#media is so intertwined in american culture that statements like that are dangerous

[the-wretched-and-joyful]

Hi! So do you think that he was just taking his time to figure out how to respond to this and that it was okay that he was quiet for a while? Because I literally just reblogged something like this and got attacked. I hope I didn't accidentally offend anyone with it. What's your take on it? If you don't mind me asking :)

I don't mind at all, in fact than you so much for asking. I've been meaning to go on a rant anyways. You just gave me a perfect chance.

I think it was perfectly fine that he was taking his time to figure out how to respond to this. Cause this movement is not lightweight. The BLM movement and the activity we are seeing right now is going to be significant in the coming times. And we can not forget that any wrong statements made especially by a guy like Hozier with a massive platform can be dangerous to the movement. Now is the time to educate ourselves, know exactly how to fight this and succeed in this fight. And that's why i think it is wise of him to take time talk to the activists who can educate him properly and then move.

Now, we come to him being quiet part. The thing is he has never been quiet. Through his music and his interviews he has always expressed his support and his thoughts on such issues. He has always said that his music is influenced and inspired by black artists and their art. He has always been an ally. It's not as if his entire career he has never once spoken any words on this. He has. And what astonishes me is that until the protests started, we were all content on glossing over this fact. Everytime he waved a flag on his stage, whether it was an LGBTQ+ flag, or BLM flag, we cheered "yes we stan a fae prince" and moved on. I don't think in my short time in this fandom I've ever seen anyone actively discussing about his inspirations such as Nina Simone (who he mentions in almost every interview when asked about what inspired him) Mavis Staples and such. Now I'm not saying no one is talking about this, but till now I've not seen anyone actively discuss on it, sadly.

Now, when the active protests started, i was active on twitter, and my timeline was full of all the messages and people's opinions on this matter and so on and so forth. But due to mental health issues, i went on a break. And logged out. I only logged in a few days later seeing that people have started to attack Him, (and no I won't be calling it a "call out" cause some of those tweets were not a call out) for being quiet. And it both hurt me and surprised me. It was a clear demonstration of how little we as a fan base trusted him. He is known for being eloquent, and choosing the right words to express the right sentiments. And eloquence in matters you are not well educated on takes time. We can't forget he is a white guy, from an entirely other side of the pond. And we can guess that He has limited idea on American system, its institutionalised racism and how politics is intertwined with it. So for him to make a rash statement would be unwise. So instead of making rash moves, he chose to share the resources, helpful links for donations, and such. And for that he was called out and attacked and 'FANS' almost went ahead and cancelled him. In fact i even remember seeing someone replying to his tweet asking for him to reveal how much exactly did he donate, which is straight up disrespectful.

I also want to talk about the "performative" part he added which i feel is the perfect and subtle call out to the criticism he received for being 'quiet' at the beginning. It was an important part cause celebrity social media does take an active part of this performative culture. On my end of the pond many celebrities have taken part in this performative support culture which is harmful. Cause it not only takes away little bits of spotlight from the movement itself, but these celebs actually capitalize on the movement, which is extremely harmful to the movement. And it is a good and kind of obvious thing that He is aware of that and won't say or do anything that perpetuates this "performative support and ally"culture

And now that he has finally made a statement, all those fans who apparently called him out, are now either prostate on the ground or going "yes we are so glad our call out made him give a statement and do something". LIKE, NO. HE IS NOT DOING THIS CAUSE YOU IDIOTS CALLED HIM OUT AND THREATENED TO CANCEL HIM. BUT BECAUSE IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

Fans need to understand that there is a limit. A celeb they love and adore is still a human being, and they make mistakes, have a learning curve to go through in their life to become better versions of themselves. And that takes time and patience. Calling someone out on their mistakes is fine. But attacking them for not reacting to something the way WE want them to, cancelling them out (don't even get me started on this fucking cancel culture) is not a sign of maturity, at least on our part. We should've shown our trust in him, that he was going to come through, we should've waited to see what he does. It disgusts me how hypocritical some 'fans' are being, who were almost on the verge of cancelling him out and now once again worship him because he made a statement they liked.

