WASHINGTON DC POVERTY - A TALE OF TWO CITIES (NO REPRESENTATION):
GREAT WEALTH vs GREAT LACK.
WIDE ECONOMIC GAP CREATED BY 21st CENTURY GENTRIFICATION.
LOWER INCOME BLACKS ARE BEING PUSHED OUT OF NATION'S CAPITOL.
DC CITY GOVT LEADERS DON'T CARE & USE CITY ATTORNEYS TO SILENCE POOR BLACKS.
Sources: Washington Post, RT America, BBC News, YouTube
******As D.C. families get richer, staggering disparities persist, report finds
As the D.C. budget grows more flush and housing prices continue to soar, concentrated poverty among households with children persists in some areas, according to a report released Tuesday.
The report by a local advocacy agency found that the overall median income of D.C. families has climbed since 2010. But families living in Wards 7 and 8, the only wards east of the Anacostia River, have experienced sharp declines.
D.C. Action for Children’s annual “Ward Snapshots” report breaks down child poverty rates and family economics by ward, saying that as the city fills its coffers, it needs to ensure that families across the city benefit from it.
“As the District gets more wealthy, how is it affecting all kids?” Shana Bartley, the group’s acting executive director, said of the report. “Ward Snapshots” culled data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the D.C. Department of Health, the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education and more.
Since 2010, the number of young children living in the city has increased by 23 percent, and children younger than 5 account for nearly 40 percent of the child population. But the wards with the highest share of these young children — Wards 5, 7 and 8 — have the lowest median family incomes.
In Ward 8, for example, the median family income dropped nearly 17 percent between 2006-2010 and 2010-2015, from $28,979 to $24,096.
Likewise, in Ward 7, the median family income during those years went from $34,562 to $31,273, a nearly 10 percent drop.
By comparison, the median family income in Ward 2 jumped nearly 65 percent, from $114,752 to $189,324.
Bartley said that one factor driving these disparate incomes is that as families are priced out of neighborhoods in Wards 1 and 2, for example, they are moving to Ward 8, the city’s poorest ward.
While the overall child poverty rate has declined to 26.7 percent — a drop of three percentage points since 2010 — there has been a slight uptick in Wards 3, 4 and 8. Ward 3 had a child poverty rate of 2.9 percent in 2015, compared with Ward 8’s 49 percent. Some of the increases could be attributed to rising housing costs. Ward 3’s rate was previously 2.4 percent; Ward 8’s was 48.3 percent.
The report found that more than 40 percent of D.C. residents spend more than a third of their monthly income on rent and related costs. The number of children enrolled in Medicaid increased by 21 percent, with the largest jumps in Wards 3, 4 and 8.
Some positive trends also emerged: In Wards 7 and 8, teen pregnancy rates steadily declined between 2010 and 2015, and students’ standardized test scores there saw slight increases between 2015 and 2016.
The report does not create a new narrative in the nation’s capital: The city has long been divided by race and socioeconomics. The report suggests that the wave of wealth the city has seen in recent years — the D.C. budget has reserves totaling $2.4 billion — has not trickled to all residents equitably.
“The biggest thing for the District to be is forward thinking,” Bartley said. “We’re continuing to see a baby boom, we are seeing families laying down roots in the city, public school enrollment is increasing, but we have to make sure that there’s infrastructure in the city to support healthy growth for all families and kids in the District.”
D.C. Action for Children recommends that the city boost access to quality early-childhood care and education, use census and local demographic data to determine how to allocate the city’s budget, and put more resources toward home-visiting programs that would support maternal and child health.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser released her 2018 $13.8 billion budget earlier this month that proposes modest spending increases for affordable housing, homeless services and education.
" I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness."
ATLANTA'S DIRTY SOUTH "SECRET" IN BLACK COMMUNITIES - FREEMASONS (POWER, MONEY & SEX):
MIND CONTROL, ADULTERY, CHILD EXPLOITATION & CHILD PROSTITUTION.
Atlanta is known as "the City too busy to hate" and "the BLACK Mecca".
However aside from the Southern Hip Hop music, Successful BLACK-owned businesses and Peach-flavored ice tea, is something much more Sinister.
Atlanta's BLACK FREEMASONS and Child Exploitation!
Learn how the BLACK Freemason organization controls BLACK Men and destroys Marriages for MONEY, POWER & Illicit SEX. (see video above)
How "Dirty" is the City of ATLANTA?
Look no further than the region's BLACK FREEMASONS and their Sister organization the EASTERN STARS.
