Deadly Silence.

Adam Purinton. CREDIT: mugshot via Toronto Star.

Adam Purinton. CREDIT: mugshot via Toronto Star.

Yet another incident of racially motivated, domestic terrorism has been met with a deafening silence from the Tiny Tyrant. In the Splintered States of White Nationalism, our president willfully ignores every instance of white nationalism, white supremacy, racism, Islamaphobia, and refuses to face the fact that domestic terrorism is by far the greatest threat to uStates citizens. This happens when you install a white supremacist, Nazi cabinet in the highest offices, people who have no problem whatsoever with domestic terrorism, as long as it doesn’t accidentally take out any white people.

The racially motivated violence in Kansas comes amid an explosion of hate incidents since the election.

[…]

Trump has established a pattern of trying to capitalize on incidents that reinforce his Islamophobia and fear-mongering about “inner cities,” while ignoring violence perpetrated by white supremacists. He has still not publicly denounced a January 29 mass shooting at a mosque in Quebec City that left six dead and was reportedly perpetrated by a white nationalist, anti-immigrant fan of his. Instead, days later, he tweeted about an attack in Paris that left one person with minor injuries.

Research indicates a person in America is far more likely to be killed by a right-wing extremist or white supremacist — like the one who allegedly opened fire on Wednesday night in Kansas — than a Muslim terrorist. But three days after the Quebec City mosque shooting, news broke that the Trump administration wants a federal counter-terrorism program to stop focusing on violent white supremacists and any other extremist groups not comprised of Muslims.

Via Think Progress.

Rotten Peaches.

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Giulio Bernardi

There are reasons some white people are seriously disliked, like oh…being a fucking Nazi. Even non-Nazis, when white and hetero, can be the most oblivious, obnoxious assholes, with their heads buried so far up their privilege they may as well be blind. That tends to put people off. White people can’t become a minority fast enough for me. More Turtle Island, less America. That’s a good thing. As I’ve often said, if some white people are in such an uproar over uStates not being white enough, fine, there are options: emigrate. Go buy an unoccupied island. Whatever, move, leave, go found Naziland and be happy forever, far removed from decent people.

Spencer’s whine goes on for a while, combined with a desperation laced insistence that he and his Nazi buds are the thing, oh yes they are! All the young white dudes just love him! If there’s amusement to be found, it’s in the fact that Spencer was thrilled to be at CPAC, noting that no one was punching him. It didn’t take long, after his being escorted out for him to start trash talking CPAC. CPAC is deserving of trash talk, but not from Nazi Spencer, whose increasing desire to be another Adolf is becoming a an umbrous stench wrapped around his ankles and tripping him up at every turn.

Via Raw Story.

Oh, Those Pro-Protesters, At It…Wait.

Credit: YouTube.

Credit: YouTube.

It’s not protesters causing trouble, it’s a cop. Again. In this case, there’s a 13 year old who is damn lucky to be alive. Let’s see what caused this shining example of “to protect and serve” to boil over, shall we?

Protests erupted in Anaheim, California on Wednesday after an off-duty LAPD officer dragged a 13-year-old boy across his yard, pulled a gun on the boy’s friends, and pulled the trigger.

According to an eyewitness, the confrontation began after a young girl walked across the lawn of an off-duty officer, who responded by calling her a “cunt.” Thirteen-year-old Christian Dorscht reportedly tried to defend the girl.

Cellphone video then shows the unnamed cop grabbing and pulling Dorscht by the arm. As a group of young people wearing backpacks looks on, the officer drags Dorscht for a few yards. Moments later, three boys rush the officer, pushing him into nearby bushes to free Dorscht. Seemingly uninjured, the cop gathers himself and drags the 13-year-old through the shrubs. After one boy tries to punch him, the officer reaches into his waistband and pulls out his gun. Everyone backs away, but the officer fires anyway. Nobody was struck by the bullet.

Oh, well, a kid cut across his lawn. Yes, that’s such an extraordinarily unusual and heinous action! There’s no such thing as the cliche of an adult, generally an old curmudgeon, shaking their fist and yelling “damn kids, get off my lawn!” Obviously, such a horrible act forced this upstanding officer to spit “cunt” at her, and what on earth was a 13 year old boy thinking, trying to defend her? Goodness, such awful behaviour, oh my yes.