Thank you for asking this. I've wanting to do a post on this anyways. And if anyone wants to further discuss this in a peaceful and respectful way, my inbox is open. But i swear to gods is anyone tries to be disrespectful then I'll go off. I have low tolerance for disrespect..

#Hozier #andrew hozier byrne #hozier fanfic #hozier memes #hozier nfwmb #take me to church! #in a week #in the woods #wasteland baby! #moment's silence #Anya answers #anon love #love anon #important

[collatedblogposts]

JOURNALISM AND READING BY HANS KHO

"Reading is an intimate act, perhaps more intimate than any other human act." Words, beautifully woven by none other than Harold Brodkey himself, from his article " Reading, The Most Dangerous Game." He was an American Short-story writer and novelist, famous for his command of the conversation, and words woven thematically complex to encapsulate his readers into his work. An in-depth read about his work "Reading, The Most Dangerous Game" dated 24th of November, the year 1985, would provide us a journey that would further prove how Brodkey can masterfully exhibit his command of words.

Reading is meticulous obscurity that brings together comprehension, viewpoint, opinion, and anything else that elicits a sense of sapient excitation like no other act. It's an exhilarating experience that intertwines an individual in such a way that even when a group reads the same article, narrative, novel, excerpt, and so on, they'll have different reactions, bringing the concept of a thematic expression of individuals to a new level from a single source. Brodkey, our author, expresses his dissatisfaction with a salvo of fascinating comments bolstered by his unrivaled skill and technique, all drawn from his boundless store. One of which stated how unimaginable it is to teach an introductory text in school further elevates the obscurity of reading to heights that were "supposedly" hampered by institutions that appear to perpetuate a placated manner of teaching that hinders the experience and reality that comes with reading. Grasping this concept prompts his proposal regarding a person's originality in reading to accommodate, satiate, and fill the bland and dull notion of school standards and so on. "Reading always leads to personal metamorphosis," and "A good book leads to alterations in one's sensibility and often becomes a premise in one's beliefs," are two of his statements that propagate his persuasive allures and debunks on how certain institutions "help" us understand and "consume" make-believe ideologies sprouting from a read, when, in fact, the read itself is the obscurity wherein a reader dives and drowns himself with the environment. It is genuinely obscure, for it is a pleasure of ecstasy and inebriation that they deem tasty and sufficient to their senses that easily elate the clamored commoners for the joy of euphoria and inebriation that they feel pleasant and adequate to their minds.

Journalism may have to be related to the challenges and significance that reading- as an art- has experienced.  “The crisis of journalism, therefore, includes both a diagnosis of a series of problems that journalism faces as well as an opportunity for all interested parties to apply their judgment to move forward”. Despite this, however, it has still paved the way to give media consumers an opportunity to be logical and critical in terms of their rationality. There were four crises that Journalism has to deal with:

1.       Time - The notion of ‘timeless time’ applied to journalism: 24/7 news cycle

2.       Money - The financial crisis of journalism may be up to an extent be attributed to the internet.

3.       Autonomy - The problem with journalism is that, in fact, it is dominated by the market, while in our media-saturated age, it tends to dominate other fields, such as science, law, politics, etc., dictating the conditions under which they operate

4.       Cultural Changes - Changes in news consumption patterns, e.g., steal quick looks at the headlines at several intervals during the working day.

What is the payoff for being a deceiving idiot in the imposition of a deceptive and well-crafted masterpiece, malevolent and harmful in its entirety yet attractive and convincing in its entirety? Brodkey describes it as "lying happiness," which I assume is the central theme of the book. The existence of a broad concept of writing keeps the reader docile and in check, as it is deemed by the author to be "swindled" away by capitalizing on the obscurity of reading and how an individual's imagination and cognition facilitates the mystery of word reception, to which even the indomitable will submits. Both the reader and the writer are heavily reliant on the joy and exuberance of a read. If a writer only writes for the superficial, he fails in his essence as a writer, and if a reader just reads in the most linear manner possible, he falls in his nature as a reader. The fluctuation, variation, and various spurs of ideologies are defined by an individualistic notion that a distinct sense of understanding can only grow when reading is free of distractions. As a result, a culture that promotes reading in the mildest way possible, in the form of academic resolution of written extracts, is highly supportive of a docile and dull society.