The majority of Atlanta’s BLACK male leaders, including BLACK Men who work in Corporate America, are indeed FREEMASON members. (i.e. Prince Hall Masonic lodge)
Each FREEMASON member is assigned to a Masonic lodge.
Each member pays mandatory DUES to their lodges.
The more DUES a lodge collects, the more Powerful those lodge members are.
Thus it is imperative for Atlanta’s BLACK FREEMASONS to attract new members by any means necessary.
This includes breaking up MARRIAGES by encouraging Men to commit ADULTERY with much Younger Women or Girls.
Many of these men are Cold-hearted Married BLACK men, long known for Worshipping a False GOD......Engaging in frequent Adulterous acts......doing absolutely anything for MONEY and POWER.
Atlanta’s BLACK FREEMASONS use DECEPTION……POWER……MONEY…..INFLUENCE to Control Poor BLACK people and POLITICS.
CHILD PROSTITUTION is also linked to Atlanta's BLACK FREEMASONS.
** Related Topics: (VIDEO)
Secret society
14th century
Illuminati - Egypt
33 degrees
Blood oaths; must Denounce GOD Almighty
Secret Ceremonies and Masonic Lodges
Prince hall Masonic lodge - sweet auburn street in ATLANTA
Mind Control
Very Strong Suggestions
Adultery is strongly encouraged & Multiple Divorces are common
Child Prostitution
Child Exploitation
No Women allowed *(Sinister Sister organization - EASTERN STARS)
A female defendant is escorted into the courtroom with shackles around her ankles, making it difficult to walk.
Dressed in a jail-issued jumpsuit and flip-flops, she takes a seat at the appointed table up front, until the judge is gaveled in and we all rise.
As a newspaper reporter for more than 20 years in Atlanta, I'd observed this scene before. But this time, something was different.
This defendant was chewing on her finger, had her hair pulled back in a tiny pigtail, and spoke in a high-pitched voice.
She was 10.
She had been in and out of an Atlanta jail for months, as had her sister, because she was an alleged prostitute, a chronic runaway and no one knew what to do with her.
When her probation officer asked whether the defendant could address the court, the judge nodded yes, and the little girl rose from the defense table.
Her head bowed, she quietly told the judge she wanted to go home. Then, as she rubbed her eyes with balled up fists, she began to cry.
Nearly 15 years ago, I wrote a series of stories called "Selling Atlanta's Children" about child prostitution for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and I started it with that courtroom scene.
That little girl was a metaphor for everything I had learned through my reporting.
By meeting and interviewing her, her 11-year-old sister and other girls, I realized: There's something wrong with this picture.
In 2000, I got a call in the newsroom from Stephanie Davis, a woman I'd never met, who identified herself as director of the Atlanta Women's Foundation.
She told me there was a problem with childhood prostitution in Atlanta, that she knew I'd written about children's issues before, and that she wanted me to meet with some people who could describe in detail what was happening.
I was working on another series of stories, but I agreed to the meeting.
A week or so later, I met with a group of women that included a Fulton County Juvenile Court probation officer and some child advocates.
They told me that a growing number of young girls -- early to late teens -- were coming into juvenile court charged with shoplifting or, more commonly, running away -- an offense that applies only to minors.
Upon questioning by the judge, they learned that the girls were surviving on the streets as prostitutes under the tutelage of men who housed, fed and clothed them and, in exchange, sold them to other men for sex. I asked for numbers, but they couldn't provide them.
I asked for access to the girls.
They said that because of confidentiality, that could not happen.
I told them I wouldn't use their names, but I wouldn't do the story without meeting some of the girls involved.
I also said I needed some way of determining how big a problem this was.
Back then, when people spoke of sex trafficking, I assumed they were referring to an international trade -- the phenomenon of young women from China or Thailand or some other country being brought to the United States, then forced to pay back their transportation fees through sexual slavery.
But these women I'd just met were telling me it was a homegrown problem. I wanted them to prove it.
When I searched for articles about child prostitution as a homegrown industry in other cities, I found only one story about an American-based prostitution ring that had exploited local minors somewhere in the Midwest.
One of the first people I met was Fulton County Juvenile Judge Nina Hickson.
Through her, I began to see what was wrong with this picture -- what was wrong that day I sat in her courtroom and watched that little girl with the pigtail cry.
In Georgia in 2000, while children were being arrested, put in jail, and chained like the worst of criminals, the men selling them and having sex with them were rarely arrested.
Back then, there were no reliable statistics on the number of prostituted children.
