping another Mexicano was her historical duty. Her loyalty and self-sacrifice will never be forgotten, and someday repaid. She enjoyed being called a comrade or compañera, especially by those she admired for their talent and dedication. [Read More]
Remembering a Revolutionary Mujer
Compañera Magdalena Mora(The following is the introduction to the pamphlet Raíz Fuerte que no se Arranca, which pays homage to the life of Magdalena Mora. This pamphlet was produced in 1981 by Editorial Prensa Sembradora, Inc.)
Writing this introduction was both an honor and a challenge. An honor because Magdalena affected the lives of so many people; a challenge because by now everything that could, and perhaps should, be said about Magdalena has been said. This little pamphlet was produced as an honor to her memory and example. It was prepared as a labor of love by friends who want very much to see other Magdalenas among our youth. In these lines I will afford myself the pleasure of saying those things about Magdalena which those who knew her only in academic or political life have a right to know.
She was a woman... not only because she espoused women's rights, but more importantly because she embodied that combination of tenderness and strength that always seems to elude men.
She was a compañera... not only because we shared organizational affiliation, but because she understood that helping another Mexicano was her historical duty. Her loyalty and self-sacrifice will never be forgotten, and someday repaid. She enjoyed being called a comrade or compañera, especially by those she admired for their talent and dedication. [Read More]

New Review of ZIne and D-I-Y DVD and Music Video: The Recidivist DVD and 'Riding on the Rails' Zine

2010-06-02T22:32:00.001-07:00

New Review of Zine and D-I-Y DVD and Music Video: The Recidivist DVD and 'Riding on the Rails' Zine.

Listen to the long detailed podcast review below.
Quick Summary.

I rate items received on a scale of 1-10 Clean Socks with 1 Sock being not-the-best (as it often is the case when you only have one clean sock and the other one is lost or dirty, smelly and crusty and the rest of your socks have already been reused so many times that you would rather go barefoot in winter) and 10 Clean Socks being the very, very best situation because it means you get the clean fluffy blackmanfluff (ahhhhh...I think) feeling because you just did the laundry and have 10 fresh days of clean socks at hand and if you recycle you have 20 days of almost clean socks if you don't feel like doing the wash after the 10 days.

Summary review of The Zine 'Riding on Rails'
6 Clean socks for Illustrationsn by Ethan Young - http://youngillustrations.com
Only 2 pages of hand drawn illustrations but they were a very good two pages. if there was more art he would've got a 10.

9 Clean Socks. for the zine layout by Sarah Kriley. She gave a Website address with nasty corporate ads flashing so that can't ever get a 10.
Good layout though. Full color $50 NY subway ticket on front and back for playing music on the train. Very cool and original. Not even a title on front. $100 court judgment inside. Artwork included. Photos. Rock solid 9 clean socks job of layout.

10 Clean Socks for Editing by TLE. No crazy ass typos throughout the whole damn thing (which is how I do my thing actually! *happy laughter* I'm all about typos!). Makes reading it very smooth.

5 Clean socks for James who told the story in the Zine I take it. Not so interesting a story, sorry. You get 3 clean socks for including one of my favorite songs for sure though. But you've got a great layout, editing and art team on your hands. Keep that team and you've got nothing but goodness in your future, homey!

In the future send the form found at www.freerentcommunity.org so I can tell people where to get your stuff. I will not ever type all that stuff out. Sorry. Better for you and me due to all my typos! *happy laughter* :)

Their email address is ghstsnguitars@gmail.com - I had to triple check that email.

Audio,
Podcast review of the other stuff below.
Brought to you by BlackManFluff at http://www.BlackManFluff.org

MP3 File

Dis' my Shit: Let The Beat Rock!

2010-05-30T18:27:00.000-07:00

The Same rapper in live performance

Electronics Maker Promises Review After Suicides

2010-05-26T15:19:00.001-07:00

Bobby Yip/Reuters

Ma Zishan, Gao Zhaoying and Ma Liqun, the mother, father and sister of Ma Xiangqian, who jumped to his death in January, mourn outside a Foxconn factory in southern Guangdong province on Wednesday.

By David Barboza DAVID BARBOZA

SHENZHEN, CHINA — There were bows and an apology from Terry Gou, one of the richest men in Asia and chairman of Foxconn Technology.

With about 800,000 Chinese employees, revenue of about $60 billion a year and a reputation for military-style efficiency, Foxconn is possibly the world’s biggest electronics maker. It is now also the focus of troubling questions about a wave of suicides among its workers at a pair of factories here that serve as major suppliers to global brands like Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

As part of a hastily assembled, carefully orchestrated news conference and tour led by Mr. Gou on Wednesday, Foxconn executives defended their labor practices, even as they vowed to do everything possible to prevent more young people from taking their own lives. And the company presented a panel of mental health professionals to discuss the likely causes of suicide in China generally.

And perhaps in a sign of desperation, the company said it had even begun putting safety nets up on factory buildings to deter suicide attempts. (Not soon enough in at least one case, apparently. Hours after the news conference, another Foxconn employee fell to his death from one of the complex’s buildings, according to the official news agency Xihuan, although it was not immediately known whether it was an accident or suicide.)
“We’re reviewing everything,” said Mr. Gou, whose Taiwanese company controls Foxconn Technology, which operates two sprawling factories here with about 420,000 employees.
Sensing a public relations fiasco and questions from Foxconn suppliers, Mr. Gou traveled here Wednesday from Taiwan on what company executives said was an emergency trip. “We will leave no stone unturned and we’ll make sure to find a way to reduce these suicide tendencies,” Mr. Gou said.
Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, whose own corporate images are at risk from the suicides, say they, too, are now investigating conditions at Foxconn.
Mr. Gou, the 59-year-old founder of Foxconn and its Taiwanese parent company, the Hon Hai Group, sought to calm growing concerns that Foxconn’s labor practices and highly regimented operations are to blame for the rash of suicides on its two Shenzhen campuses this year.
The most recent confirmed suicide took place early Tuesday, when a 19-year-old employee fell to his death here. It was the 9th Foxconn suicide this year, police officials say, and the 11th time an employee at one of Foxconn’s two Shenzhen campuses attempted suicide. Two workers who survived suicide attempts suffered serious injuries.
In an interview Wednesday, Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, said his company was “saddened and upset” by the suicides and that Apple was determined to ensure that Foxconn workers were treated with respect and dignity. The company, whose popular iPod is among the products made by Foxconn, has conducted labor audits of the company in the past and sought improvements.
But questions about Foxconn’s labor practices have lingered. At a separate news conference late Wednesday, Shenzhen city officials suggested that the company was partly to blame for the accidents, although they offered few details.
And several labor rights groups are calling for an independent investigation into the deaths and labor practices at Foxconn. Workers are paid about $32 for a regular 40-hour work week, which is above minimum wage in the area, and often seek to work large amounts of overtime.
“Foxconn’s production line system is designed so well that no worker will rest even one second during work; they make sure you’re always busy for every second,” says Li Qiang, executive director of the China Labor Watch, a New York based labor rights group. “Foxconn only values the enterprise benefits but totally ignores the social benefits.”
Those claims have been bolstered in recent weeks by some of China’s state-run newspapers, which have published a series of sensational reports about the suicides, alongside exposes detailing what they claim are the harsh conditions inside Foxconn factories.
Some articles have described the company’s authoritarian management style, the heavy burdens workers face in trying to meet Foxconn production quotas. Others say the company has cramped dormitories that sometimes house 10 to a room.
But at Wednesday’s press conference, Foxconn executives extolled Shenzhen campus amenities that they said included modern dormitories, swimming pools and other recreational facilities. The company also said it had regularly passed stringent social audits conducted by Apple and other major customers, although some of those audits have cited labor infractions.
And while executives acknowledged a sharp rise in the rate of suicides on the Shenzhen campuses this year, they said there was no single or clear-cut cause. They insisted that personal problems and social ills, like the nation’s rising income gap, were largely to blame for the deaths — not what some say is the company’s authoritarian management style.

“There is a fine line between productivity and regimentation and inhumane treatment,” said Louis Woo, a Foxconn executive. “I hope we treat our workers with dignity and respect.”