Approximately 300 protesters —including young people — gathered in the streets Wednesday night, as news of the incident spread. They reportedly blocked major avenues and intersections in Anaheim, home of Disneyland, and some protesters marched to the unnamed officer’s house. People yelled “Whose streets, our streets” and “Hands up, don’t shoot” as they marched, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Some of the demonstrators threw rocks at police observing the fray, while a few people banged on the doors of the officer’s home. Riot police were eventually called to block off protesters.

Oh, I’m sure that just completely justified calling in riot cops. Having been face to face with riot cops more than once, I can say that no, protests don’t justify their presence in any way. You have a bunch of hyped-up authoritarians swaddled in battle armor, just itching to use all those nifty, lethal toys.

So, what happened to the key players, like the cop, who was an adult, at least technically, who called a young girl a cunt, assaulted a 13 year old boy, and pulled his gun and fired? Oh, nothing much, but those evil, meddling kids?

Dorscht, who sustained a line of bruises on his neck, was arrested and brought to the Orange County Juvenile Hall for battery and making criminal threats against the officer. A 15-year-old involved in the initial confrontation was also arrested for assault and battery.

According to Anaheim Police Sgt. Daron Wyatt, the officer was not arrested but was removed from the field for three days. The LAPD is currently investigating the matter.

Oh, I’m sure they are “investigating”, if that means getting stories straight, shuffling paperwork, and purging evidence. In the meantime, two victims have been dumped into the maw of the SoCal juvenile justice system, which is a remarkably ugly one, as these systems go. As for those wicked protesters, 24 of them, including 6 minors, were arrested and charged for resisting arrest, battery, and refusing to disperse. Remember, cops are the good guys!

Via Think Progress.

Arizona Goes for Full Protest Suppression.

Women's March on Washington (Photo: Sarah Burris/RawStory).

Women’s March on Washington (Photo: Sarah Burris/RawStory).

The myth of professional protesters continues to be spread by rethugs, and Arizona rethugs have passed legislation which would allow the cops to seize the assets of anyone who attended a protest which turned violent in any way, along with the power to arrest those who planned the protest, although they did not commit any violent acts. The rethugs are extremely unhappy with The Resistance, and are doing everything they can to shut it down. We are all going to have to stiffen our spines and our resolve, and refuse to back down in the face of blatant rights violations.

The Republican-controlled Arizona Senate has passed a bill that would let law enforcement officials seize the assets of people who participate in protests that turn violent — even if those people had nothing to do with any violent incidents.

[…]

The bill would allow police to seize assets of anyone who attended a peaceful protest that happened to turn violent, and it also gives cops the power to arrest people who planned the events, even if they did not personally commit violence.

State Sen. John Kavanagh (R-Fountain Hills), who supported the bill, explained to the Arizona Capital Times that it’s aimed at curtailing the activities of “professional protest” groups whose goal is to start riots and damage private property.

“You now have a situation where you have full-time, almost professional agent-provocateurs that attempt to create public disorder,” said Kavanagh, a former police officer.

Bald-faced fucking liar. :spits: I’d like to see this flaming asshole address all the violence at Black Lives Matter protests, as the violence was all perpetrated by cops. I’d like to see this asspimple address the overwhelming violence committed by cops against all those at Standing Rock. Fuck you, Kavanagh. People are marching and protesting and protecting because it’s the only recourse we have. It’s not like we can look to our government for help.

Via Raw Story.

Marriage Equality Reduces Teen Suicides.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Seth Wenig.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Seth Wenig.

A new study reveals something remarkable: marriage equality cuts down on teen suicide. This shows just how much social justice issues matter, and that they can be, all too often, a matter of life or death. LGB teens are prone to suicide, given that they often find themselves with no support system, no safety net, and see a bleak future in which they can all too easily envision never being accepted, and never having the same human rights as other people.

A new study found some stunning results: After same-sex marriage became legal on a state level, the rate at which young people attempted suicide in that state dropped significantly.

Published this week in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, the new study used data from the hundreds of thousands of students who participated in the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) between 1999 and 2015. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, and Boston Children’s Hospital looked at 32 different states that legalized same-sex marriage in that span of time and found a consistent drop in teen suicide attempts in each state after marriage equality arrived.

Overall, the suicide rate attempt among all high school students dropped 7 percent in the year after marriage equality arrived in a state. For students who identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual or who were still questioning their orientation — a group whom the suicide attempt rate is much higher — the drop-off in suicide attempts was 14 percent after the arrival of marriage equality.