While the number of 300,000 nationwide was bandied about, I researched the genesis of that number and learned it was wildly speculative and had no basis in fact.
The best I could do was pull the numbers of adults who had gone to prison for prostitution in Georgia versus the number who had gone to prison for pimping.
From 1972 to 1999, I found that 401 adults -- almost all women -- had been incarcerated for prostitution.
Not one person had gone to prison for the crime of pimping. That told me something.
I remember the explanation given to me at the time by Mike Light, then the Department of Corrections spokesman and a former parole officer. "I think there was an unwitting bias that the woman was the perpetrator," he said. "She was the one out having sex.
...The pimp was just collecting the money."
Because the numbers were so unreliable, my newspaper agreed to do a national survey of juvenile judges. We enlisted the help of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, who urged enough judges to respond that we were able to get a reliable sample.
A hidden problem
Child prostitution is a hidden problem that was -- and still is -- difficult to count.
Unlike adult women, these children -- such as that 10-year-old girl -- rarely came into the criminal justice system charged with prostitution.
Rather they came in under a host of other charges, such as running away. Juvenile judges were often the first to identify them as sexually exploited minors who were working as prostitutes.
And according to our survey, their numbers were growing.
Almost one in three of the juvenile judges surveyed said they had seen an increase in the past five years in the number of child prostitutes coming into their courtrooms.
Rural judges participating in the survey reported the sharpest increase, with the typical rural judge seeing an average of three youths a month involved in prostitution.
Our survey suggested, however, that even judges viewed the problem differently, depending on their gender.
Among female juvenile justices, 85% estimated they saw one or more child prostitutes a month, compared with 68% of male judges.
The female judges were also more likely than male judges to complain that police weren't aggressive enough in going after pimps and customers.
Many judges participating in our survey said they believed the laws should be changed, mandating harsher penalties for pimps and "johns."
One judge said the adults got away with exploiting children because "people don't believe children, particularly if they're a naughty, bad, unpleasant child."
A majority of the judges said their communities lacked services for child prostitutes in need of being "deprogrammed," with 10 times as many judges saying they should be treated as victims rather than criminals.
Atlanta police said at the time it was a lot harder to arrest pimps than prostitutes.
As undercover officers, they could pluck the prostitutes off the streets as the girls or women worked the "track," such as Metropolitan Parkway, or turned tricks at strip clubs, where underaged girls illegally danced.
The PIMPS were more hidden.
Even if police were able to make an arrest, prosecutors said it was difficult to build a case against the men.
They needed witnesses, but the general rule was that prostitutes didn't testify against their boss, the PIMP, out of reluctance or fear.
The problem, Judge Hickson said at the time, was that police and prosecutors often failed to distinguish between prostitutes who were adults and those who were children.
The children who were coming into her courtroom weren't seen as victims by law enforcement, she said. "They're seen as consenting participants."
Partly in response to that perception, I told her I needed to find a girl 12 or younger who was allegedly being prostituted.
I felt if I could paint a picture of a child who was being prostituted, as opposed to a teenager, the exploitative nature of this problem would become more real to our readers.
I told her I would not use any names without her approval, as I understood the dangerous lives these young people were leading.
Eventually, after she contacted other judges familiar with stories I'd done involving child victims, I think she decided it was worth the risk.
She called me one day and said, "What about a 10-year-old?" Soon after, I was in her courtroom when they brought in the little girl.
The judge explained that the last thing she wanted to do with this child was to keep her behind bars, which is where her 11-year-old sister had been waiting for three weeks. "But I've got to make sure she's safe," the judge said.
There was just nowhere to put children like these because of a lack of children's programs in Georgia.
There were plenty of beds for bad children needing punishment, but practically none for young exploited victims needing help.
At the court hearing, Hickson was clearly frustrated.
She accused child welfare officials of not doing enough to find some place to put the two sisters other than jail. The probation officer complained they had done nothing to get the girls' mother into drug treatment.
Hickson said she had never intended to keep them locked up more than a few days, and she was angry she had had to schedule this hearing to force the child welfare officials to act.
They told the judge they worried about sending the girls home to their mother, whose life was controlled by drugs.
When the child told the judge she wanted to go home, Hickson said to her, "I don't want you locked up either. But I'm also concerned about your safety and whether you're going to stay with your mom. Are you going to stay at your mother's?"
"Yes, ma'am," the child said.
After the hearing, the judge took me back to her chambers where she allowed me to interview the little girl. Her eyes red from crying, the child said she was sorry for what she had done.
She said if she could, she would "change back the hand of time."