[ultraletseatstuff-blog]

ALEX Jones has the FORMULA

On your favorite radio show, you may tune in to get updates on your favorite sport teams, listen to your favorite political analyst or listen to a comedy jockey. While browsing the airwaves, you may also come across another show, one unlike the others. You just might encounter the Alex Jones show. This show doesn’t deal in sports or intentional comedy, this show deals in emergencies. When one thinks of political discourse and the presentation of the news, one thinks of the logical appeal, one based in numbers, fact checked and cited. All through news history, we remember the news anchors with the “Golden voice” as they read of the headlines monotonously, avoiding personal flair. Throughout the era of radio that continues into the television era, countless voices and faces from the television have come and gone, leaving their sanitized spirits floating on the airwaves but disappearing nonetheless. Except for a few exceptions, we consume our news from whichever interchangeable voice was scheduled for that day. This system continued until the 1960’s when some opportunistic young journalists decided to throw a wrench in the whole system. The emergence of shock journalism captured the emotion of the population where the old radio gods had failed before. The whole idea of shock was to play off the emotions and fears of the population. In this new world, logic took a backseat to the extraordinary. We all remember Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone’s tomb on national television, just to find it empty, or Jerry Springer airing brutally trashy love escapades. While you may not remember the nightly CNN segments, you sure do remember the odd and the outrageous. While some of these more provocative figures became hacks, many of them became accepted as almost mainstream, if quirky. While all this happened before the time of Alex Jones, he was able to repackage it, gaining his place in the blurry, convoluted limelight of tabloidism. No one had heard the name Alex Jones before the late 1990’s. It seemed that he came out of nowhere, but suddenly he was making a huge impact on the public discourse. While it’s true that Alex formed his own path, he sure didn’t have to forge that path. Through his fiery, emotional appeal, Jones has been able to influence the public discord while still remaining underground, shielding his most unpalatable positions, while presenting the ‘concerned patriot’ persona to the mainstream. While many see Jones’s rhetoric as a bad joke, he has leveled his show to shift the public conversation from the purely logical to the fantastical. Through the years, Jones has built a loyal following of millions who tune into his daily four hour show. By using powerful language and emotion, Alex intertwines supernatural language with mainstream narratives through long monologues where the energy increasingly escalates until there are screams and sweat After obtaining freak out nirvana. Jones refocuses the conversation back to a less heated level, ready to start the process again. For the last 20 years, Jones has been able to successfully stay in the spotlight by using carefully crafted exclamations designed to provoke. He has also been at the forefront of the conspiracy world, where he provides the antithesis to the official narrative. He has been able to do this with an amazing effect. By using events such as 9/11, Alex has been able to propel himself to the front of the conversation. In the early 2000’s during a time of uncertainty, Alex was able to offer an alternative to people who were confused and lost. Alex gained his prominence during 9/11 when he developed the inside job theory. While everyone has heard and laughed at the “Jet fuel doesn’t melt steel beams” and “Bush did 9/11” Few know where these sentiments came from. While these claims sound fantastic, Jones was able to bring these things to the surface where now over half of the country believes the inside job theory; over 150 million people. While it may be easy to blow these conspiracy theories off as silly, it is also just as easy to underestimate how effective they can be at shifting the conversation. As Americans, we are relatively speaking, a fiercely independent culture that distrusts authority and wants to be left alone. Combine that with a government that operates in the dark, in a mysterious cloak of secrecy and you get the perfect situation for a cold war between citizen and ruler. Americans have always been conspiracy minded, but until recently, it’s been hard for conspiracists to organize. As technology progressed rapidly thorough the 90’s and into the 2000’s, new ways of communication and projection were now possible. While it may be easy to assume that the most rich and powerful would be the most effective at leveraging and utilizing this revolutionary new tech, it actually was the opposite. The media old guard, who had monopolized airwaves responded poorly to the media revolution of the 90’s. Instead of reworking the way they communicated with the American public, they slid into the mindset of “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it”. With the rise of the internet and the mainstream media’s indifference, it gave room for small independent outfits like Alex Jones to carve out a space in the wild west WORLD WIDE WEB, and become a king of his own metaphorical internet island. Soon, the small independent outlets were leading the game in innovation and market outreach, many of the new media giants such as Vice and Slate started out as small independent niche publications. This trend continues today with major newspapers still printing paper and having to hide their website behind a paywall just to make ends meet, while the new media giants are fully geared up to utilize the internet, usually making their content free. Alex did exactly this, running his 4 hour daily show on the internet and radio simultaneously. To supplement his income, he sold vitamin supplements on his show, such as the popular “Super Male Vitality”. As the Alex Jones show grew, so did Alex and his style. As he carved out a name for himself, he also developed his unique style, giving maybe not the most factual take, but by far the most unique. One aspect of Alex’s style is his weaving of conversational first person and breaking down the fourth wall, where the conversation seems to be between Alex and his audience. He uses phrases such as “you folks” and he will tell the listeners that “we’re the chosen ones” and “You guys get it”. One of the draws to the Alex Jones show is the fact that it’s exclusionary. It takes a certain type of person to get really into Jones’ message and buy into it fully, so Alex tactfully awards the audience by essentially telling them that they’re the only ones who get the message and that everybody else is either evil or uninformed. This strategy is seen perfectly in this quote from Alex Jones:  

