You are loved by your daughter, your girlfriend, your sister, your entire family, and the children you served lunch to everyday at school. You were not a threat, a thug, or any of the hurtful names they called you. It hurts to know an officer can take your life for no valid reason at all and walk away a free man. It irks me to the core to know that the officer felt your life wasn’t worth living. For you and anyone else who has lost their life due to do the individuals who are supposed to be protecting us, we will not give up hope or faith.
Philando Castile, I will continue to say YOUR name.
Nettles’ friends spoke up against this mistreatment. After Eyricka died, we, her friends, had two options: Speak up or remain silent. As cisgender allies we could choose to do our part to ensure Eyricka’s story was shared, or we could do nothing. But true allies are not absent when they are needed most.
Many trans women of color are fighting just to live, and dream of stopping the onslaught of violence in their lives. Among LGBTQ communities, trans people are most susceptible to police violence; trans women in particular are most likely to be killed by hate violence homicides, according to the advocacy organization the Anti-Violence Project.
“Black trans women should never have to live in fear that today will be their last day,” Elle Hearns, a field coordinator at the LGBTQ advocacy organization Get Equal, told AlterNet.“It is a national emergency that we must pay attention to by taking action to support and sustain the lives of trans women who are under attack.”
Trans women of color need us all to listen to their stories when they are alive so that we are not grief-stricken when they are slain. We could all have fewer occasions to shed tears if we followed the lead of trans women of color in the fight to end trans antagonistic violence now. Eyricka, Tamara, Elisha, Shade, Amber, Kandis, Papi, Lamia, Ty, Yazmin, Taja, Penny, Kristina, Keyshia, London, Mercedes, India, K.C. and so many other trans women of color killed deserve more than silence. It takes self-reflection and determined effort to overcome complacency in a society that often treats those who defy rigid cultural norms — like gender nonconforming and transgender people — as unworthy of respect or safety, but it should not have to take a friend’s death to remind us to speak up.
So I thought y'all would like this too
This great white comes to the jersey shore every year and this year they named her and have been tracking her hella so this is Mary Lee and she decided to show herself under this rainbow for pride month
A true gay icon
In Japan, radiation creates monsters (Godzilla) and in America radiation creates superheroes
Shockingly, it’s almost like Japan and America have very different narratives surrounding nuclear fallout. Now, if we all think very very hard, maybe someone could think of why this might be.
Over his lifetime, acclaimed Nigerian photographer, J.D. Okhai Ojeikere, photographed thousands of hairstyles worn by Nigerian and African women. Today, these photographs have been seen around the world and continue to inspire stylists, hairdressers and photographers alike.
To pay homage to Ojeikere’s work, photographer Medina Dugger created the Chroma photo series, which she describes as “an ongoing series that celebrates women’s hairstyles in Lagos, Nigeria through a fanciful, contemporary lens.”