Because the effect was specific to each state as it legalized marriage equality, it cannot be dismissed as mere correlation. In fact, during the same span of time, suicide rates in the country were actually increasing across almost all age groups.

[…]

Regardless, the study offers a profound addition to the wealth of research already documenting the impact of what psychologists call “minority stress.” For example, a study published earlier this month in Australia found that LGB people who had strong social support and affirmation had normative rates of depression and anxiety, while only those who experienced rejection or had past experiences of trauma experienced higher rates. Several other studies in the U.S. have found that simply living in more conservative communities can have a negative impact.

Republicans, who so often tout themselves as being so very “pro-life”, but could not care less about the lives or health of women, and support the death penalty, are also staunchly against marriage equality. The fact that equality helps to maintain life is one which will, no doubt, not sway them in the least. For all their claims of pro-lifery, they don’t seem to be the least bit concerned with LGBT people dying. It’s rather difficult to not get the feeling they are cheering behind closed doors, so I imagine this news will be met with a renewed determination to kill marriage equality. Seeing as the Trump Regime is all set to rescind the Obama administration’s guidance protecting transgender students, which is little more than a license to harass and bully transgender kids, I’m sure an uptick in violence against transgender people and suicides will be seen. This is not a good. This is evil, absolutely evil, repulsive behaviour that any decent person should be ashamed of, and be willing to fight against, tooth and nail. Once again, the rethuglicans prove they are people who are pro-death, and they will go to any length to ostracize those they deem subhuman, and hope they will be driven to death, one way or another.

Full stories at Think Progress: one, two.

Homeland Security: Department of Lies.

Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly speaks at news conference as cars enter the United States from Mexico at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on February 10. CREDIT: AP Photo/Denis Poroy.

Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly speaks at news conference as cars enter the United States from Mexico at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on February 10. CREDIT: AP Photo/Denis Poroy.

Homeland Security, also known as the department of official lies and bullshit, is now spewing out lies about all those awful aliens. The manipulation is so blatant as to be pointless, outside of the Cult of Trump. Look at that photo, the choice of location! That’s a location I know very well, having been across it and back more times than I could ever count. One thing is sure – most all those cars lining up to head back into SoCal contain U.S. citizens. Mexico is a very popular place. I get the idea behind having the press conference there was to scare idiots though, “oooh, looky, an unsecured border! Hordes of aliens could come pouring in!” The bullshit is deep enough to choke on.

A Department of Homeland Security memo authored by Secretary John Kelly asserts that “criminal aliens routinely victimize Americans and other legal residents.”

The memo, entitled “Enforcement of the Immigration Laws to Serve the National Interest,” creates a new federal office meant to work with those victims.

“Accordingly, I am establishing the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) Office within the Office of the Director of ICE, which will create a programmatic liaison between ICE and the known victims of crimes committed by removable aliens,” Kelly writes. “To that end, I direct the Director of ICE to immediately reallocate any and all resources that are currently used to advocate on behalf of illegal aliens to the new VOICE Office, and to immediately terminate the provision of such outreach or advocacy services to illegal aliens.”

Sigh. Bullshit is not strong enough. Lies is not strong enough. This is not based on any factual information whatsoever. Immigrants, legal or illegal are less likely to commit crimes, particularly so in the case of people who are illegal. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. Way back when, I worked with a whole lot of people who were illegal, and they were law abiding to the core. One thing they did not want was the attention of cops. What this new “office” will do is give hateful bigots the equivalent of a wet dream, allowing for a brand new level of harassment.

Data indicates undocumented immigrants are no more likely to commit crimes than American citizens, and are actually less likely to be criminals in some cases.

The literature is summarized in a 2015 Cato Institute report entitled, “Immigration and Crime — What the Research Says.” Here are some key findings from studies cited in the report.

— One study found that “roughly 1.6 percent of immigrant males 18–39 are incarcerated, compared to 3.3 percent of the native-born.” The study found the disparity in census data spanning three decades — from 1980 to 2010.

— Another found that the phased rollout of the Secure Communities (S-COMM) immigration enforcement program didn’t reduce crime in affected communities. S-COMM “led to no meaningful reduction in the FBI index crime rate,” researchers found. If undocumented immigrants were more likely to commit criminal acts, you’d expect to see crime rates decrease as undocumented immigrants were removed from communities. That wasn’t the case.