“I just get flippant and angry but it's because deep down folks, I can see what they're doing and I have we have a responsibility to stop these globalists. Where are the men in this country? Where are the men in this world? What the hell have we become? We just offer our children up to the system with the fluoride in the water and the GMO hurting em. And we let fat perverts grab them at the airport to train them for the pedophile government. And we've just got such a sick society.”

In this quote, you can see where Alex is shifting the conversation from himself back to the audience and personalizing it with first person questions. He presents himself as the selfless patriot who sees what’s going on and has the duty to stop it. I believe this gives the message an aura of genuine belief, which also gives Alex more liberty in spewing otherwise ludicrous statements. The whole appeal of Alex’s message is the mystery and adventure of it. The viewpoints that Alex shares come from a realm quite different from the academic world that we know. Instead of standard debate, Alex brings on “experts” that reinforce his arguments and are relegated to a proverbial leash that Alex uses to drag the conversation to wherever he pleases. When you listen to the Alex Jones show, there’s a sense of entertainment and danger, every segment is more extreme than the last and you begin to get into it. Another thing that drives Alex’s show and keeps him in the spotlight is his ability to interweave fantastical statements with somewhat factual news. In the quote above, Alex refers to the government as a “pedophile government”. While it is a shocking statement, these are commonplace on the show. One thing Alex does to captivate the audience and lend credibility to his message is using a provocative statement and then directly afterwards providing a factual event or argument that could potentially be skewed as supporting evidence. While the event or “evidence” could be seen as unrelated or as a strawman, it simply doesn’t matter. Just hearing the statement “...We let fat perverts grab them at the airport to train them for the pedophile government”, will set you the edge of your seat, and it has, for millions and millions of people.  

[mikemortgage]

Dolce&Gabbana fiasco shows importance, risks of China market

BEIJING — Don’t mess with China and its growing cadre of powerful luxury consumers.

That’s the lesson Dolce&Gabbana learned the hard way when it faced a boycott after Chinese netizens expressed outrage over what were seen as culturally insensitive videos promoting a major runway show in Shanghai and subsequent posts of insulting comments in a private Instagram chat.

The company blamed hackers for the anti-Chinese insults, but the explanation felt flat to many and the damage was done. The Milan designers cancelled the Shanghai runway show, meant as a tribute to China, as their guest list of Asian A-listers quickly joined the protests.

Then, as retailers pulled their merchandise from shelves and powerful e-commerce sites deleted their wares, co-founders Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana went on camera — dwarfed against the larger backdrop of an ornate red wall-covering — to apologize to the Chinese people.

