Poets Morgan Parker, Angel Nafis, and Danez Smith are on tour in Paris this month!
Samaria Rice, Tamir Rice’s mother, is interviewed at Fusion: “But when she was asked to endorse Hillary Clinton, she said, she declined. (Clinton’s campaign says it did not ask.) She despises that this is the kind of decision that comes with being a black American mother whose child has been killed by a cop.”
Tanya Walton Pratt, a federal judge in Indiana, is protecting women in her state from racist, misogynist policies being proposed by Mike Pence: “Pratt has ruled against Pence many, many times. It is clear they have differing understandings of what is constitutional and what is not. She ruled against his ban on state agencies aiding Syrian refugees seeking to resettle in the state, writing, in 36 pages,that she found his restriction of funding unconstitutional on equal protection grounds and unenforceable because withholding funds is not provided for in the Refugee Act the way it is in the Medicaid Act.”
If you like in or near a city with a street named after Martin Luther King Jr., consider helping to organize for this year’s #MLKSitIn; goals of the sit in include: “To gather people in an occupational protest on every single street named for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in America; Draw international attention to the systematic execution of Black Americans and the terrorism inflicted upon us by racist institutions; Celebrate the joy, love, and hope of our future in defiant acts of community and peace; To call everyone around the country to commit themselves in the fight to eradicate racism, sexism, queer/transphobia, xenophobia poverty, injustice, and all violations of civil and human rights and liberties.”
Two excellent poetry chapbook releases this summer from Meghan Lamb and Christine Shan Shan Hou!
Leslie Jones shared some of the barrage of racist, misogynist hate she has been receiving on Twitter, bringing attention to the regular abuses that many women, particularly women of color, are subjected to online: “These people hate themselves. You have to hate yourself to put out that type of hate. I mean, on my worst day I can’t think of this type of hate to put out. I don’t know how to feel. I’m numb. Actually numb. I see the words and pics and videos. Videos, y’all. Meaning people took time to spew hate. … Like no shame or compassion for human life. It scares the fuck out of me!”
Support Asian American Tarot: A Mental Health Project, feat. art and writing from Mimi Thi Nguyen, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Wo Chan, and many more: “In the spirit of fortune-telling practices so prevalent in our communities, we’re creating a new deck of tarot cards, featuring original art and text that work to reveal the hidden contours of our Asian American emotional, psychic, and spiritual lives, as well as the systems of violence that bear down upon them. Replacing the 22 archetypes of the traditional major arcana (e.g., the Empress, the Hierophant, the Wheel of Fortune, etc.) are figures drawn directly from Asian American life–the Migrant, the Foreigner, the Shopkeeper, the Adoptee, the Model Minority, the Desecrated Temple–that we’ve asked some of our communities’ most exciting artists, poets, and writers to reinterpret.”
The extended trailer for Ava Duvernay’s new television series Queen Sugar is now up.
Alabama now has to recognize same-sex adoption whether it likes it or not: “The decision reverses the lower court’s ruling that the adoption rights granted to a lesbian couple in Georgia had no validity in Alabama. The two women, identified only by their initials of EL and VL, were raising three biological children EL conceived while they were a couple until they separated in 2011. A Georgia court had given parental rights during that time to VL, who has no biological relationship to the children. But when she moved to Alabama and sought visitation rights, her former partner challenged her parental rights and won in front of the state supreme court.”
You can now listen to a recording of “What is Contemporary: Black Lives Matter,” which recently took place at MOCA in Los Angeles: “Following the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, Black Lives Matter organizers and community members gathered in remembrance and solidarity.”
An interview with Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes, whose novel The Sleeping World comes out in September: “Loving books makes me want to make them . . . to bring the joy, expansiveness and possibility for change I’ve felt to others.”
Muriel Lueng’s poem “World’s Tiniest Human,” at Adroit Journal: “of rosettes and rotting majesty, her throat as slim / as stem and poised to snapping. How she rattles / with each spook. She sneezes and a white feather / coffin sets to drift.”
Angela Davis’ Are Prisons Osbolete? is available as a free PDF from Féministes Radicales.