— Another study “looked at 159 cities at three dates between 1980 and 2000 and found that crime rates and levels of immigration are not correlated,” the CATO report says, summarizing the findings.

— Another “looked at a sample of 150 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and found that levels of recent immigration had a statistically significant negative effect on homicide rates but no effect on property crime rates.” Yet another study found that an influx of immigrants is actually correlated with decreases in homicide and robbery rates.

— A study that looked looked at 103 different MSAs from 1994–2004 found that “the weight of the evidence suggests that immigration is not associated with increased levels of crime. To the extent that a relationship does exist, research often finds a negative effect of immigration on levels of crime, in general, and on homicide in particular.”

Last month, Richard Pérez-Peña of the New York Times alluded to some of the aforementioned research, writing, “several studies, over many years, have concluded that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States. And experts say the available evidence does not support the idea that undocumented immigrants commit a disproportionate share of crime.” Pérez-Peña’s report is entitled, “Contrary to Trump’s Claims, Immigrants Are Less Likely to Commit Crimes.”

While citizens don’t have reason to fear undocumented immigrants more than they would any other person, the two memos distributed by Homeland Security on Tuesday makes gives undocumented immigrants good reason to by fearful of anyone with a badge.

Oh yes. There will be much more reason to fear. As if non-white people didn’t already need to be scared to death of cops.

As ThinkProgress covered in another post, Kelly’s memos detail “an implementation plan to hire thousands more immigration officials, make more criminal offenses punishable by deportation, allow local law enforcement officials to carry out federal immigration duties, and make it easier to prevent entry to asylum-seeking children who show up at the southern U.S. border.”

Oh good, even more reason to fear cops! Neatly buried under all the fear-mongering is the ginormous waste of money this will be.

Full story at Think Progress.

Kill All Ni**ers.

Woman wears Donald Trump mask in racist video (screen grab).

Woman wears Donald Trump mask in racist video (screen grab).

Old Dominion University revealed on Tuesday that it was investigating a hate-filled video that was posted on YouTube.

Throughout the video, which has now been removed due for violating YouTube’s community standards, a woman in a Donald Trump mask can be seen dancing and waving a firearm.

The woman wears a shirt with a picture of Donald Trump and the words, “My President Is White. Again.”

Messages on the screen read, “N****r History Month” and “Kill All N****rs,” while rap music playing in the background promotes lynching, white power and the Ku Klux Klan.

In a statement, Old Dominion University said that an investigation had been launched because the university’s logo could be seen in on a sweatshirt in the video.

You can see the video in the link above, but I recommend a very strong stomach, and an irony meter which won’t explode in your face. I couldn’t make it through the whole thing, but from the start, it’s obvious Ms. White Power is attempting to rap. Yeah. Hate is almost always allied with stupid, and apparently, a serious case of being oblivious to, well, everything. Once again, hate also displays the inherent cowardice of masking up. The university is investigating, and I hope Ms. White Power is kicked out on her lily white ass.

Full story here.

Pastor: Traumatized by Trump.

Trump speaks to supporters at a rally in Melbourne, Florida (screen grab).

Trump speaks to supporters at a rally in Melbourne, Florida (screen grab).

A Florida pastor has recounted his experience at the Trump rally in Melbourne, Florida. To say he wasn’t impressed is quite the understatement. His child was traumatized.

Joel Tooley, lead pastor at First Church Of The Nazarene in Melbourne, said that both he and his daughter were traumatized after attending President Donald Trump’s rally in Florida over the weekend.

In a lengthy Facebook post written after Trump’s Saturday rally, Tooley explains that he had not supported the Republican presidential candidate but he felt that attending a presidential speech would be a good civics lesson for his daughter.

[…]

“People were being ushered into a deeply religious experience…and it made me completely uncomfortable,” the pastor recalls. “I felt like people were here to worship an ideology along with the man who was leading it. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the song per se – it was this inexplicable movement that was happening in the room. It was a religious zeal.”

Tooley describes First Lady Melania Trump’s reading of the Lord’s Prayer as “theatrical and manipulative.”

“I can’t explain it, but I felt sick,” he notes. “People across the room were reciting it as if it were a pep squad cheer. At the close of the prayer, the room erupted in cheering. It was so uncomfortable.”

After the president began speaking, Tooley says that Trump fans squared off against protesters in the crowd.

“Two ladies in front of them began seething and screaming in their face while shaking their Trump signs at [the protesters],” he writes. “As they continued chanting, the people around them became violently enraged. One angry man grabbed the lady’s arm – that’s when I went into action. I barged through the crowd and yelled at them to back off.”