“We will never forget this experience, and it will definitely never happen again,” a solemn-looking Gabbana said in a video statement posted Friday on social media.

The apology video, and the sharp public backlash that demanded it, shows the importance of the Chinese market and the risks of operating in it. More broadly, it highlights the huge and still-growing influence of China, a country that cannot be ignored as it expands economically, militarily and diplomatically.

These trends are intertwined in frequent outbursts of nationalist sentiment among consumers who feel slighted by foreign brands or their governments. It’s not the first time a company has apologized, and it surely won’t be the last. Mercedes-Benz did so in February for featuring a quote by the Dalai Lama on its Instagram account.

For Dolce&Gabbana, it could be mark the end of its growth in China, a market critical to global luxury brands that it has cultivated since opening its first store in 2005 and where it now has 44 boutiques.

“I think it is going to be impossible over the next couple of years for them to work in China,” said Cary Cooper, a professor of organizational psychology and health at Manchester University in England. “When you break this kind of cultural codes, then you are in trouble. The brand is now damaged in China, and I think it will be damaged in China until there is lost memory about it.”

That could shake Dolce&Gabbana’s financial health. The privately held company does not release its individual sales figures. But Chinese consumers are responsible for a third of all luxury spending around the globe, according to a recent study by Bain consultancy. That will grow to 46 per cent of forecast sales of an estimated 365 billion euros ($412 billion) by 2025, fueled by millennials and the younger Generation Z set, who will make a growing percentage of their purchases online.

“Without China, the hinterland for growth, D&G will obviously be in a weak competitive position and in danger of being eliminated,” the Chinese business magazine New Fortune said in a social media post Sunday. “This is one of the major reasons why D&G finally lowered its head. They really cannot survive without the Chinese market.”

While Dolce&Gabbana has displayed a knack for social media engagement, inviting millennial influencers with millions of collective followers to sit in their front rows or walk in their shows, that engagement has been a double-edged sword. Pop idol Karry Wang, who has drawn hundreds of screaming Chinese fans to the designer’s Milan showroom for season runway shows, was one of the first to disavow the brand, saying he was ending his role as Asia-Pacific brand ambassador.

Dolce found himself on the defensive several years ago after Elton John lashed out for comments that suggested he did not support gay couples using surrogate mothers to have children. At the time, more than 67,000 tweets urged #boycottdolcegabbana, while Courtney Love vowed to burn her Dolce&Gabbana garb and Martina Navritalova pledged to trash her D&G shirts.

Gabbana, who has 1.6 million Instagram followers, faced a more contained backlash earlier this year when he responded to a collage of Selena Gomez photos on Instagram with the comment, “She’s really ugly.”

Zhang and other celebrities took to social media Wednesday to blast Dolce&Gabbana and said they would boycott the show, which was cancelled. By Thursday, the company’s goods had disappeared from major e-commerce websites. The prevailing sentiment was captured by an airport duty-free shop that posted a photo of its shelves emptied of D&G products: “We have to show our stance. We are proud to be Chinese.”

The rapid escalation into a public relations disaster was fueled by social media. Individuals posted videos of themselves cutting up or burning their Dolce&Gabbana clothes, or picking them up with chopsticks and putting them in the trash. A parody of the offending Dolce&Gabbana videos, which featured a Chinese woman using chopsticks to eat pizza and an oversized cannoli, shows a white man trying to eat Chinese food with a fork and knife. At least three rap bands took up the cause with new songs.

“Companies that don’t respect us don’t deserve our respect,” Wang Zixin, team leader of CD Rev, a nationalist rap band, said by phone from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. Its new song had been viewed more than 850,000 times on Weibo.

“We hope people will remember companies that have ever insulted China, and not forget about them when the fallout passes,” Wang said.

That sense of pride reflects a nationalism that has been encouraged by the government, often in disputes China has with other countries over other foreign products.