Foxconn executives say they have invited several groups of sociologists and mental health experts here to study the suicides and offer advice about how to prevent additional deaths.
Jing Jun, a sociology professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing and one of the experts Foxconn invited here, dismissed the idea that the company’s labor practices were to blame. He said the victims were young people, aged 18 to 24, almost all of whom had recently moved to Shenzhen from rural areas. He said he believed they struggled with personal problems and the challenges of adjusting to factory life.
Professor Jing also offered a theory that widespread reports about the earlier suicides at Foxconn this year had created a contagion of copycats, particularly after rumors spread about the high compensation the company was paying some of the victims’ families. Some families had received about 100,000 renminbi, or a little more than $14,600, according to several Foxconn employees.
“We don’t know everything yet, but this almost seems like an infectious disease,” Professor Jing said. “And paying high compensation to some may have played some role.”
Health experts say the suicide figures from Foxconn, while troubling, actually remain far below the national rate of about 14 per 100,000 in China, as calculated by the World Health Organization — a figure that compares to about 11 per 100,000 in the United States. Some independent studies, though, say suicide rates in China are higher than reflected in the WHO figures.
In any case, Foxconn has drawn growing scrutiny with the sudden surge in suicides at a pair of factories here that company executives say recently hired about 100,000 workers to help meet growing demand for electronics.
Last year, a 25-year-old worker killed himself after he was accused of stealing an iPhone prototype. In e-mail and text messages to friends he said he had been beaten by the company’s security officers.
Mr. Gou rarely grants interviews and almost never allows journalists onto the Foxconn campus. But Wednesday he made an unusual show of concern, bowing several times at the news conference and apologizing for the tragedies.
And he promised to scrap recently announced plans to have all employees sign a form acknowledging that their relatives would only get basic, government mandated compensation — and nothing more generous — if they took their own lives.
The company said it originally released the form, which has been widely criticized here, after consulting with the government and worrying about whether rumors about high compensation was a contributing factor in some of the suicide attempts.
Mr. Gou even led dozens of journalists on a tour of Foxconn’s campus, visiting dormitories, a campus hospital, a production line and a center meant for helping employees with personal problems.
And he appealed to the media to be careful in its coverage of the suicides at Foxconn, which he said could fuel even more suicide attempts.
“I’m appealing to the press to take social responsibility: do not sensationalize this,” he said. But he also said the company was re-examining its own operations. “We can be a better company.”

Bao Beibei contributed research.

I encourage you to See Angela Davis in Olympia

2010-05-19T19:12:00.000-07:00

Angela Davis and Antwi Akom Speak!

May 22 | 3:30 p.m. doors open, 4:30 p.m. – 12 p.m.
Location: The Evergreen State College, CRC
Ticket Information:
• $5 ADVANCE TICKETS for ANY students, staff, & faculty of ANY school w/school i.d.:
(Available at the Evergreen Bookstore or online @ http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/110928)
• $15 ADVANCE TICKETS for general public:
(Available at the Rainy Day Records or online @ http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/110928)
• DAY OF SHOW:
$20 at the Door for everyone

For more information on the event, please see the Facebook event
ABOUT ANGELA DAVIS (Author, Educator and Activist):
Through her activism and her scholarship over the last decades, Angela Davis has been deeply involved in our nation’s quest for social justice. Her work as an educator – both at the university level and in the larger public sphere – has always emphasized the importance of building communities of struggle for economic, racial, and gender equality.
Professor Davis’ teaching career has taken her to San Francisco State University, Mills College, and UC Berkeley. She has also taught at UCLA, Vassar, the Claremont Colleges, and Stanford University. She has spent the last fifteen years at the University of California Santa Cruz where she is Professor of History of Consciousness, an interdisciplinary Ph.D program, and Professor of Feminist Studies.
Angela Davis is the author of eight books and has lectured throughout the United States as well as in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America. In recent years a persistent theme of her work has been the range of social problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of those communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination. She draws upon her own experiences in the early seventies as a person who spent eighteen months in jail and on trial, after being placed on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted List.” She has also conducted extensive research on numerous issues related to race, gender and imprisonment. Her most recent books are Abolition Democracy and Are Prisons Obsolete? She is now completing a book on Prisons and American History.
Angela Davis is a member of the executive board of the Women of Color Resource Center, a San Francisco Bay Area organization that emphasizes popular education – of and about women who live in conditions of poverty. She also works with Justice Now, which provides legal assistance to women in prison and engages in advocacy for the abolition of imprisonment as the dominant strategy for addressing social problems. Internationally, she is affiliated with Sisters Inside, a similar organization based in Queensland, Australia.
Like many other educators, Professor Davis is especially concerned with the general tendency to devote more resources and attention to the prison system than to educational institutions. Having helped to popularize the notion of a “prison industrial complex,” she now urges her audiences to think seriously about the future possibility of a world without prisons and to help forge a 21st century abolitionist movement.
ABOUT ANTWI AKOM (Award Winning Educator, Scholar and Writer):
Antwi Akom is a leading expert on the green economy, climate change, and educational equity. His research focuses on the links between race, environmental health, and educational equity in cities and schools; the role of the green economy in facilitating pathways out of poverty for vulnerable populations; and the role of local knowledge in the production of environmental health and educational equity.
Dr. Akom’s research and practice works to build partnerships between local residents, schools and universities, environmental and educational experts, community based organizations, labor unions, green businesses, and city planners working together to generate policy and planning solutions that improve community health, economic mobility, and the pedagogies and practices of community leaders and decision-makers.
Professor Akom is currently working with The California Endowment and a number of non-profit organizations to conceptualize a set of “Emerald city” projects and develop a set of “Green Health Equity” indicators; all aimed at promoting human health, job creation, and environmental sustainability.
He is also working with the Ella Baker Center, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and the East Bay Green Corridor to create “Green Education Technology” (GET) academies that attract and engage students, especially low-income students, students of color, and other vulnerable populations who have been marginalized by the educational system, for career pathways into existing and emerging green energy careers.
In 2009, Professor Akom co-founded the Environmental Sustainability Planning Network (ESPN), a national learning and climate change action network working to improve the lives of residents in seven cities across the United States. The project team, which includes the California Center for Civic Participation, the Youth Planners Network, the Lawrence Berkeley Hall of Science, and the Global Metropolitan Studies Initiative at U.C. Berkeley, are drafting local and regional climate action plans and policies aimed at significantly reducing carbon emissions, securing land tenure, and improving economic opportunities, infrastructure and improving environmental health. The team is also conducting a youth participatory action research project culminating in the production of an Environmental Justice Bill of Rights.
Professor Akom is a 2010 recipient of a RIMI Investigator Award in Health Disparities Research from the National Center on Minority and Health Disparities. He is currently co-editing a book with Professor Jason Corburn from U.C. Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design/City Planning entitled Revolutionary Urbanism: Race, Climate Justice, and the Politics of Pollution in Cities and Schools, which explains the nature of climate change in urban communities in the United States and abroad, the ways in which cities and schools in the global north and global south are responding to climate change, and the potential role for public and private partnerships to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis.
Additionally, he is working on his first solo authored book, Ameritocracy: The Racing of our Nations School Children. He has received research support for his work from the National Institutes of Health, The David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, The Charles Mott Foundation, The California Endowment, and the National Science Foundation.
He has also served as a consultant on community based participatory action research processes and outcomes with major philanthropic organizations, departments of public health, school districts, and community based organizations in the United States as well as abroad. Professor Akom has held research appointments at the University of California, San Francisco, and UC Berkeley’s Institute for the Study of Social Change.

Who is Angela Davis you ask?

Angela Davis

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Angela Yvonne Davis

Born	January 26, 1944 (age 66) Birmingham, Alabama, USA
Occupation	Author, Educator, Activist

Angela Davis (b. January 26, 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American socialist, philosopher, political activist and retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was the director of the university’s Feminist Studies department.^[1] Davis was a vibrant activist during the Civil Rights Movement and was associated with the Black Panthers. Her research interests are in feminism, African American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music and social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons.^[2]
In the 1970s, she was a target of COINTELPRO, tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad brothers‘ August 1970 abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County, California. She was twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA ticket during the Reagan era.
Since moving in the early 1990s from party communism to other forms of political commitment, she has identified herself as a democratic socialist. Davis is the founder of Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex.
Childhood
Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama. Her father was a graduate of St. Augustine’s College, a traditionally black college in Raleigh, North Carolina, and was briefly a high school history teacher. Her father later owned and operated a service station in the black section of Birmingham. Her mother, a graduate of Miles College in Birmingham, was an elementary school teacher.
The family lived in the “Dynamite Hill” neighborhood, which was marked by racial conflict. Davis was occasionally able to spend time on her uncle’s farm and with friends in New York City.^[3] Her brother, Ben Davis, played defensive back for the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Davis attended Carrie A. Tuggle School, a black elementary school; later she attended Parker Annex, a middle-school branch of Parker High School. By her junior year, she had applied to and was accepted at an American Friends Service Committee program that placed black students from the South in integrated schools in the North. She chose Elisabeth Irwin High School in Greenwich Village in New York City. There she was introduced to socialism and communism and was recruited by a Communist youth group, Advance. She also met children of some of the leaders of the Communist Party, including her lifelong friend, Bettina Aptheker.

