10 Frisk Commandments
via dream hampton
Tonight at about 1am I decided to watch Slacker by Richard Linklater. I'd first heard of it years ago and have had my eye on it for a while. It was damn good: funny, riveting, and just plain smart throughout. It was set in Austin, where I visited this past March for SXSW Interactive, so it was neat to have a smidgen of context for the landscape of the film. Yeah, I was on South Congress that one time!
I really did mean to go to sleep early tonight. But I didn't, and at around 1am I started seeing hints of what's going down in Anaheim via my Twitter stream. I'd actually seen -- and even retweeted -- some very specific and worrisome info on Anaheim earlier today, but it was while I was working and trying to stay as focused as possible. Yes, I'll admit, I sometimes retweet even big deal things without getting to peruse them thoroughly. Probably not the best idea.
Anyhow, this tweet from Liz Henry tipped me off again:
It's heartbreaking and awful that these kids had to experience and witness police brutality in Anaheim. But it's also amazing to hear this group of young Latin@s of many genders speak about their experience. They were scared by what happened to them -- the girl in the preview frame was hit in the leg by a rubber bullet -- but they're not scared to speak up, to come up with their own opinions about the situation, and to demand justice. It might sound corny or trite but youth like these give me hope for our future.
I've been tempted to write here again for a while, very much so since November. It's oddly intimidating.
Transmisogyny--transphobia directed specifically and often exclusively at trans women--has felt continually rampant in many of my communities for an entire decade now.
I frequently witness transphobia against trans women expressed by people who do not similarly target trans men, thus rendering this particular expression of transphobia sexist in a somewhat traditional sense.
As I took my usual morning scroll through my Facebook feed, I saw one, then two, then more and more quotations from Maya Angelou. After the third I realized this was no fluke and most likely meant one of two things: today is her birthday and she's getting way more wonderful tributes than I've seen for her in the past; or today Maya Angelou died. I think I knew it was the latter but held out hope until I saw the first post confirming that she has died. Rest in power, Dr. Angelou.
After a webinar on blogging for social change earlier today, I found myself on the home page of my old blog, AngryBrownButch. Scrolling down the page, I was jarred to read these words from November 18, 2008:
On May 28 I started a conversation on Twitter with THEESatisfaction, musicians of whom I've been a fan for a bit, about their upcoming performance at the Allied Media Conference, which I've been deeply involved in since I first attended in 2011.