Sales by Japanese automakers plunged in 2012 amid tensions between islands both countries claim in the East China Sea. The clash also illustrated the complexity of Chinese sentiment: Industry analysts said buyers didn’t want to be seen in Japanese auto showrooms but went ahead with planned purchases once tensions had passed.

More recently, several foreign companies ran afoul of Beijing’s insistence that they explicitly refer to Taiwan, a self-governing territory, as part of China. Many complied, showing how important the Chinese market has become.

Delta, American and other airlines agreed to refer to Taiwan as part of China, and Zara now says “Taiwan, China” on its website after regulators criticized the fashion brand for calling Taiwan a country. Marriott announced it “respects and supports” China’s sovereignty after it was ordered to shut its China website for a week.

Actor Richard Gere, a supporter of the Dalai Lama, has told The Hollywood Reporter that movie studios balk at hiring him for fear of an official or public backlash that might affect ticket sales in China.

It remains unclear whether the D&G mea culpa video will stop the backlash — or if it will have implications for Made-in-Italy at large. The scandal erupted as Italy’s high-end furniture and design companies were making an annual presentation in Shanghai and as Miu Miu, the Prada Group’s little sister line, showed its cruise line in Shanghai.

Italian designers have so far refrained from comment.

Italian commentators mused whether the Dolce&Gabbana protests were truly spontaneous or if there was some level of government control behind them. The government has publicly said the spat had no diplomatic element and would not comment.

“Anywhere in the world, an entrepreneur can make a mistake, use inappropriate language. Usually it is the consumers and the market to decide the seriousness of the offence,” the Milan daily Corriere della Sera wrote in a commentary. “Only in China is one forced to produce a humiliating video with public self-criticism, like in the time of Mao’s revolution. Now China feels powerful and is applying re-education on a global scale.”

——

Barry reported from Milan. Associated Press business writer Joe McDonald, video journalist Dake Kang and researchers Henry Hou and Jiawei Chen contributed.

from Financial Post https://ift.tt/2TISwCM via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

#IFTTT #Financial Post

[thesynsyn]

The Misinformation of a Culture

Written by Taia White & Divine 

In our current age, social media is not only a means of communication, but also a tool for law enforcement. This became apparent in the search to find missing sixteen year old Kennedi High, when a massive amount of twitter users used the platform to look for her. While few of the tweets were helpful,  it ignited an urgency to ensure that local police were actively searching for her. But as always, with such a useful tool at the fingertips of anyone with a phone, it is to be expected that some bad would come out of this. In this case, the bad can be attributed to the fear ignited by various groups of people on social media. This fear is due to many things, the biggest being the falsehoods that began to interlace with the truth to provide shock value. Soon after the disappearance, twitter users began to retweet and post photos of missing black girls, some of them from D.C, others from different states. Some of them who are still missing, and others who have been found for weeks, months, and even years. Soon, a few numbers began to float around, the first, 200 . “200 Hundred girls have gone missing in DC this month Alone .” The Second, most urgent was, “14 girls have gone missing in the last 24 hours.” As with most things on the internet, these statements are half truths.

            Yes, in the month of January 211 people, not exclusively black girls, did go missing in Washington D.C alone. No, they are not all still missing. In fact, 190 of them were found unharmed. 21 of those 200 are still missing. 10 of that batch,  black teenage girls. Currently, there are 41 open missing persons in Washington DC, 11 of them black teenage girls.This information can be found, on DC’s metropolitan Police Department website.

            Still, the simple fact remains: girls are going missing at an alarming rate and until now there has been zero coverage.  With a situation like this it’s easy to get swept up in the cynical idea that the world is not as friendly as once imagined, and no better outlet reflected this than Twitter. On social media, talks regarding the sex trade, as well as human organ trafficking erupted. Most recently, one user coined a very elaborate theory which claimed that these girls could potentially be caught up in the “the buying and selling of human parts.” This user intertwined facts from a news storyfrom 2013 in which a medical professional was illegally trading human cadaver parts meant for research at the  University of Michigan's anatomical donation program.

            With all these theories floating around, here is a detailed and factual list of what has proven to be true and what we know regarding the missing girls.