Education

Brandeis University

Davis was awarded a scholarship to Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where she was one of three black students in her freshman class. Initially alienated by the isolation of the campus (at that time she was interested in Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre), she soon made friends with foreign students. She encountered the Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse at a rally during the Cuban Missile Crisis and then became his student. In a television interview, she said “Herbert Marcuse taught me that it was possible to be an academic, an activist, a scholar, and a revolutionary.”^[4] She worked part time to earn enough money to travel to France and Switzerland before she went on to attend the eighth World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki, Finland. She returned home in 1963 to an FBI interview about her attendance at the Communist-sponsored festival.^[5]
During her second year at Brandeis, she decided to major in French and continued her intensive study of Sartre. Davis was accepted by the Hamilton College Junior Year in France Program and, she wrote in her autobiography, she managed to talk Brandeis into extending financial support via her scholarship. Classes were initially at Biarritz and later at the Sorbonne. In Paris, she and other students lived with a French family. It was at Biarritz that she received news of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, committed by the members of the Ku Klux Klan, an occasion that deeply affected her, because, she wrote, she was personally acquainted with the eight young victims.^[5]
Nearing completion of her degree in French, Davis realized her major interest was in philosophy. She became particularly interested in the ideas of Herbert Marcuse and on her return to Brandeis she sat in on his course without asking for credit. Marcuse, she wrote, turned out to be approachable and helpful. Davis began making plans to attend the University of Frankfurt for graduate work in philosophy. In 1965 she graduated magna cum laude, a member of Phi Beta Kappa.^[5]

University of Frankfurt

In Germany, with just a stipend of $100 a month, she first lived with a German family. Later, she moved with a group of students into a loft in an old factory. After visiting East Berlin during the annual May Day celebration, she felt that the East German government was dealing better with the residual effects of fascism than were the West Germans. Many of her roommates were active in the radical Socialist German Student Union (SDS), and Davis participated in SDS actions, but events unfolding in the United States — the formation of the Black Panther Party and transformation of SNCC, for example — impelled her to return to the US.^[5]

Postgraduate work

Marcuse, in the meantime, had moved to the University of California, San Diego, and Davis followed him there after her two years in Frankfurt.^[5]
On the way back to the United States, Davis stopped in London to attend a conference on “The Dialectics of Liberation.” The black contingent included the American Stokely Carmichael and the British Michael X. Although moved by Carmichael’s fiery rhetoric, she was disappointed by her colleagues’ black nationalist sentiments and their rejection of communism as a “white man’s thing.” She held the view that any nationalism was a barrier to grappling with the underlying issue, capitalist domination of working people of all races.^[6]
Davis earned her master’s degree from the San Diego campus and her doctorate in philosophy from Humboldt University in East Berlin.^[7]^{[citation needed]}

This section requires expansion

UCLA

Davis was an acting assistant professor in the philosophy department at the UCLA, beginning in 1969. At that time, she also was known as a radical feminist and activist, a member of the Communist Party USA and an associate of the Black Panther Party.^[1]
The Board of Regents of the University of California, urged by then-California Governor Ronald Reagan, fired her from her job in 1969 because of her membership in the Communist Party. She was later rehired after legal action was taken.^{[citation needed]}

Arrest and trial

Main article: Harold Haley

On August 7, 1970, Superior Court Judge Harold Haley was abducted from his Marin County, California, courtroom and murdered during an effort to free a convict.^[8]
The firearms used in the attack were purchased in Davis’s name, including the shotgun used to kill Haley, which had been purchased only two days prior and sawed-off.^[8] The California warrant issued for Davis charged her as an accomplice to conspiracy, kidnapping, and homicide. On August 18, 1970, Davis became the third woman and the 309th person to appear on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List.^[9]
Davis fled California and evaded the police for more than two months before being captured in New York City. While being held in the Women’s Detention Center there, she was initially segregated from the general population, but with the help of her legal team soon obtained a Federal court order to get out of the segregated area.^[10]
Her bail was posted by Rodger McAfee, a farmer from Caruthers, California. Portions of her legal defense expenses were paid for by the Presbyterian Church (UPCNA).^[11]
In 1972, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. The mere fact that she owned the guns used in the crime was not sufficient to establish her responsibility for the plot. John Lennon and Yoko Ono, wrote the song “Angela” on their 1972 studio album Some Time In New York City to show their support. Mick Jagger, of the Rolling Stones, wrote the song “Sweet Black Angel” in her support. The song was released in 1972 on the album Exile on Main Street.^[12]

In Cuba

After her release, Davis moved to Cuba, following fellow radicals Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael, and Assata Shakur. Her reception by Afro-Cubans at a mass rally was so enthusiastic that she was reportedly barely able to speak.^[13]

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

In a New York City speech on July 9, 1975, Russian dissident and Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn told an AFL-CIO meeting that Davis was derelict in supporting various socialist projects around the world, given her stark opposition to the U.S. prison system. In particular, Solzhenitsyn claimed that a group of Czech prisoners appealed to Davis for support, which he said she refused to offer.^[14] In a speech at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania, Davis denied Solzhenitsyn’s claim.^[15]

Activism

Davis ran for Vice President on the Communist ticket in 1980 and 1984, along with the veteran party leader, Gus Hall, as the lead candidate. She also won the Lenin Peace Prize for her civil rights activism.

Angela Davis as honorary guest of an East German Youth Festival in 1973

Davis has continued a career of activism, and has written several books. A principal focus of her current activism is the state of prisons within the United States. She considers herself an abolitionist, not a “prison reformer,” and has referred to the United States prison system as the “prison-industrial complex.” Davis suggested focusing social efforts on education and building “engaged communities” to solve various social problems now handled through state punishment.^[1] Davis was one of the primary founders of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization dedicated to building a movement to abolish the prison system.
She has lectured at San Francisco State University, Stanford University, Bryn Mawr College, Brown University, Syracuse University, and other schools.^[1] She states that in her teaching, which is mostly at the graduate level, she concentrates more on posing questions that encourage development of critical thinking than on imparting knowledge.^[1] In 1997, she declared herself to be a lesbian in Out magazine.^[16]
Davis spoke out against the 1995 Million Man March, arguing that the exclusion of women from this event necessarily promoted male chauvinism and that the organizers, including Louis Farrakhan, preferred women to take subordinate roles in society. Together with Kimberlé Crenshaw and others, she formed the African American Agenda 2000, an alliance of Black feminists. ^[17]
Davis is no longer a member of the Communist Party USA, leaving it to help found the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, which broke from the CPUSA because of the latter’s support of the Soviet coup attempt of 1991 and the Communist parties of the Warsaw Pact.^[18] She remains on the Advisory Board of the Committees.^[19]

Davis at the University of Alberta, March 28, 2006.

Davis has continued to speak out against the death penalty. At the University of California, Santa Cruz, she participated in a 2004 panel concerning Kevin Cooper. She also spoke in defense of Stanley “Tookie” Williams on another panel in 2005,^[20] and 2009.^[21]
In addition to being the commencement speaker at Grinnell College in 2007, in October of that year, Davis was the keynote speaker at the fifth annual Practical Activism Conference at UC Santa Cruz.^[22]
On February 8, 2008, Davis spoke on the campus of Howard University at the invitation of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity. On February 24, 2008, she was featured as the closing keynote speaker for the 2008 Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference. On April 14, 2008, she spoke at the College of Charleston as a guest of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. On January 23, 2009, she was the keynote speaker at the Martin Luther King Commemorative Celebration on the campus of Louisiana State University.^[23]
On April 16, 2009, she was the keynote speaker at the University of Virginia Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies symposium on The Problem of Punishment: Race, Inequity, and Justice.^[24] On January 20, 2010, Davis was the keynote speaker in San Antonio, Texas, at Trinity University’s MLK Day Celebration held in Laurie Auditorium.
Davis is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at Syracuse University.^[25]

Interview with new Freeschool Community and Peace Communities volunteer.