She said a relative's boyfriend had led the sisters into prostitution. At first he "was buying us stuff." She said she realized something was wrong "because of what he wanted in return." He wanted money "by my prostituting."
"He forced me. He wouldn't let me go." She said he took her sister and her to a hotel on Fulton Industrial Boulevard in Atlanta.
As she sat hunched over with her hands partly hiding her face, she said softly that he threatened to kill her if she left. "He'd pull my hair, and he punched me." She was very frightened of him.
She said she would like to tell other girls her age, "Stay in school.
Don't waste your life on something like this. Some people have caught HIV and AIDS."
She said she wanted to go back to school.
Her elementary school had a mentoring program.
And then this 10-year-old little girl -- with no hope and no one in her life who loved and cared for her -- said that more than anything, she wanted a mentor. "It would help me be better off in life," she said. "Much better than I am."
That day, Hickson ordered that both girls be returned home and without electronic monitors, as child welfare officials had requested.
Three weeks later, the 10-year-old ran away again.
Eventually police picked her up and returned her to the youth jail, where she remained while officials tried to figure out what to do with her.
"It's not the judge's fault," Alesia Adams said at the time. Adams was head of Victims of Prostitution, a newly formed program to help children like the 10-year-old. "It's not anybody's fault.
There's just no place for these kids to go."
In the past 15 years, I've thought of that child, as well as the other girls I met and profiled for the newspaper series. I've wondered what happened to them. The 10-year-old would be 25 today. If she's alive.
Changing industry, changing laws
Since I wrote that series, a lot has changed. And a lot hasn't.
Soon after my stories ran in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, people such as Hickson, Stephanie Davis and Alesia Adams convinced the Georgia Legislature to change state law so that pimping minors was no longer a misdemeanor but a felony, with prison sentences of up to 20 years, depending on the child's age.
It was a start.
Prosecutors such as Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard called child prostitution possibly "one of the largest problems facing our young people today." He said more than a new law was needed, and he began more aggressively prosecuting men who were exploiting minors while calling on police to more aggressively identify and arrest them.
The Atlanta Women's Foundation set up "Angela's Fund" to raise money to help children exploited as prostitutes. Soon Angela's House was born as a residential safe house for a small number of children victimized by commercial sexual exploitation.
While Angela's House no longer exists, eventually two other safe houses have taken its place, thanks in part to a growing number of individuals and organizations concerned about the problem, such as youthSpark, Street Grace and Wellspring Living.
Each year, these organizations promote a "Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children Lobby Day" to continue calling attention to the problem.
In 2011, they succeeded in winning passage of House Bill 200:
Georgia's Human Trafficking Law, which again increased penalties for trafficking, required training for the proper response by law enforcement and emphasized the need to treat those who were being commercially exploited as victims rather than criminals.
This year, Gov. Nathan Deal of Georgia signed two new measures, both sponsored by Sen. Renee Unterman, a Republican from Buford.
Senate Resolution 7 would permit an annual $5,000 fee paid by strip clubs to go toward housing, counseling and other services for victims of child prostitution, if voters approve.
The resolution sets up a statewide referendum that will be on the ballot in November 2016.
Senate Bill 8, known as Rachel's Law and the Safe Harbor Law, lays out how the money would be collected and spent.
It also ensures that sexually exploited youths are treated as victims, not criminals, specifically stating that children who have been sexually exploited may no longer be charged with prostitution.
Hickson, today an ethics officer for the city of Atlanta, was there for the bills' signing.
"The level of awareness certainly has increased," she said in a recent interview.
She believes the perception of human trafficking has also changed and is no longer viewed exclusively as a problem among immigrants from other countries.
"I think people today understand it is a homegrown problem," she said. "You have people acknowledging that the problem exists in our metro area, and the children need to be treated as children with problems as opposed to problem children."
But, she said, it remains critical to keep the public glare on the problem.
From the streets to the INTERNET
And that's not easy, because if this societal problem was hidden before, it's gone underground today.
INTERNET and cell phones have changed everything, according to Hickson and law enforcement officers.
While young girls can still be seen walking the "track" in some well-known areas of Fulton and DeKalb counties, in the core of the Atlanta metro area, they are as likely to be advertised on the INTERNET.
A number of girls and women have set up their own ads that are prominently displayed on a plethora of websites, one of the biggest being "Backpage.com," which filled the gap after Craigslist was sued and in 2010 shut down its money-making adult services section.
Backpage's escort and body-rubs section brings in millions in revenue each month, according to a 2013 report by an advertising consultant company, the AIM Group.