“My 11-year-old daughter was clinging to my arm, sobbing in fear,” Tooley reveals. “The two angry, screaming ladies looked at me, both of them raised their middle finger at me in my face and repeatedly yelled, ‘F*#% YOU!’ Repeatedly.”

These are the people who think they comprise American greatness. I imagine they would have pressed assault charges on anyone who dared to to flip the bird at their little darlings.

I raised my voice and calmly said, “These ladies have the right to do what they are doing and they are harming no one; this is America and they a right to express themselves in this way. They are harming no one.” A couple of other people around me stepped in and supported me in protecting them as a barrier, as well.

My daughter was shaking in fear as she clung to me. The one man behind the protesters shoved himself forward, grabbed the lady by the arm and screamed with multiple expletives, “I’m going to take you out! This is my president and nobody has the right to disrespect him and nobody has the right to keep me from hearing him!”

Ah, the amazing reasonableness of the Trump fanatic. Funny how they didn’t notice all the people yelling and making noise were the Trump supporters.

Tooley states that he eventually lost track of what Trump was saying because of the ongoing scuffles.

“My kid was shaken – she had just seen some of the worst of humanity,” the pastor laments in his Facebook post. “But, at the end of the day, what I felt from his leadership in this experience was actually horrifying. There was palpable fear in the room. There was thick anger and vengeance. He was counting on it.”

You can read the whole Facebook post here. So, we don’t just have to be concerned with a maniacal, unstable tyrant, the possibility of nuclear war, and fascism, but there’s a cultish thing going, too. Times continue to be interesting. What I wouldn’t give for uninteresting times.

Oh, Now He’s Against Anti-Semitism.

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© DonkeyHotey.

Nearly a dozen Jewish community centers reported phoned-in bomb threats on Monday, following a disturbing uptick in anti-Semitic scares and harassment in recent months. Yet President Trump — known for immediately tweeting his outrage over international Islamic attacks and threats on U.S. soil before all the facts are known— stayed silent until Tuesday morning.

[…]

“Hatred and hate-motivated violence of any kind have no place in a country founded on the promise of individual freedom,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in response to a request by NBC News reporter Peter Alexander on Monday. “The President has made it abundantly clear that these actions are unacceptable.”

But the president had not said such actions “are unacceptable” as of Monday night. In fact, it took until Tuesday morning for the president to respond to the wave of anti-Semitic threats at all. During remarks from the National Museum of African American History, Trump said, “Anti-Semitism is horrible, and it’s going to stop.” Trump also said he would never pass up an opportunity to denounce anti-Semitism.

“Wherever I get a chance, I do it,” Trump said.

That’s just a lie though, isn’t it, Donny? A bigly, yuuuuuuge lie. You couldn’t even be arsed to mention it on Holocaust Remembrance Day. I’d call that a chance, a yuuuuge chance, actually, to address anti-Semitism.

In a memorable exchange with Jewish reporter Jake Turx during a press conference last week, Trump interrupted Turx’s question about the wave of anti-Semitic threats, saying it was “not a fair question” and demanding that the reporter “sit down.” Trump went on to defend himself as “the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life.”

Yes, well, the Tiny Tyrant is always the best, most, or least of something or other. So, as usual, that’s saying nothing at all.

The administration has been largely silent when it comes to attacks on Jews (and Muslims) thus far. On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the White House released a presidential proclamation that omitted the words “Jewish” and “Jews.” Prominent anti-Semites like Richard Spencer and former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke endorsed Trump’s candidacy and presidency, as ThinkProgress previously reported. And his supporters have long harassed and sent death threats to Jewish reporters.

The president and other administration officials have been quick to condemn horrific incidents that do not exist, however. Trump recently suggested that something horrific had taken place in Sweden, allowing him to justify plans to restrict travel to the United States.

On Tuesday, Steve Goldstein, the executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, issued a harsh critique of Trump’s denouncement, saying that the president’s “sudden acknowledgement of Anti-Semitism is a Band-Aid on the cancer of Anti-Semitism that has infected his own Administration.”

“His statement today is a pathetic asterisk of condescension after weeks in which he and his staff have committed grotesque acts and omissions reflecting Anti-Semitism, yet day after day have refused to apologize and correct the record,” Goldstein said. “Make no mistake: The Anti-Semitism coming out of this Administration is the worst we have ever seen from any Administration.