2010-04-17T18:13:00.000-07:00

Interview with new Freeschool Community and Peace Communities volunteer.

The Amazing ARUNDHATI ROY at Town Hall Seattle Tonight, along with ARUNDHATI ROY videos

2010-03-29T11:13:00.001-07:00

Brought to you by BlackManFluff at http://www.BlackManFluff.org

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As many of you know, I quote one of Arundhati Roy's quotes all the times at the end of my blog and podcast posts which is:

"....a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it and within it is no struggle at all.”

-Arundhati Roy

So it goes without saying that I encourage you to see her tonight...or forward this to your friends who may be in the Pacific Northwest!

The below Excerpt is from elliottbaybookwebsite:

Co-presented with SEATTLE ARTS & LECTURES. We are delighted and honored to again help present one of the most vital, arresting writers at work in the world today, Arundhati Roy. The Booker Prize-winning author of the 1997 novel, The God of Small Things, and the author, since, of a series of compelling, political non-fiction books, it is with the most recent of these, Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers (Haymarket Books), that she visits Seattle this evening. "After so much celebratory salesmanship about India the 'emerging market,' Roy draws us into India the actual country, peeling away the gloss until we are confronted with perhaps the most challenging question of our time: who and what are we willing to sacrifice in the name of development? Roy is one of the most confident and original thinkers of our time." - Naomi Klein. "Arundhati Roy, the direct descendant of Antigone, resists and denounces all tyrannies, pleads for their victims, and unflinchingly questions the tragic. Reflect with her on the questions she receives from the political world today." - John Berger. Tickets and information are available via Seattle Arts Lectures at www.lectures.org or (206) 621-2230. Town Hall Seattle is at 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca).

Location:

The Elliott Bay Book Company

101 S. Main St.

Seattle, Washington 98104

End of Excerpt.

Videos

====================

One of my personal favorites ---> video Public Power in the Age of Empire: War, Resistance and the Presidency (Democracy Now! / August 23rd 2004)

video Arundhati Roy on India, Iraq, U.S. Empire and Dissent

(Democracy Now! / May 23rd 2006)

video Baby Bush Go Home: Arundhati Roy on Massive Protests Against Bush's Visit to India

(Democracy Now! / March 3rd 2006)

video Crashing the Party: Famed Indian Writer Arundhati Roy Goes Inside the RNC (Democracy Now! / September 2nd 2004)

video Arundhati Roy and David Barsamian at Seattle Town Hall (August 2004)

video Arundhati Roy, Hans Von Sponeck Respond to Bush's State of the Union on Iraq (August 2004)

video Indian Elections, Her Support for the Iraqi Resistance & the Privatization of War (Democracy Now! / January 21st 2004)

video Arundhati Roy Addresses Tens of Thousands At World Social Forum in Bombay (Democracy Now! / January 20th 2004)

video

Speech: “Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy, Buy One Get One Free” (Democracy Now! / October 24th 2003)

audio Come September: Arundhati Roy Speaks Out On Iraq, U.S. Foreign Policy, Palestine & Corporate Globalization

(Democracy Now! / October 15th 2002)

Arundhati Roy, Author of the God of Small Things, Faces Prison for Speaking Out Against the Privatization of Rivers, Energy, and Other Essential Resources in India (Democracy Now! / March 4th 2002)

audio Arundhati Roy Speaks On War, Terror and the Logic of Empire (Democracy Now! / October 19th 2001)

The direct web address for the discussion forums is here: http://tinyurl.com/mutualistproject

As always, to Leave a Comment about this blog post, please place it on my Peace Community Profile page found by clicking here (where you'll see my huge smile and I'd love to see your smile too! *happy laughter*).

Love for the people,
-T

"....a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it and within it is no struggle at all.”

-Arundhati Roy, Quoted from her speech: '2004 Sydney Peace Prize Lecture' (The entire speech is available online, search for the title)

Black Man Fluff

2010-03-22T20:44:00.001-07:00

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Applause

2010-03-18T16:21:00.001-07:00

Applause

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Black Man Fluff

2009-07-28T20:33:00.001-07:00

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Black Man Fluff

2009-07-22T22:24:00.001-07:00

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Black Man Fluff

2009-07-22T22:11:00.001-07:00

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Black Man Fluff

2009-07-14T21:34:00.001-07:00

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Black Man Fluff

2009-07-14T21:08:00.001-07:00

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Black Man Fluff

2009-07-14T20:52:00.001-07:00

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Very Special thanks, 90+ photos and slideshow, upcoming East Coast meet-up event coming up

2009-06-05T07:45:00.001-07:00

Brought to you by BlackManFluff at www.BlackManFluff.org

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Dear friends, compañeras, allies, and friends who I will come to know soon who are working for a better world,

Special thanks to everyone who came out to the Radical Media Convergence event (either in person or by spirit *happy laughter*) organized by the Freeschool, the Radical road trip and folks at PeaceCommunities.org! You rock!

You will find over 90+ photos of the event here:
http://radicalevents.slide.com

A direct link is here:
http://www.slide.com/r/WPVXXTJ3sj_r1wQnQ3xAMZEjgModzl1Q

Special thanks to everyone who helped take photos. :)

Make sure you have your computer speakers on because there is music in the slide show (though very corny I must admit, the other selections I had to choose from were far worse I assure you!) *happy laughter*.

There will probably be more photos added later. John has some more photos and will send me a disc plus Pamela had a bunch of photos and I'll add a few of those too. :)

On another note...

I invite everyone to the Reuniting, Recreating and Relocalizing 2009 (East Coast Meet-up) taking place June 12-14th, 2009 in West Virginia. There will be workshops on creating multicultural communities, workshops on various systems used on the conference site such as rainwater collection, mini-solar power: small scale gardening; food preservation techniques; wild edibles; heating with wood; water conservation techniques and much more.

I will be giving the following workshop:

Workshop: Beyond Reporting the News. Is the second stage of the progressive movement to help create independent, self-sustainable activist communities rather than to simply criticize our oppressors?

Lauren, Bonnie, Fraanc, my friend Charles and many more wonderful folks, activists and couchsurfers will be coming from around the country to be there! We will leave the Baltimore area on the morning of June 12th to head to West Virginia by car and we invite everyone to caravan down with us. We would definitely like more drivers with cars to help out with the Rideshare if possible. :)

The new website is here: http://www.eventsforfree.blogspot.com

Free food, camping, workshops music and more! :)
Bring your instruments!

WooOOoooo HOOoooooooooooeyy!

Love ya'all!

Love for the people,
-T

For updates on our other events, please subscribe to our radical road trip couchsurfing group found here:
http://www.couchsurfing.org/group.html?gid=5982

Or better yet, join the Peace Communities, online community with discussion forums about these events found here:
http://www.PeaceCommunities.org

Keep working for a better world everyone. :)

As always, to Leave a Comment about this blog post, please place it on my Peace Community Profile page found by clicking here (where you'll currently see another photo of Emily's huge smile! *happy laughter*).

Love for the people,
-T
You can also search for the short version of this episode in Itunes under the podcast title: 'Volunteers for Three Groups: A World Beyond Capitalism Conference, The Freeschool Community and The Peace Communities' or click here: http://tinyurl.com/link2itunes

Dare to dream of a better world!

"....a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it and within it is no struggle at all.”

-Arundhati Roy, Quoted from her speech: '2004 Sydney Peace Prize Lecture' (The entire speech is available online, search for the title)

2009 Radical Media Convergence Schedule! Join me!

2009-05-20T01:15:00.000-07:00

Black Man Fluff

Brought to you by BlackManFluff at www.BlackManFluff.net

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2009 Radical Media Convergence Schedule:
All workshops and meals are free.