Backpage "has succeeded Craigslist as the nation's leading publisher of online prostitution advertising," the report said.
(Earlier this summer, Visa, American Express and MasterCard all cut their ties with the website.) Calls and emails to representatives of Backpage were not returned.
To understand how endemic the Internet is to the world of prostitution, consider the website "The Erotic Review," or TER.
It has been around so long, there are johns who make it their business to go see escort after escort, then review them on TER.
They call themselves "hobbyists," and they post explicit descriptions of the services others can expect from a girl, whether the girl has a bad attitude or whether she's posted a picture that makes her look better than she does in person. Attempts to reach TER have been unsuccessful.
Pimps who once exploited girls by making them walk the track can now troll the Internet for girls who are going it alone, sometimes luring them into escort services with an offer of higher salaries, payment to cover the cost of their ads and an apartment where they can rendezvous with their clients.
That means that for the 14-year-old girl from an impoverished area who is just getting started and doesn't understand what she's getting into, "a pimp will come along and say, 'Instead of you staying out there in the wind or the cold, I'll put you in a warm apartment and you'll make a lot,' " says a seasoned law enforcement officer and former vice and narcotics detective.
"Anyone who runs an escort agency and gets a cut from your profit prostituting, they're pimping."
As prostitution has moved indoors and underground, the community is less likely to see it on the streets and complain to police. So there's less involvement by police, who are driven to respond by the community's complaints.
That's bad for the young victims, the officer says, as well as for the community because the sexual exploitation of underage youth remains a booming business.
He worries that while demand remains strong, too many young girls -- and some boys -- are lured into prostitution out of view of the public and police and without understanding the consequences.
"The biggest impact is on the girls themselves," he says. "It has a psychological, moral impact on a girl, and she doesn't realize what she's sacrificing. A lot of these girls become drug addicts.
This is happening all over Atlanta.
After 10 years, if you survive the diseases, a potential criminal record, and the psychological toil, you suddenly realize you have no education or marketable skills.
"Once you lose your looks, you're back in the same place you started in. Any time you take a productive young person out of the mainstream of society and point her toward a criminal enterprise, which prostitution is, that's never good."
Hickson agrees.
She said that while she is hopeful about the new laws, the growing awareness and the numbers of people and organizations fighting against child prostitution, she worries there's a "flavor of the month" aspect; that child prostitution is a "topic that's in style."
"If this is a shallow issue for people, it will dissipate when the next issue comes along," she said. Fifteen years ago, I wrote that Hickson "looks into the eyes of children who have been prostituted and she sees nothing. No hope. No dreams. No more childhood."
Like that 10-year-old girl.
Some years after that child had stood before Hickson, the former judge got word about what had happened to her and her older sister.
For a while, they were in the care of the Department of Family and Children Services because of their mother's ongoing drug addiction.
But at some point, their mother got into a drug treatment program and eventually the girls went home.
"It was touch and go," Hickson said. "But last I heard, they were in school."
In the meantime, Hickson and a number of others remain committed to rescuing young girls and boys from the destruction of sexual exploitation.
Top of their agenda now is to ensure that voters support the $5,000 annual fee on strip clubs in next year's referendum.
"We have to remain vigilant because the adult entertainment industry has deep pockets," Hickson said.
"This is long-term work. There has to be a level of commitment."
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin found a moment Thursday during a wide-ranging news conference to offer a strong endorsement of Republican front-runner Donald Trump, calling the billionaire presidential candidate the “absolute leader in the presidential race.”
Putin consecrated a budding international bromancebetween the two men as he commented on the U.S. campaign for the White House, saying that Russia would work with “whomever the American voters choose” but expressing special praise for Trump.
Trump said in October that he would “get along very well” with Putin and applauded the Russian leader for his intervention against the Islamic State in Syria. But until Thursday, Trump’s praise had gone unreciprocated.
“He’s a very lively man, talented without doubt,” Putin said when journalists approached him after the news conference and asked about Trump. “He’s saying he wants to go to another level of relations — closer, deeper relations with Russia. How can we not welcome that? Of course we welcome that.”
It was a moment of levity during a more than three-hour news conference that touched on Russia’s battered economy, Russia’s intervention in Syria, tense relations with Turkey over the downing of a Russian warplane, and the smoldering conflict in Ukraine.
LGBT'S MOVEMENT BLACK HATEFUL FEMINISTS: (CHARLOTTE)
NOT ALL BLACK FEMINISTS USE HATE & RETALIATION TO ADVANCE THEIR AGENDA.