Think Progress has the full story.

Why Does a White Guy Always Have to Be the Hero?

Matt Damon as William Garin in The Great Wall. Jason Boland/Universal Pictures.

Matt Damon as William Garin in The Great Wall. Jason Boland/Universal Pictures.

Chinese director Zhang Yimou, of Hero and House of Flying Daggers fame, made his English-language debut with The Great Wall, which opened Friday. But in a story set in ancient China, Matt Damon’s character sticks out like a sore thumb. The presence of his pale mug in movie posters and trailers drew backlash even before the film’s release. “We have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that only a white man can save the world,” Fresh Off the Boat actress Constance Wu wrote in a Twitter tirade. “We don’t need salvation.” Damon and Yimou both publicly defended the film, with Damon calling it “historical fantasy.”

[…]

The Great Wall exemplifies a related Hollywood trend where white characters play a dominant role in a foreign situation, while nonwhite locals are reduced to sidekicks or people “to be killed or rescued—or to have sex with,” as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen put it recently. Vogue recently added to the outrage over cultural tone-deafness by presenting Karlie Kloss, an American model of German and Danish descent, as a geisha—for the magazine’s diversity issue, no less. Vogue later removed the photographs from its website and Kloss apologized for her participation, but it was yet another episode in America’s long history of whitewashing Asians. We’ll leave you with this brief history of the same. Dig around and you’re sure to find plenty more.

Mother Jones provides a very brief history of Hollywood’s more infamous whitewashing efforts when it comes Asian-based movies, starting with Charlie Chan in 1926, and ending with The Great Wall in 2017. Click over to see them all.

Matt Damon plays a European mercenary who saves China from monsters in The Great Wall. Actress Constance Wu takes issue: “We like our color and our culture and our strengths and our own stories,” she writes. “Hollywood is supposed to be about making great stories. So make them.”

Full story at Mother Jones.

Also see:

Well, in response to The Great Wall’s upcoming release, people got the #ThankYouMattDamon hashtag trending, and it’s a hilariously sarcastic way for people to “thank” Damon for his all that’s he’s done to help stop people from thinking only white men can save the day. *eye-roll*

Crispus Attucks: A Shared Narrative.

Getty images - Simon and Schuster.

Getty images – Simon and Schuster.

Gyasi Ross has an excellent article up about Crispus Attucks, and the shared narrative between Black people and Indigenous people.

Since white colonization of this continent, Black and Native lives have always been valued less than other people.  The story of Crispus Attucks was an early illustration of how there seems to always be a reason why black and Native people get killed that somehow exonerates the authorities of guilt when they harm us.  “Self-defense.”  But, perhaps most importantly, the story of Crispus Attucks is about combined Native and black lineages that resisted, suffered, but through that resistance caused a revolution.

The year was 1770 and the scene was the Massachusetts Colony.  Boston was hot with anger and resentment toward England. 150 years after Pilgrims originally occupied the homelands of the Wampanoag people, the descendants of those Pilgrims felt like they were losing control of the land they called “home.” At that time slavery was legal in the Massachusetts Colony—white colonists enslaved Natives and blacks alike in Massachusetts.  For example, in 1638 during the so-called “Pequot Wars,” white colonists enslaved a group of Pequot women and children. However, most of the men and boys, deemed too dangerous to keep in the colony. Therefore white colonists transported them to the West Indies on the ship Desire and exchanged them for African slaves.

[…]

Crispus Attucks was both Indigenous and black and a product of the slave trade. He was brilliant in the survival skills that is common and necessary amongst both Indigenous people and black people since the brutal regime of white supremacy came to power on Turtle Island.  His mother’s name was Nancy Attucks, a Wampanoag Native who came from the island of Nantucket. The word “attuck” in the Natick language means deer. His father was born in Africa. His name was Prince Yonger and he was brought to America as a slave.

Attucks was himself born a slave. But he was not afraid to actively seek his own (or others’) liberation. For example he escaped from his slave master and was the focus of an advertisement in a 1750 edition of the Boston Gazette in which a white landowner offered to pay 10 pounds for the return of a young runaway slave.

“Ran away from his Master, William Brown of Framingham, on the 30th of Sept. last, a Molatto Fellow, about 27 Year of age, named Crispas, 6 Feet two Inches high, short curl’d Hair…,”

Attucks was not going back though—he never did.  He spent the next two decades on trading ships and whaling vessels.