Breakfast- [Seattle]
8am-9am - Free Breakfast
Time and Date: 8am-9:00am on Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Title: [Seattle] Radical Healthcare Justice and Media Empowerment. Presented by Dr. Pamela Wible, radical activist doctor from Eugene, Oregon
Time and Date: 9am-11:30am on Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Photo: Pamela and Angel inside the AstroDome shortly after Hurricane Katrina

Pamela Wible, a practicing radical doctor from Eugene, Oregon, will give a remarkable presentation. She has merged health care empowerment with radical media in every manner including videos, itunes, website publishing, social bookmarking, search engines and soon a nationwide book tour. She has given workshops around the country including at the Gesundheit Institute (as featured in the movie Patch Adams) and at Andrew Weil's Center for Integrative Medicine: "Burnout to Bliss: How Patients are Healing Physicians and Changing the Face of Medicine." She has also volunteered during the Hurricane Katrina at the AstroDome among other places and later given presentations on "Googling My Way to Katrina: Breaking Rank When Necessary" and "Community-Designed Ideal Medical Care: The Grassroots Health Care Revolution." She was also in the middle of the 1999 protests that successfully shut down the 1999 WTO in Seattle and found herself surrounded by police shooting people at point black range with rubber bullets while the police threw concussion grenades at people

and she decided, in her words "to engage in my own form of protest." Her love-centered work combined with her radical experience and workshops have resulted in inspired audiences throughout America. She has helped to give people the tools and the resources they need to start their own grassroots community medical practice. She continues her medical practice in Eugene, Oregon at the Ideal Medical Practice. http://www.idealmedicalpractice.org

Lunchtime- [Seattle]
11:30am-1pm Free Pizza

Title: [Seattle, WA] Networking and Participatory Society Open Forum
11:30am-1pm on Thursday, May 28th, 2009.
Presented by Joel Isaacs, Z Media Institute Alumni from Los Angeles, California

Title: [Seattle] Tour of the Emma Goldman Finishing School
2pm-3:30pm on Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Title: [Olympia, WA] Informal Schedule and Various workshops on Media, Solidarity and Creating Participatory Societies at the The Latin American Solidarity Conference held at Evergreen College
[Olympia], Friday -Sunday, May 29th-31st, 2009

What started out as the Z Media Institute Reunion has now grown into the Radical Media Convergence! Everyone is welcome and This is a free event.

For more detailed information please visit the Radical Media Convergence at

go here: http://www.peacecommunities.org/5001.html

The direct web address for the discussion forums is here: http://tinyurl.com/mutualistproject

As always, to Leave a Comment about this blog post, please place it on my Peace Community Profile page found by clicking here (where you'll currently see another photo of Emily's huge smile! *happy laughter*).

Love for the people,
-T
You can also search for the short version of this episode in Itunes under the podcast title: 'Volunteers for Three Groups: A World Beyond Capitalism Conference, The Freeschool Community and The Peace Communities' or click here: http://tinyurl.com/link2itunes

Dare to dream of a better world!

"....a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it and within it is no struggle at all.”

-Arundhati Roy, Quoted from her speech: '2004 Sydney Peace Prize Lecture' (The entire speech is available online, search for the title)

My friend Emily graduated from Medical School (this week) and she is now officially 'Dr. Emily.'

2009-05-08T11:28:00.000-07:00

My friend Emily graduated from Medical School (this week) and she is now officially 'Dr. Emily.'
Check out her blog here: http://emilyblockgeib.blogspot.com

Cool. She also got officially engaged to another doctor within the last couple months. Above is Emily with the 'Congratulations on Graduating/Happy Engagement/Happy marriage' *happy laughter* flowers and dog I sent! :)

Below is her Graduation Photos.

happy days. :)

As always, to Leave a Comment about this blog post, please place it on my Peace Community Profile page found by clicking here (where you'll currently see another photo of Emily's huge smile! *happy laughter*).

Love for the people,
-T

My review of the Movie "Capote" - A Commentary on Observing Life Versus Participating in Life

2009-05-03T20:24:00.001-07:00

Brought to you by BlackManFluff at www.BlackManFluff.org

MP3 File

Below is the Movie Poster:

Below is the Photo of the real Truman Capote on the very Interesting Wikipedia Article (found by clicking here) that you should read after you see the movie.

Truman Capote
Truman Capote, as photographed by Roger Higgins in 1959

This much-discussed 1947 Harold Halma photo on the back of Other Voices, Other Rooms

(1948) was a key factor in Capote's rise to fame during the 1940s.

Music for Chameleons, the last work of Capote published during his lifetime. Capote is pictured with actress Marilyn Monroe

As always, to Leave a Comment about this podcasta and blog post, please place it on my Peace Community Profile page found by clicking here.

I love you all,

Love for the people,
-T

Recognize the Rebels: Vote For The Rebels! Daisy's Dead Air Blog & For Renee of WomanistMusings in the Feminist Awards.

2009-04-12T00:25:00.001-07:00

Brought to you by BlackManFluff at www.BlackManFluff.org

MP3 File

Ay friends,

Canadian F-Words is having their Blog Awards.

There are two blogs I want to encourage you to vote for.

Vote for Daisy's Dead Air in the International Category- it is great blog and more importantly, she has great comments on other blogs.

She had a great blog post on that guy who was beat blind by Police, plus a lot of great comments in the Digital Colonial issue blog post.

Vote here:

http://acreativerevolution.ca/phpQ/fillsurvey.php?sid=46

Vote for Womanist-Musings - it is great blog. I sent her an article about Police mysteriously killing a Black guy (that the NAACP have stated was not a suicide as the cops want people to believe) and she published it and there are a lot of feminist and progressive blogs that do not publish guest post blog issues about people of color injustices.

Vote for her in all these categories:

http://acreativerevolution.ca/phpQ/fillsurvey.php?sid=44

http://acreativerevolution.ca/phpQ/fillsurvey.php?sid=55

I wanted to encourage my readers to not only vote for them... but to encourage them to send out a message on their Twitter accounts encouraging their friends to vote for them.

I'm not affiliated with the awards in any way, manner of form but I think they deserve more credit than they get for speaking up for so many marginalized groups and people of color.

Keep up the great work! :)

Love for the people,
-T

p.s.

Twitter this message:
Vote 4the rebels! Daisy's Dead Air Blog &4 Renee/WomanistMusings in Feminist Awards http://bit.ly/DaisyAndRenee -Share #rebelleft #woc #fem2

or twitter this message:

Feminist Blog Awards: Vote 4 women who speak up 4 LGBTQ, poc & marginalized http://bit.ly/DaisyAndRenee

Solidarity for a better world.

-T. Love
http://www.blackmanfluff.org

You can also find this broadcast as an Mp3 audio recording and on my podcast.

You can also search for us in Itunes under the podcast title: 'Volunteers for Three Groups: A World Beyond Capitalism Conference, The Freeschool Community and The Peace Communities.'

p.s.

Want to leave comments? Leave them on my profile page found by clicking here.

Member of the The Freeschool Community Collective

To learn more about the Freeschool Community please visit: http://www.freeschoolunity.org

The Freeschool Community is a member of the PeaceCommunities Progressive Coalition.
http://www.peacecommunities.org

"....a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it and within it is no struggle at all.”

-Arundhati Roy, Quoted from her speech: '2004 Sydney Peace Prize Lecture' (The entire speech is available online, search for the title)

Black Man Fluff

2009-03-30T13:46:00.001-07:00

Brought to you by BlackManFluff at www.BlackManFluff.net

MP3 File

Black Man Fluff

2009-03-26T18:04:00.001-07:00

Brought to you by BlackManFluff at www.BlackManFluff.net

MP3 File

Blog Awards Based on Link Authority Are Killing The Progressive Movement - or - Why Feminist Should Have Boycotted Fem 2.0 Conference

2009-03-24T12:54:00.001-07:00

Brought to you by BlackManFluff at www.BlackManFluff.org

MP3 File

--------------------------------------

You can also search for the short version of this episode in Itunes under the podcast title: 'Volunteers for Three Groups: A World Beyond Capitalism Conference, The Freeschool Community and The Peace Communities' or click here: http://tinyurl.com/link2itunes

-----------------------------------

Update: The permanent link web address for the follow up article to this podcast and blog about
'Post Swiping' is
http://bit.ly/post_swiper - Thanks.