What purpose do BLACK Women serve in the FEMINIST Movement?
How EFFECTIVE is the role of BLACK FEMINISTS if they are spreading HATE?
How EFFECTIVE can BLACK FEMINISTS be as LEADERS if they are using their Authority and Power to inflict RETALIATION upon people who disagree with their agenda?
I call myself a Black Feminist and hold that label dearly, but the naming happened after the fact. I was a black feminist from the moment, as a child, I recognized the domestic violence was gendered and somehow seen as acceptable because of this.
When neighbours called the police to our back-to-back terrace in what is now the red light district of Bradford, I would feel anger that my mother's fear of the police and what they stood for took precedence over her own safety.
As a Nigerian immigrant whose abuser had full control of her documentation and the processes through which she had managed to remain in the country, my mother believed that speaking truthfully to the police was not a choice she could make.
As I grew, my childish anger gave way to a recognition that my mother was a Black woman caught in her own particular understanding of what it meant during the 80s and 90s to be Black and a woman in Britain: a place where over half the population agreed that we lived in a racist society; a place where immigration was (and continues to be) seen as a damaging factor in British life; a place so hostile to her presence that a walk home from work resulted in racist abuse so regular that it wasn't worth mentioning.
Through the work of feminists looking at race, class, disability, sexuality and nationality, I came to understand my mother as a person who was, as we all are, constructed by social and cultural forces beyond her control.
What a relief it was to discover that in "feminism" you could find a place that collated all the experiences of women like my mother – women who were, and continue to be, routinely ignored by the dominant feminist movement.
Within the media, and indeed the movement, there has been much celebration of our feminist resurgence. Yet our success is being marred by infighting. White, middle-class and young women are often seen as the ones spearheading this new wave of activity.
Their high-profile campaigns – to have women on banknotes, challenge online misogyny and banish Page 3, for example – though necessary and praiseworthy, do not reflect the most pressing needs of the majority of women, black and minority-ethnic women included. The problem is not that these campaigns exist, but that they are given a focus and attention that overshadows other work feminists are engaged with.
Organisations such as Women Asylum Seekers Together, which has groups in London, Liverpool, Leeds, Cardiff and Manchester, are not only meeting to support and empower themselves through their shared experience.
They are also working on challenging gender discrimination within the UK immigration system – a system that can still ask whether a rape victim had adequately resisted her rapist, or whether a trafficked woman had enjoyed her work as a prostitute.
Women from countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo – which the UN calls "the rape capital of the world" – are met by a culture of disbelief that sees them as asylum claimants to be interrogated and caught out rather than as vulnerable and in need of support. This is a feminist issue, too, but the movement is largely silent on the plight of such women.
Or organisations such as Manchester's Lesbian Immigration Support Group, which offers practical help to members with asylum applications based on sexuality. Or the London-based black feminist organisation Imkaan, which is working in partnership with Women's Aid to support and maintain specialist services dealing with violence against women for black and refugee women. In these times of austerity, the ability to save refuges from closure is no small feat and should be celebrated.
Yet such groups do not make the headlines or gain enough support despite the profound change in lives that they enable.
The majority of women both in the UK and across the globe do not live lives that are negatively impacted by sexism alone. Because of this reality, the black feminist concept of intersectionality, the idea that oppressions criss-cross and compound each other, has been seismic.
Through it black feminists have been able to point out the failures of the wider feminist movement – which lie in its continual failure to capture and reflect the extreme differences in how women live their lives. That we sometimes point this out with a lack of patience has garnered more column inches than the critiques we are making.
This is saddening but predictable. It is a type of quibbling that enables procrastination in the matter of the difficult work of turning feminism into feminisms – something more representative of our wonderful variety.
It is ironic that even some within the feminist movement, when engaging with criticism from black feminist quarters, use the stereotype of the angry and humourless black woman. At the black feminist meetings I attend we are angry with a lot of things, because – shock horror – we live in a world where racism, sexism and economic inequality abound.
Our meetings are, however, also filled with laughter and a deep love for having a space in which much that is said is empathised with, not minimised, questioned and treated defensively.
I call myself a black feminist because I am unwilling to be silent and complicit.
The Black feminist academic Sara Ahmed puts it well when she writes that "sometimes you can only stand up by standing firm. Sometimes you can only hold on by becoming stubborn".
Emotionally, Black feminism reminds black women that the racism and sexism they experience on a daily basis are not a figment of their individual imaginations but are real and structural.
Critically, black feminism is championing a more nuanced understanding of how oppression and privilege operate.