[…]

The story of Crispus Attucks is powerful. Native and black people have been facing the same tribulations and common enemies for a very long time.  For most of the time since white people have been on this continent, black folk and Native folk have had no choice but to work together and have.  If we look at statistics today—from expulsion/suspension from schools, to the blacks and Natives going to prison, to getting killed by law enforcement—not a lot has changed.  We still share very common narratives and need each other.

We still need to work together.

Click on over to Indian Country Media Network for the full article.

Arctic Hysteria.

A still from Arke’s 1996 video Arctic Hysteria shows the artist naked and crawling across a photograph of Nuugaarsuk Point in Greenland. Photo courtesy of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Acquired with funding from Anker Fonden 
Poul Buchard/Brøndum & Co.

A still from Arke’s 1996 video Arctic Hysteria shows the artist naked and crawling across a photograph of Nuugaarsuk Point in Greenland. Photo courtesy of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Acquired with funding from Anker Fonden 
Poul Buchard/Brøndum & Co.

Most people have never heard of Pia Arke, which is a shame, because she was an artist who took on one huge subject: the colonial takeover of indigenous peoples by those who termed themselves “explorers” and “discoverers”. There’s a great deal of horror inherent in any indigenous peoples experiences with colonialism. Unsurprisingly, indigenous women got the worst of it.

In the spring of 1995, Danish-Greenlandic artist Pia Arke was digging through the archives of New York City’s Explorers Club. She was searching for maps, ethnographic images, and scientific miscellany that she could repurpose into collages that confront Greenland’s colonial past. Arke knew early 20th-century adventurers often, by turns, demeaned and romanticized her Inuit ancestors. Even so, one photo from American explorer Robert E. Peary’s collection shocked her: a native woman, topless and screaming, restrained by two fur-clad and seemingly untroubled white men. A curator told Arke the woman could have been suffering from a madness called Arctic hysteria.

More than 20 years later, Arke’s mesmerizing film Arctic Hysteria, which she created the year after she found that dark photo, was looping endlessly in an alcove at Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Situated in a small town along the Baltic Sea about 50 kilometers north of Copenhagen, the Louisiana Museum enjoys the kind of international acclaim that makes it a dream exhibit space for most artists. Arke’s work was part of last year’s star-studded exhibit Illumination, which featured such luminaries as Ai Weiwei, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, and Gerhard Richter. The flashiest Arke piece on display was Legende I-V, a series of five collages of Greenlandic maps and sepia-toned family snapshots layered with imported commodities such as rice, sugar, and coffee. Legende I-V is physically imposing—it dominated an entire gallery wall—and hauntingly beautiful. The foodstuffs function both symbolically and texturally, the photographs evoke the warmth of kinship, and the cartographic lines of Greenland, stamped with place names referencing colonial explorers (Peary Land, Humboldt Glacier, and Kane Bassin, for example), loom insistently over everyone.

Arke’s Arctic Hysteria is equally magnetic. The performance, which lasts six minutes, is silent and consists almost entirely of one scene: Arke crawling naked across a giant black-and-white photo of Nuugaarsuk Point, a spit of land at the terminus of a C-shaped bay. The artist lived there, outside the small town of Narsaq, Greenland, with her parents and siblings in the late 1960s. In the video, Arke strokes the artificial landscape, rolls across it, and sniffs it like an animal. Then she methodically rips the entire thing to shreds, gathers the curled shards of paper, and lets them fall across her shoulders and thighs. The intimacy of the performance and the title’s historical allusion are classic Arke.

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Historical context points to alternative interpretations. Inuit women labored at the very bottom of the social hierarchy on Peary’s expeditions and in his camps, expected to sew, fish, carry wood, and submit to the Americans’ sexual desires. Peary, for example, fathered two sons with his Inuit laundress, Ahlikasingwah. His navigator, Robert Bartlett, viewed one woman’s hysteria as simple protest, or “pure cussedness.” Accounts described women who seemed intent on escape or dissent leaping over the ship’s railings or shouting for a knife. Expedition member Donald MacMillan recounted finding a woman named Inawaho naked and screaming, presumably unaware of her surroundings and out of her mind. But as soon as MacMillan pulled out his camera, Inawaho hurled huge chunks of ice at him and later begged him to destroy the photos. Were these women, in fact, crazy? Or were they reacting perfectly rationally—even bravely—to their circumstances?

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