Dear friends,

The below article, orginally titled. 'The Colonizing of the Feminist Blogosphere: Why Feminists Should Have Boycotted Fem 2.0,' has, by far, the most detailed background information to Why Feminists Should have Boycotted Fem 2.0 Conference. As many of you know, I have written a great deal about my thoughts on the The Colonizing of the Feminist Blogosphere, my thoughts about the Good Ole' Girl's Network and my thoughts about the Fem 2.0 Conference endorsements of pimps. However, the below article is an absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful and amazingly well researched article about how corporate interests are sucking the life out of the feminist movement and using feminists to promote corporations and give awards to corporate-friendly so-called activist bloggers.

Just in case you don't read the entire article below, I want to share with you my favorite paragraph within the below article:

Finally, “Linkfluence” is invited, you know, the company that offered us the “Top 30 Feminist Blogs”. Linkfluence’s goal is to “make finding influential communities and following their conversations easier for the greatest benefit of corporations, consultancies or survey institutes.” Just what we need! An organization working to make our feminist conversations most beneficial to corporations! As references, Linkfluence lists multinationals Nestle, Nike and Roche, among others. So I suppose we should not be surprised that among the “Top 30″ are pimps, procurers and those who blog for them, anti-feminists and misogynists. All of that notwithstanding, when companies like this create lists like this, the naive and trusting as well as the anti-feminist and capitalist are going to LINK to them which is what the real goal is. The goal is not to carefully study the influence of feminist bloggers. The goal is to rank blogs according to how dogged they are in linking — who cares WHY they are linking; perhaps they are linking in order to repeatedly launch attacks on feminists, as is very true of several on the “Top 30 list”, and which is always a good way to drive up hits and linkage; blogosphere attacks on women are such good times – because that way companies like Linkfluence and Fem 2.0 garner maximum linkage to themselves and therefore they begin to gain exposure and to influence in heretofore untapped markets.

I hope you read that paragraph twice to truly gain an appreciation for the insight.

For those unaware, and for those who have never clicked on 'The History' tab at the top of this blog, you will understand that part of the reason this blog was created was because of so many activists who are just completely selling-out to Nike, a multinational corporation that has only increased their worldwide oppression of women, children and the entire earth while a select few profit at the expense of millions.

If that doesn't convince you that these pro-Corporate Feminist Blog Awards Need to be boycotted, please consider the comments (found here) of two of the people who won awards at “Top 30 Feminist Blog” Award:

Lauren [of fauxrealtho blog]

My question is how the hell my personal blog can be one of the top thirty. I barely write on it, and moreover, almost none of my posts there have anything to do with feminism. I feel like someome looking for feminism showing up on my personal site would be confused, AND including it bumped someone whose blog is more worthy.

Below is the second comment by another Top 30 Feminist Blog winner:

Hugo Schwyzer [of Hugo Schwyzer blog]

Yeah, it’s really a strange list, if you think about it... ...there’s some pretty major stuff missing, and some clear non-blogs included.

This was indeed very awesome and very courageous of Lauren to admit what she said and awesome for Hugo to speak out about the non-blogs that were included on the list, much like it was awesome for Renee (the only woman of color chosen as a top 30 feminist Blog award winner) at Womanist Musings to question, in detail, the entire awards process as it regards racism. The answer for why Lauren won an award, even though she admits that:

a. she barely writes on it, and
b. most of her posts have nothing to do with feminism

...is simple: The 'goal is to rank blogs according to how dogged they are in linking — who cares WHY they are linking'

In Lauren's case, the reason why people are linking to her personal blog, is clear when you look at the 'about page' of her personal blog that won an award, you will see that she is "the founder of Feministe and designed Pandagon, Hugo Schwyzer, Bitch PhD, Skippy The Bush Kangaroo, and Republic of T, among others."

So of course, they are all going to link to her personal blog.

What is my point? What is the reason I keep speaking up about this?

Until all Blog Awards and especially Feminist Blog awards stop determining their 'winners' based on 'how dogged they are in linking' (meaning their Technorati linkage/authority numbers) then we, who are part of the feminist movment will continue to overlook...

a. People of Color and LGBTQI feminists
b. Actual feminist blogs, rather than blogs that admittedly don't talk about feminist issues, as Lauren mentioned is the case with her personal blog
c. Actual blogs, rather than easily identifiable non-blogs, as Hugo Schwyzer mentioned
d. Entire groups of radical, feminist blogs who are extremely controversial, who speak up on behalf of LGBTQI, third world people (who are victimized by corporations like NIKE) and thus don't receive links by the Good Ole' Girl's Network.

There are a lot of Feminists Bloggers, including the below author, who have stated that 'feminist blogging, so far as the potential...it once had for advancing feminist goals, is history' and there are women of color like BFP, and Black Amazon who have spoken passionately about their pain and victimization from many folks ijn the feminist movement (several of whom were prominently given awards in the Top 30 Feminist Blog Awards).

But you know what? I'm not going to give up on Feminist blogging. There is too much at stake. Too many newspapers have gone bankrupt all over the country and blogging is possibly our last avenue to have our voices heard about Feminist issues.

And I want to urge all of you to Keep working for a better world everyone and to keep working for solutions.

Love for the people,
-T

"....a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it and within it is no struggle at all.”

-Arundhati Roy, Quoted from her speech: '2004 Sydney Peace Prize Lecture' (The entire speech is available online, search for the title)

The below article was originally posted by Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff or Heart

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Heart said:: Kindly credit me.

This is my work and can be found here:

http://www.womensspace.org/phpBB2/2009/02/26/the-colonizing-of-the-feminist-blogosphere-why-feminists-should-have-boycotted-fem-20; Thanks,

Heart/Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff
http://www.womensspace.org/phpBB2

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the sturm and drang over the blog post What if the Feminist Blogosphere is a Form of Digital Colonialism, which resulted in the post’s authors, Brittany Shoot and Mandy Van Deven issuing this apology today, nobody seems to have taken a close look at the event itself, and especially, its sponsors — the real colonizers — who I believe are the people who should rightfully be apologizing to all of us. I think those who supported this event or advertised it should also be apologizing to all who have made the feminist blogosphere the occasionally-effective vehicle for positive change for women that it has been in the past.

Turner Strategies sponsored Fem 2.0. This is a public relations, advertising and marketing company run by people long in the employ of Fortune 500 companies, which, in itself, ought to have given feminists considering participating in this event some pause. Of more concern, Turner Strategies has a multitude of connections with biotechnology multinationals. Some of its top level management are or have been biotechnology entrepreneurs. Ben Carlson, Operations Vice President, was a spokesman for a California Company, Genetic Savings & Clone, that is in the business of cloning kittens and dogs, retailing them to the tune of $50,000 each. He appears to continue to head up another cloning company, Clone Safety, and in that capacity he wrote a press release not long ago thanking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for his support of genetically engineered seeds and cloned livestock. Here is a list of Carlson’s press releases in support of livestock cloning and eating food derived from cloned livestock. At the end of this post there is information about why supporting by far most biotechnologies cannot be consistent with feminism, or for that matter, with any sort of reverence for human or animal life or the earth itself.

According to the Turner Strategies website, President Suzanne Turner’s ”communications campaigns have helped pass more than 40 pieces of legislation. She has worked for Fortune 500 companies, devising branding and marketing campaigns that have moved millions of dollars worth of products.” Nowhere did I see a listing of the 40 specific pieces of legislation Turner’s company helped to pass. But her current projects offer some clues. Turner speaks regularly at conferences on the topic of “how to effectively communicate food and agricultural biotechnology messages to consumers and opinion leaders using new media strategies.” According to the description of one such conference where Turner was a speaker:

Many activist groups have capitalized on using new media strategies including blogs, vlogs and social networking that create a “viral” spread of both information and potential misinformation thereby confusing the consumer and perpetuating negative opinions in some cases. The panel will delineate the issues surrounding credible, science-based messaging on food and agricultural biotechnology using new media strategies, including case examples and insights for both domestic and international audiences.

In other words, Turner offers seminars on the internet promotion of biotechnologies to consumers. This press release describes Turner’s involvement in forming a company that “will manage and license a broad portfolio of intellectual property rights related to animal reproductive technologies [including] the foundational nuclear transfer cloning technology that was developed at the Roslin Institute for the cloning of Dolly the sheep. “ In other words, one of Turner’s projects is the patenting of biotechnologies, particularly odious in what these patents mean for the world’s food supply (more about that at the end of this post).

Sascha Burns, Turner’s Vice President, Political Strategy, is a one-time drug industry lobbyist employed by Bristol-Squibb. Lisa Dry, listed as “Of Counsel,” is a former Director of Communications for the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). She had responsibility for ”representing foods and crops derived through biotechnology to the media and the public”.