The first point.

            1. What Is Happening?

            Chanel Dickerson, commander of the D.C. Police’s Youth and Family services Division, states that the increase in reports is not due to an uptick in cases, but just better reporting by the families of the girls. There are currently 64,000 women and girls of color reported missing in the United States. According to the Black and Missing Foundation, about 37 percent of all missing Black American’s are 17 or younger. It’s important to note here that these numbers fluctuate. In D.C a family isn’t required to wait 48 hours to report someone as “Missing”. This means, that, if a child doesn’t return  home at the time when they are expected, the parent can  report the child missing immediately. When these reports are filed, if the person is under the age of 18, they are filed as “Critical Missing”. The majority of these cases, however, are filed under runaway. Under the eyes of the law a “runaway” is defined as:

“...a minor who is reported missing because his\her whereabouts are unknown to the child's legal custodian, the circumstances of whose absence indicate that the child voluntarily left the care and control of his legal custodian without the custodian's consent and without intent to return”

While this definition may seem black and white, it isn’t. A child who leaves home because they are experiencing abuse may also be classified as a runaway.

“ If the officer has reasonable cause to believe that the minor has experienced physical or sexual abuse in the parent's or guardian's household. It may also be possible to take the minor to a nearby location agreed to by the minor's parent or guardian if the parent or guardian does not consent to return of the minor. The minor might also be taken to an office specified by the Department of Health and Social Services, a program for runaway minors, or a shelter for runaways that agrees to shelter the minor.”

This information can be found here.

            2. Is it sex trafficking?

            While Washington D.C does have a sex trafficking problem, D.C police believe that a lot of these girls left on their own accord. Regarding the girls who are victims of sex trafficking, It is believed by Sharece Crawford, an Advisory Neighborhood Commission member in Washington, that the girls are getting involved with gangs, and from there being forced into prostitution. Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS), a nonprofit that provides services to teen survivors of  commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking, reports that 85 percent of victims are female, 75 percent  were involved with child welfare services and/or foster care, 70%-90% have a history of sexual abuse, and in 2015 94 percent of their clients were girls of color. Regardless of how these cases occur, the narrative is clear:  black girls are at risk.

            3. Why is the media not reporting ?

            National attention began with Kennedi High. Like countless others, our writers at Syndicate caught wind of this situation via Twitter. While Twitter can be a great source of news, it isn’t the most reliable source of information concerning these issues. If the story wasn’t relevant to our editor,  a black women, would she have heard about it at all?  People of color know the answer.

            Stephanie Mimsperkins left this comment on an article from earlier this month regarding these missing girls .  Her anger can be attributed to the fact that the media has provided more coverage of missing white children than any child of color. Despite minority children making up 65% of all non-family abductions, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

            Another reason there isn't as much media coverage about missing girls of color is due to the assumption that the girls are runaways. While this tends to be the case for some girls, it is NOT the case for every child and should not be treated as such. Natalie Wilson, co-founder of the Black and Missing Foundation, said in a 2014 interview, “The media tends to classify [Black] missing individuals as runaways or law enforcement does. So then, there isn’t any media coverage [and] there isn’t an AMBER Alert for the missing individual.” American police have a history of labeling missing children as runaways when they had actually been abducted. This happened in the 1980s case of Johnny Gosch, a white 12 year old boy from a well off family whose privilege couldn't save him from gross police negligence. However, the proportion of “runaway” cases regarding people of color is vast despite there being little evidence that would classify them as such. With the amount of reporting being whittled down to the bare minimum, leaving us to ask “Who is reporting on this issue?”

            Organizations such as the Black and Missing Foundation have an archive of open and cold cases of reported missing black people. This includes a description of the person, the area in which they were last seen, how long they have been missing, and how old they would be now. Also, websites of local police departments should feature a list of current missing persons.

            The steps in how to make this the information available are clear. However, it is unclear how one can inspire people to care.