We, all of us, must understand that at the level of the individual, we can at differing points occupy positions of privilege. I am a black woman from a working-class background. I also have qualifications from elite universities that mean I am able to access a career, friendships and a lifestyle my 18-year-old self would never have imagined. When and where I experience privilege or oppression changes from day to day, hour to hour.
Though women who live in the "real world" – ie outside academia – may not bandy the word intersectionality, it nevertheless speaks to our lives within it. This is not to deny that power can be invested in language and that for some the term is perhaps alienating. It would be great if we had a word already in existence that conveys the complex and complicated nature of oppression.
We do not.
The language that we currently use serves to compartmentalise inequalities. It won't do. I am less interested in whether feminists choose to use the word or replace it with (no less academic) phrases such as multiple oppressions. What is of greater concern is how we work to empower women whose lives are impacted by a number of inequalities.
Despite prevailing misconceptions, intersectionality is not merely concerned with the academic; it is and always has been about tangible positive change for those who so easily slip through the gaps of popular thinking and attention.
Organisations such as Southall Black Sisters, which are committed to meeting the needs of black and minority-ethnic women, did not exist in my hometown. My mother remained locked in an abusive relationship, living in shame and fear, isolated and helpless. I cannot dare to imagine what difference such a group might have made to her as a young black woman. It is too painful to think of what could have been.
For the feminist movement, it is also best to not repeat the mistakes of the past. It would demonstrate an inexcusable carelessness for the lives of women like my mother who are too often silenced and unheard.
• This article was amended for legal reasons on 9 December
OFFICER DARREN WILSON CALLS FOR "PEACE" IN FERGUSON:
SAY WHAT?? DIDN'T HE CREATE THIS CHAOS??
The same Adult Man who pumped 8 Bullets into an Unarmed 18-yr old Big BLACK Kid and left this BLACK kid's body lying in the Street for hours, just because WILSON felt this BLACK Kid did not move out of the Street quickly enough.........
Gov. Jay Nixon (D) said at a news conference Tuesday that he would deploy hundreds more National Guard soldiers to Ferguson in response to overnight violence throughout the area. The additional troops will be stationed throughout the community to protect homes and businesses, he added.
“Last night criminals intent on lawlessness and destruction terrorized this community, burning buildings, firing guns, vandalizing store fronts and looting family businesses, many for the second time,” he said.
Nixon said there were already more than 700 troops in the area, but that number would increase to “more than 2,200 in the region.”
I RESPECT SHARPTON BUT HE NEEDS TO ALLOW NEW YOUNG BLOOD TO STEP UP AND LEAD.
SHARPTON CAN REMAIN IN THE MOVEMENT BUT HE SHOULD NOT LEAD IT.
WE NEED LONG TERM ECONOMIC BOYCOTTS AND PEACEFUL PROTESTS ALL OVER THE USA UNTIL CHANGE OCCURS.
TALK IS CHEAP WE NEED ACTION……..JOBS………SMALL BUSINESSES……..EQUAL JUSTICE.
Long time Self-Appointed Civil Rights Leader AL SHARPTON should NOT be allowed to LEAD this New Racial Justice MOVEMENT in the United States of America.
Although I may NOT have always agreed with AL SHARPTON'S Motives, I do appreciate his Voice but now he needs to fall back and make way for some New, YOUNGER LEADERS to take charge of this MOVEMENT.
If SHARPTON wants to remain in the MOVEMENT than be a MENTOR but don't try to LEAD because his LEADERSHIP days are over.
Older Civil Rights LEADERS are often Stubborn and Stuck in their ways.
Older Civil Rights LEADERS are often NOT as Open-Minded and Open to Effective CHANGE as Younger people are.
Older Civil Rights LEADERS are often too entrenched and Sold-out to CORPORATE MONEY to remain Effective.
What worked 20 years ago will NOT work today because the World has Changed and INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM has grown Worse!
The 21st Century BLACK Community needs NEW, YOUNG LEADERSHIP like the FLORIDA DREAM DEFENDERS and Mayor BILL DE BLASIO of NEW YORK CITY.
Dream Defenders plan rally against shooting of unarmed Michael Brown
UPDATE: Monday, Nov 24, 2014; 9:26 p.m.
The grand jury reached the decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in August. Dream Defenders are set to march at 10 p.m. at the Civic Center.
UPDATE: 6 p.m.
Tallahassee's Dream Defender's changed the time and location of their rally to 9 p.m. at the Civic Center.
Lead Organizer Brian Marshall said they will hold the rally regardless of the verdict.