Nachison and Peskin, sponsors of Fem 2.0

Then there is the sponsor “IFocus,” a media think tank, which is the brainchild of Andrew Nachison and Dale Peskin (above) and which was formed to ”establish partnerships with individuals and organizations around the globe to create next-generation media projects that foster an informed society, as well as create new opportunities in the marketplace.” Prior to IFocus, Nachison and Peskin ran WeMedia. A recent NPR feature goes straight to the heart of what this organization and these men are all about (bolds mine):

Thanks to the audience taking control of their media experience and creating their own media in blogs, podcasts, video and social networks, the people who are losing control have decided to meet — and meet, and meet again — until they figure out how they can take back some control of this uncontrollable situation. That’s the rub in Miami today and tomorrow at the We Media conference, a high-end schmooze-fest sponsored in part by Reuters, Washington Post, Newsweek Interactive and the Knight Foundation…. First up was the “Community Forum,” which included representatives from MTV, Topix.net and BlogHer leading a discussion about the new ways people are using news and information in their communities. Ian Rowe from MTV noted how his younger audience is changing the dynamic in how MTV covers issues.

“They want to get their content when they want it and how they want it, and that also goes for issues in their life,” he said. “It used to be top down where we chose one or two issues for them. Now our audience is telling us it’s great you are focusing on issues, but I want to deal with issues that are important to me, and I want to connect with people around the world to talk about issues I care about…We see great opportunities in the media revolution that’s now in the hands of young people.”

…What’s left largely unsaid (at least until the afternoon “Investment Forum”) is what MTV and other media companies think these “opportunities” are. Is it an opportunity to cash in on the idea of citizen media? Is it an opportunity to change their own top-down culture?

Jan Schaffer, who runs the J-Lab at the University of Maryland, pointed out that grassroots media sites don’t necessarily play by the corporate media rules of money first, community service second.

A recent survey by the lab of 191 citizen media sites found that they were largely shoestring operations with content coming from volunteers. Here are some eye-opening stats from that study:

51% said they didn’t need to make money to continue.
82% said they planned to continue “indefinitely.”
73% of respondents said their sites were a “success,” based on the impact in their communities

NPR quoted the CEO of Topix in an excellent blog post he wrote about the work of IFocus’s Nachison and Peskin:

There is actually a media revolution in the works. So what’s going on here? By implicit definition, participatory media is non-commercial. If it’s commercial, someone owns it, and it’s not “we” anymore.

Furthermore, as soon as a new media venture crosses the line and tries to become a business, it either becomes a successful business or a failed one. Businesses aren’t about ideology, they’re about getting a job done and earning revenue to keep the thing going. Even wild success tends to leave ideology behind. Ideology is the realm of nonprofits and failures…
Yes, there is a media revolution in the works. But it’s messy, it’s nasty videos on YouTube, not the neat & tidy civic Welcome Wagon of citizen journalism. You can’t quit your job as a journalist and replace your salary with AdSense on your blog. You’ll be lucky to make beer money, let alone pay COBRA and fund your SEP-IRA.

And big media has been watching, and buying the winning ventures, and building their own platforms to — yes you’re right! — exploit the new models.

Gloria Pan, Vice President of Internet Communications at Turner Strategies, is described as “a driving force in its annual We Media conference, a must-attend event for the media vanguard.”

Pan was also in charge of “Sponsorships” at Fem 2.0. This is how and why of things like ”sponsorships” and similar colonization rackets. Some big company or a couple of big companies, in this case Turner Strategies, IFocus, and George Washington University invest a lot of money in creating a conference in order to make money, advance their own ideologies, companies and olitics, and to, as I blogged about earlier, get a piece of some potentially lucrative action that is going on, in this case, to get a cut of the feminist blogosphere. They then invite people they figure might have some credibility with feminist bloggers to be “sponsors.” Here is a list of “sponsors” who donated money to make this conference happen. Here is a list of “conveners” and people who attended. Take a look. You’ve got NARAL, Bitch, Ph.D., The New Agenda, On the Issues and RH Reality Check all sending in feminist money that ultimately supports capitalist, colonizing, imperialist, endeavors of multinationals, Big Pharm and biotechnologies. Did any of them ever bother to do any investigation before signing up? To, for example, find out who the sponsors of this thing really were? They are joined by a motley crew of random entrepreneurs looking to make a buck off of the hard work and free labor of the feminist blogosphere. Look here, here, here and here. The last link is to the “Mom 2.0 Summit”, which appears to be similar to Fem 2.0, but Mom 2.0 is sponsored by the likes of Weight Watchers, Burger King, Sony and Walt Disney. Yeah, that’s all about feminism.

Finally, “Linkfluence” is invited, you know, the company that offered us the “Top 30 Feminist Blogs”. Linkfluence’s goal is to “make finding influential communities and following their conversations easier for the greatest benefit of corporations, consultancies or survey institutes.” Just what we need! An organization working to make our feminist conversations most beneficial to corporations! As references, Linkfluence lists multinationals Nestle, Nike and Roche, among others. So I suppose we should not be surprised that among the “Top 30″ are pimps, procurers and those who blog for them, anti-feminists and misogynists. All of that notwithstanding, when companies like this create lists like this, the naive and trusting as well as the anti-feminist and capitalist are going to LINK to them which is what the real goal is. The goal is not to carefully study the influence of feminist bloggers. The goal is to rank blogs according to how dogged they are in linking — who cares WHY they are linking; perhaps they are linking in order to repeatedly launch attacks on feminists, as is very true of several on the “Top 30 list”, and which is always a good way to drive up hits and linkage; blogosphere attacks on women are such good times – because that way companies like Linkfluence and Fem 2.0 garner maximum linkage to themselves and therefore they begin to gain exposure and to influence in heretofore untapped markets.

Vandana Shiva

Heart, the original author of this article did not give photo attribution but this blog gives attribution for this photo to WholesomeGoodness found at: http://www.wholesomegoodness.org/pressroom.html

It is in this way that ativist movements are assimilated into patriarchy, then systematically gutted of any effectiveness or power they might ever have had to change the world. This is what it means for a movement to be colonized. This is what I was talking about when I blogged about the end of feminist blogging. If you are not aware of the threat corporate multinationals, biotechnologies, the World Bank and other of these organizations’ agendas and politics are to the world’s women, land, creatures, the earth itself, read here, here, here. Read this and go here. Read everything on this page written by Vandana Shiva (above), and consider her words (bolds mine):

‘The “Green Revolution” was supposed to bring Western technology to the aid of Third World farmers. But instead of wealth, the new high-yielding seeds brought poverty and environmental destruction. These capital-intensive technologies also led to an economic monoculture. Institutions like the World Bank loaned money around the world to every developing country to do the same thing.
‘But uniformity is not nature’s way; diversity is nature’s way,’ she explains. Soon, she adds, there was a backlash. ‘When Third World farmers began to grow single crops, plants that for centuries had provided communities with essential vitamins were suddenly declared “weeds” and doused with pesticides. In some villages in India blindness increased severely because the so-called “weeds” had been the community’s only source of Vitamin A… Genetic changes to shorten the height of grain and increase yield led to a scarcity of straw; that meant less humus, depleted soils and eventually fewer grazing animals.

The end result of all this was not more but less food. Reducing the financial support for farmers will only make it easier for multinational corporations to tighten their grip on global markets.

‘Open-door policies,’ she says, ‘will remove all restrictions on imports and exports, inevitably converting Third World’s subsistence food production into a market for big business.’ It’s not surprising that peasant movements worldwide oppose these kinds of open markets. ‘For them maintaining diversity is a matter of survival. There will be no Indian culture if there are no Indian farmers to regenerate and continue that culture.’

Diversity, she insists, cannot be maintained by foreign corporations whose main aim is optimum yield from one product in order to gain maximum profit. The names of the six corporations that control the global grain trade roll off her tongue: Cargill, Continental Grain, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge, Andre and Mitsui Cook. These companies market the high-yielding seeds that are the heart of the ‘Green Revolution’.

Ms Shiva argues that these new seeds are not all they’re made out to be. ‘In India I’ve discovered that farmers can grow more grain and lose money. In the group of farmers I worked with those planting their own seeds earned 3,000 rupees a year. Others planting Cargill’s “new improved” hybrid seed netted only 297 rupees after the harvest because most of their earnings were used to pay for inputs like fertilizer and pesticides.’

