End Police Bias
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The King Center
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4 min read
Hope you all saw my hopeful letter to Martin, yesterday, but today I want to ask people to spend a little time further investigating the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., and challenge everyone to get busy if they are not already in furthering his precepts though activism. One of the best places to advance your education…
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Today in hundreds of cities and towns across the world transgender and gender-nonconforming people and their allies pause to honor our fallen heroes. The Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) was founded in 1998 by Gwendolyn Ann Smith—a transgender graphic designer, columnist, and activist—to memorialize the murder of Rita Hester in Allston, Massachusetts. It occurs annually on…
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Part 2: Take Heart, Evidence Pouring In Hourly
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6 min read
Yesterday, I revisited my pre-election theory that progressives and all non-Republicans will see the greater good of a Republican takeover of the Senate and their increased footprint in the House. And I promised to riff on a few memes to substantiate that soon after. (Part 1 here.) There’s nothing to fear since these election results are actually bringing…
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Ethical Prostitution
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2 min read
[pexyoutube pex_attr_src=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH4L_z7Gefo” pex_attr_width=”500″][/pexyoutube] As a follow up to yesterday’s discussion of the decriminalization of sex work, take a look at this video of a sex worker ally drilling down to the issues. While perhaps relying too much on sensational memes based on unreliable data that says most sex workers are sex-trafficked children, she makes a durable case…
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Decriminalizing Sex Work: The Work Ahead
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4 min read
Highly-acclaimed, reader-supported news site, Truthout, has once again zeroed in on a pressing matter of social justice, the continued criminalization of sex workers. Mike Ludwig‘s news analysis, well worth a full read, weaves together several different threads of this issue in terms everyone can understand. Ludwig points our attention to “a great leap forward” in New…
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Op-Ed: Culturally Inept Policing Schools Criminals
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4 min read
In our grassroots work in Washington, DC, 3 years ago, we discovered a sad reality that persists. Police training and code, cultural competency training, with additional Special Orders pertaining to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) people, and the country’s most long-standing and extensive human rights protections for the LGBT community were not enough to rid…
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Stay Informed. Stay Active.
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3 min read
We speculate that unlike the consciousness raising on gun control following the Newtown Massacre, which petered out along partisan lines since the National Rifle Association owns most of the U.S. Congress, this singular event in Ferguson will succeed in merging the message with the messenger at just the right moment. It has brought about a…
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Love Pierces Hate
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4 min read
After a week of writing about the senseless murder of Michael Brown, a young, unarmed African-Americn in Ferguson, Missouri, by a white policeman, I’ve spent the last few days reading posts we have written over the past few years, and those from other authors, condemning racism. It’s become a meditation on the racism upon…
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Jamelle Bouie Gives the Larger Picture
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4 min read
Why the Fires in Ferguson Won’t End Soon But while calm is hard to predict, one thing is clear: The events in Ferguson—from the shooting to the police response and everything since—are a product of familiar forces and stem from a familiar history. Put another way, the area’s long-bottled racial tension has burst, and it’s…
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Old Ferguson Makes New Commitments
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3 min read
VenusPlusX’s unique mix, what we mean by The New Age of Sexual Freedom, is aimed at solutions to change the state of our country, our world, through the removal of all obstacles such as racism, sexism, the worst of nationalism, and all the other “isms,” that stand in the way of Peace, universal pluralism based…