---
The grand jury reached the decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in August. Dream Defenders are set to march at 10 p.m. at the Civic Center.
Tallahassee’s Dream Defenders say they will hold a peaceful rally, marching from the Civic Center at 10 p.m.
In addition to the situation in Ferguson, Dream Defenders are rallying against other police brutality and race issues in Tallahassee, including the tasing of 61-year-old, unarmed Viola Young last month. They are also rallying for justice for Duane Strong, an 18-year-old shot and killed by police from inside his car at Cheek's nightclub in Tallahassee.
Welcome to the BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ Blog. (Established 2008)
My name is Laurel. (Author & Publisher)
I Blog with a focus on POLITICS, Business, and occasionally Entertainment.
FACTS ABOUT LAUREL:
Wife,
Mother of a U.S. Soldier,
Sister,
Woman of GOD,
Loyal Friend,
Creative,
Blood-related to a nationally known Charlotte Politician.
Black Female, Intelligent,
Married,
Love to Travel,
Credentialed by the RNC and DNC.
Political Blogger/ Commentator
Grassroots Activist,
PROFESSIONAL STATUS:
Credential Political Blogger/ Commentator,
Registered Independent Voter
Original Native of BROOKLYN, NY
Currently reside in CHARLOTTE, NC
I’m Nice but don’t get it twisted because my Mind is Sharp!
Since You’ve Chosen to Visit and Read the Contents of this Blog by Personal Choice, and of Your Own Free Will,
Please don’t ask me to Compensate you for Expressing individual commentary/ Posted Articles, which are protected by the First Amendment, citing Freedom of Speech & Freedom of Expression.
No Intentionally Malicious Slander, Libel or Defamation of Character content will be published and I will always Credit all Sources.
NOTE TO ALL ELECTED OFFICIALS, APPOINTED OFFICIALS & PUBLIC FIGURES:
Per the Landmark U.S. Supreme Court Case: 1964 case of New York Times v. Sullivan………
The Public has a Right to Criticize the People who Govern them, so the least Protection from Defamation is given to Public Officials. When officials are accused of something that involves their behavior in office, they have to prove all of the above elements of defamation and they must also prove that the defendant acted with “actual malice.” (For a definition of actual malice, see the “History of Defamation and the First Amendment, below.”)
People who aren’t Elected but who are Still Public Figures because they are influential or famous — like Actors, Actresses, Movie Stars, Singers & Entertainers, Journalists, TV Hosts, Bloggers, etc., — also have to Prove that Defamatory statements were made with Actual Malice, in most cases.
To the Associated Press and other Media Organizations:
When I use your Content Links., I’m also citing the Fair Use Doctrine (Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107) for further Copyright permission.
Posts and Links published on Black Political Buzz are not endorsed by Black Political Buzz Blog Author Laurel’s Employer, nor the Employers of other Black Political Buzz employees.
This includes Links, Posts and Comments posted on Black Political Buzz’s Facebook and Twitter account pages.
Comments, Links and Opinions of site visitors are Independently-Owned and not endorsed by Black Political Buzz employees, Blog Author Laurel or Laurel’s Employer.)
(No Personal Offense intended) Please know that Black Political Buzz is not responsible for nor do I endorse Requests for Donations from Third Parties on this Blog.
I will Only Endorse Requests for Donations made on behalf of BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ Blog for Business Purposes & Operating Expenses.
I will also Only Endorse Requests for Donations on behalf of Legitimate Politicians and Legitimate Political Candidates. PERIOD!!
If anyone else or another Organization wishes to post a link to Request Donations, I am NOT endorsing ANY of those Requests!
Unless I receive a personal Request to do so and I have Professionally Confirmed that the Third Party Organization or Charity is indeed a Legitimate Entity.
NOTE: Anyone who chooses to give to any Third Party Organization NOT Endorsed by BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ is doing so at his or her own risk.
BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ does NOT Discriminate against Politicians, Political Candidates, Organizations or Charities based on Race, Color, Nationality, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Religion, Faith, Disability, Political Affiliation, Creed, Education, Social Status, Age.
This disclaimer applies to ANY and All requests for Donations on this Blog. Thanks for understanding. Again No Personal Offense intended.
For Story Tips….Corrections…….. or Requests for Endorsements:
Please contact me via e-mail: blackpoliticalbuzz@gmail.com
or via my Facebook page: facebook.com/blackpoliticalbuzz
Thanks for stopping by
God Bless
Laurel @BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ
LINKS: POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE & INFORMATIONAL SITES
.jpg)