Relaxed rules on biotechnology will allow companies to genetically engineer, patent and sell new organisms without having to account for their long-term effects on health or the environment. ‘The hazards of biotechnology will not be like the hazards of the chemical industry.” Ms Shiva warns.

Such threats cannot be treated casually ‘Whether it’s in the technological or economic domain, we are constantly being tricked into seeing growth where there is actually the production of scarcity. We have become totally numb to what disappears. By flattening the world to economic values we devalue ourselves. We assume there is only one economy - the market place. We forget that people have their own economies - taking care of themselves. Biodiversity is related to cultural diversity because cultures are also systems that renew - systems of value, of perception and of lifestyle. Human beings need a social economy that exchanges things other than money and that produces for reasons other than profits.’

She is working with Indian farmers to re-build seed banks in the hope of strengthening biodiversity. And to pursue sustainable farming techniques without expensive inputs from the agro-chemical companies. But if push comes to shove she argues that creative non-cooperation - ‘creating conditions for survival while rejecting an imposed system of authoritarianism’ - is the only way forward.
It may seem an impossible task to change such a powerful global system. But Ms Shiva is undaunted. ‘It’s not the first time we have tried to change a global system. Fifty years ago people were doing it all over the world and they succeeded. That time the political system was the colonial empires of Europe. When small steps are taken by large numbers of people momentous things can happen.’

Fem 2.0 was in fact the brainchild of the kind of corporate multinationals, marketing firms, “internet communications firms” Shiva is talking about who stand in direct opposition to everything feminists and progressives, revolutionaries, have given our lives for. Here they are, sponsoring conferences for feminists, moving in on the feminist blogosphere, and taking money from feminists. Worst of all, we have feminists stepping up to support them, advertising them throughout the blogosphere, and treating them for all the world as if they are not the colonizers and imperialists they truly are. And instead of fighting these guys, nobody is paying attention, instead, feminist bloggers are fighting one another!]

As I’ve written, I have been here before, many times in my activist life. I have seen this many times. The creative and potentially revolutionary energy of the feminist blogosphere, fragile as it may have been, is history now. From this time forward, barring a miracle, nothing will be the same.

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The permanent link web address for this page is http://bit.ly/linkbias - Please circulate and share it. Thanks.

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Film Showing- Free.: Kabul Transit and A Call to Action

2009-03-19T03:48:00.001-07:00

Dear friends, compañeras, allies, and friends who I will come to know soon who are working for a better world,

I encourage you to attend the below Film. The Freeschool was the home for many of the organizing events of the protestors and I was there at the Freeschool in November 2007.

I and many friends froze in the dark and the rain at night at the Port protest, but it was worth it if it even helped to save one person's life.

It was so beautiful.

Several of my friends, non-violent women at the protest, who I care about deeply, are still being harassed by the City for their part in helping to save people from the abuses of an illegal war.

Love for the people,
-T

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Mar 19 2009 - 6:30pm

When: Thursday, March 19, 6:30pm
Where: Capitol Theater, 205 5th Ave. SE Olympia, WA
Price: FREE

On March 19th, 2003, American war planes began dropping bombs on Baghdad, marking the beginning of the moral and financial disaster that six years later continues to embroil the nation.

In the broken cityscape of Kabul Afghanistan, amid the dust and rubble of war, Westerners and Afghans adjust to the uncertain possibilities of peace. Kabul Transit (2007) shuttles through the broken streets of the city, listening in on conversations, posing questions, probing the darker alleys mainstream media avoids.

Hundreds of people took part in sustained direct action to demilitarize the Port of Olympia for ten days in November 2007. Directed by AJ Strosahl and Noah Sochet, A Call to Action (2009) documents the multifaceted effort by Olympia activists to resist the use of our infrastructure to enable American imperialism.

Heart Failure Strikes Blacks More Often and at Younger Ages, Study Finds

2009-03-19T00:21:00.000-07:00

By RONI CARYN RABIN

Published: March 18, 2009

Black adults developed heart failure at a rate 20 times higher than did whites, even dying of it decades before the condition typically strikes whites, in a large multicenter study of the causes of heart disease, researchers reported.

Heart failure typically occurs in the elderly and is rare in young adults. Researchers did not expect to see much of it among the 5,115 young blacks and whites, evenly split along racial and sex lines, that they had been following to learn about causes of heart disease. But after 20 years, 27 participants in the study had developed heart failure, all but one of them black.

Most of the heart failure patients were in their 30s and 40s. Three black men and two black women with heart failure died during the study period.

The researchers estimated that heart failure strikes one in 100 blacks under age 50 in the United States.

The study is to be published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

“Blacks in our study who were in their 30s and 40s had the same rate of heart failure as whites in their 50s and 60s,” said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, the lead investigator of the study, which was part of the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults, or Cardia, study and was sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“These are people who are in the prime of their life and should be contributing in all kinds of ways,” Dr. Bibbins-Domingo added, “so this disease has a devastating effect, not just on the individual patient but on the family, the community and society in general.”

Those who developed heart failure were more likely than those who did not to have been suffering from high blood pressure, diabetes and chronic kidney disease. They were also more likely to have been obese and to have had low levels of HDL, so-called “good” cholesterol.

Heart failure is a chronic condition that is difficult to treat and often leads to early death. Patients who suffer from it tire easily, suffer from shortness of breath and usually are unable to work and qualify for disability.

David Mullens, a 57-year-old black man in San Francisco who was not part of the study, was so young when he developed shortness of breath 15 years ago that doctors thought he had asthma.

“I was climbing steps and getting short-winded, and I was surprised and thinking, ‘Forty-two isn’t too old,’ ” said Mr. Mullens, who has been on disability for the past 15 years.

Dr. Eric D. Peterson, a cardiologist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., who wrote an editorial on racial disparities in cardiac care published with the report, called the study “remarkably important” and emphasized that the disease was preventable.

“This shows you where having 20 years of uncontrolled blood pressure has effects, on kidney disease — and on the heart,” Dr. Peterson said. “It wears it out.”

Several experts said the rate of heart failure seen in the study might be just the “tip of the iceberg,” since researchers only identified patients whose heart failure led to a hospitalization or to death.

“Could the disproportional rate be even higher?” asked Dr. Gina Wei, medical officer of the Cardia study. “It’s possible, certainly.”

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A version of this article appeared in print on March 19, 2009, on page A15 of the New York edition of the NY Times.

*.black man f.l.u.f.f.*

ya know they took the "n" word out of Huckelberry finn, right?

New Review of ZIne and D-I-Y DVD and Music Video: The Recidivist DVD and 'Riding on the Rails' Zine

Dis' my Shit: Let The Beat Rock!

Electronics Maker Promises Review After Suicides

By David Barboza DAVID BARBOZA

I encourage you to See Angela Davis in Olympia

Angela Davis and Antwi Akom Speak!

Angela Davis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Education

Brandeis University

University of Frankfurt

Postgraduate work

UCLA

Arrest and trial

In Cuba

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

Activism

See also

Interview with new Freeschool Community and Peace Communities volunteer.

The Amazing ARUNDHATI ROY at Town Hall Seattle Tonight, along with ARUNDHATI ROY videos

Black Man Fluff

Applause

Black Man Fluff

Black Man Fluff

Black Man Fluff

Black Man Fluff

Black Man Fluff

Black Man Fluff

Very Special thanks, 90+ photos and slideshow, upcoming East Coast meet-up event coming up

2009 Radical Media Convergence Schedule! Join me!

Black Man Fluff

My friend Emily graduated from Medical School (this week) and she is now officially 'Dr. Emily.'

My review of the Movie "Capote" - A Commentary on Observing Life Versus Participating in Life

Recognize the Rebels: Vote For The Rebels! Daisy's Dead Air Blog & For Renee of WomanistMusings in the Feminist Awards.

Black Man Fluff

Black Man Fluff

Blog Awards Based on Link Authority Are Killing The Progressive Movement - or - Why Feminist Should Have Boycotted Fem 2.0 Conference

Film Showing- Free.: Kabul Transit and A Call to Action

Heart Failure Strikes Blacks More Often and at Younger Ages, Study Finds

.black man f.l.u.f.f.