controversies
It seems every time one racially-charged incident ends, a gender or religious controversy takes its place; Ruminate on the issues dividing our nation and world.
Now What?
Now what? Changes we can make following George Floyd’s death We ask for peace and it’s quiet. We scream for justice and we’re silenced. We go for a simple walk, yet we have to run and hide. We live in the same house, yet we’re treated like guests. We do nothing wrong, yet we get framed. We do the same things as everyone else, yet we’re not treated the same. We can’t breathe— we can’t even get some air. We have had enough, and not enough has changed. Now what?
By Karim Fall5 years ago in The Swamp
I got more backlash for this photo than anything I’ve put online in 14 years.
In my 14 years online I’ve posted naked self-portraits that have been banned from Flickr, I've outraged activists with an ad campaign of stuffed animals which got pulled from a Hong Kong metro, and I've angered Italian Christians when I staged a scene of the Virgin Mary giving birth.
By Natalie Lennard5 years ago in The Swamp
Planning and traffic rules madness
Planning and traffic rule madness. A political recipe for disaster. The politicians appear to have abandoned control over a vital aspect of national life. They have been duped into allowing left wing ecology propaganda, to replace common sense and rational evaluation, they will pay for this at the ballot box.
By Peter Rose5 years ago in The Swamp
Homeless Is Where The Hatred Is
Things are cooling down and I'm struggling against a lack of will to do anything. The joys of watching corruption burn have given way to disgust as white extremists of the right and left become the focus of the Black Lives Matter movement, at least as far as the media dictates. On a smaller scale, our personal problems are far from over. These things only happened a few weeks back and the only thing that seems to have changed is a drop in the temperature:
By J. Gonzalez-Blitz5 years ago in The Swamp
More than Mattering
Black Lives Matter; we hear this sentiment daily and absorb the message to the fullest extent (well, those who care and believe so). I am so damn sick of hearing my life matters. I know my life matters, and everyone else's too. The problem is that Black lives do not just matter; they are vital. Not only did most of the United States get its infrastructure from the Black lives stolen from Africa, but we built this country for free, might I add. So please spare me the niceties. Black lives are of utmost importance. We equally enrich the environments we inhabit.
By Brandon Lee5 years ago in The Swamp
Dear South Asian People: We (Black People) Are NOT The Problem.
It is only Thursday, and yet this week alone has felt like a lifetime. Between the shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old unarmed Black father who was shot in front of his kids 7 times in the back on Sunday, or the Republican National Convention which started on Monday and has spewed hatred and fear of Black people to their primarily white Anglo base all week, this week has been soul-suckingly long already. There have been protests raging in the United States, NBA players have announced they are boycotting (striking technically) the games that were scheduled to be played and MLB and MLS teams are following suit, standing in solidarity with their athletic colleagues. And in the midst of all of this, Black people are facing another all-too familiar attack from another marginalized and racialized group of people, who have suffered similar traumas due to colonialism, white supremacy, racism and the class system. As some of you in the Black community have heard, there is a popular Indo-Caribbean restaurant that is frequented by us and recently, the manager of one of the locations who happens to be a family member of the owner of the restaurant made some extremely racist and ignorant comments on social media regarding the current state of affairs between law enforcement and the Black community. His comments have caused backlash and quite a stir, some calling for complete boycotts of their businesses both here in Toronto and in Trinidad & Tobago. As someone who has Indo-Caribbean friends, I really wanted to take a moment to address some of the history and foundation of where this stems from. It’s roots are deep in the very white supremacist, racist and anti-Black rhetoric we are currently witnessing.
By Whitney Smart5 years ago in The Swamp
The Baalei Teshuva Project: Finally Breathing
I was raised in a very secular Soviet household. I went to a Jewish day school for about three years, where I never had help with my homework. My grandma barely remembered Yiddish. Even though she’d speak to me in Yiddish and I understood fluently, my mom didn’t want her to speak to me in Yiddish. She didn’t want me going back to the roots.
By Naomi Grant5 years ago in The Swamp
Thug(s)
I remember very distinctly the first time a white person used the term "thug" to me and I knew they really meant "N*****." I was working for a Fortune 500 company in their Supply Chain division as a budding manager. I had built out and ran a home delivery program for this company and managed a P&L of about $30 million dollars annually. It was the most stressful yet rewarding time of my life. I had received Executive Leadership awards from my senior leadership team and had been recognize company wide for my contributions. Exceptional customer service skills have always been one of my strongest attributes and I prided myself on being able to negotiate and manage tough customer service situations. There were many a time where my company president sent me issues to resolve and trusted me implicitly to make decisions on what the right course of action was. I said all this not to brag in any way, but more to provide context of my work ethic and standing at this particular point in time at this company. I was well respected and had worked my ass off to be so.
By Whitney Smart5 years ago in The Swamp
WAP vs. You Shook Me All Night Song
I absolutely love music. From the moment I was born, I was unknowingly being trained in good music. Funny (and true) sidebar story: My mom was terrified of SIDS. If you are old enough to know or remember anything about the 80's, there was a period of time were there was an increase of infants dying in their sleep. They sometimes called it "crib death," but it was SIDS which stands for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, the sudden unexplained death of a child of less than one year of age. My mom had this idea that if she played music to me on the radio when I was sleeping, that somehow the music would call me back from the Light if my little baby Spirit decided it had had enough of this planet already. Irrational, I know. Makes no scientific sense, I know. Totally a mom-logic thing? Absolutely. And really kinda sweet in an odd way! But in reality, all that happened was that I was being subliminally programmed to good ass 70's and 80's music!
By Whitney Smart5 years ago in The Swamp
White Privilege is Not Just a White Thing
When I first started talking about writing this article, I was immediately hit with several white people wanting to argue that there is no such thing as white privilege, even questioning what its definition is. This piece is not about whether or what it is, but the fact that Non Black People of Color (NB POC) often are recipients of it, whether they want to be, or not. Often without even realizing it.
By Lisa LaRue-Baker5 years ago in The Swamp