            4. The Luxury of Emotional Distance

            The simple and disappointing fact is that the further removed a person is from a situation, the less they tend to care. When it’s easy to look away, you have no reason to invest your emotions or time into the life of a stranger. People relate to the people who resemble them, if you’re an older white woman enjoying your retirement in suburbia, why should you care about a brown girl who's gone missing in the inner city? This is not an accusation but rather a fact. The same goes the other way around. When people cannot relate, they cannot care, and as a direct result these missing girls become nothing more than statistics. This was mostly recently demonstrated at the town hall held by city councilmembers in Washington D.C  on March 23rd. While the auditorium was packed, it was clear that the only people fighting for these missing black children were other black people. Not a single white person was in the crowd.

These missing children are in danger. It doesn’t require the consideration of whether it could’ve been your mother, sister or daughter. A person’s worth is not based on their proximity to your life. And the simple fact is, It’s not only terrible because it’s happening to girls of color. It is a terrible thing to happen, period. But the lack of coverage because it involves people of color, shows how little the media values black and hispanic life.

            Some people care at an arm’s length. Sympathizing, yet still treating it as someone else’s problem, instead of a national problem that requires the attention of many different groups of people. It is often said “You’re in my prayers” but ask yourself if that is a testament to the power of prayer or  a means of self soothing so issues can be forgotten about since technically you did your part.

            We have all at one time or another  waited for a personal connection to be the motivation that will to bring about change. Perhaps you still haven’t made the  connection, or maybe you’ve chosen to turn a blind eye to the issue, but at least now you are no longer ignorant to these facts. This has been brought to your attention and you now have the responsibility to help someone else. No matter how small, (sharing a post), or how big, (volunteering to help at risk youth)--do your part. What will no longer suffice is ignoring the problem.

            5. So what can you do?

            Familiarize yourself with these faces. If you see something is amiss, use your judgment and alert the proper authorities. Check facts before you retweet, reblog, re-whatever. The worst thing that can happen to the children that are actually missing is to be drowned by falsehoods and “click- baity” stories and theories.

#culture #oped #politics #writing #blackgirls #black lives matter

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Why the Charlottesville Marchers Were Obsessed With Jews by Emma Green

SOURCE: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/nazis-racism-charlottesville/536928/

The “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville was ostensibly about protecting a statue of Robert E. Lee. It was about asserting the legitimacy of “white culture” and white supremacy, and defending the legacy of the Confederacy.

So why did the demonstrators chant anti-Semitic lines like “Jews will not replace us”?

The demonstration was suffused with anti-black racism, but also with anti-Semitism. Marchers displayed swastikas on banners and shouted slogans like “blood and soil,” a phrase drawn from Nazi ideology. “This city is run by Jewish communists and criminal niggers,” one demonstrator told Vice News’ Elspeth Reeve during their march. As Jews prayed at a local synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, men dressed in fatigues carrying semi-automatic rifles stood across the street, according to the temple’s president. Nazi websites posted a call to burn their building. As a precautionary measure, congregants had removed their Torah scrolls and exited through the back of the building when they were done praying.

“This is an agenda about celebrating the enslavement of Africans and their descendants, and celebrating those that then fought to preserve that terrible machine of white supremacy and human enslavement,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, or ADL. “And yet, somehow, they’re all wearing shirts that talk about Adolf Hitler.”

For these demonstrators, though, the connection between African Americans and Jews is clear. In the minds of white supremacists like David Duke, there is a straight line from anti-blackness to anti-Judaism. That logic is powerful and important. The durability of anti-Semitic tropes, and the ease with which they slide into all displays of bigotry, is a chilling reminder that the hatreds of our time rhyme with history and are easily channeled through timeless anti-Semitic canards.

The University of Chicago historian David Nirenberg has spent his career studying anti-Jewish movements and beliefs. Recently, he spoke to a group of students about anti-Semitism on college campuses. “At the end of the … talk, I said, ‘I wouldn’t rush from all this material to thinking that this anti-Semitism is as dangerous as its early 20th-century predecessor,’” he told me. “Seeing the images of the Virginia protest, I must admit, I kind of felt otherwise. … It certainly made me feel that books and ideas that I had treated as very marginal in our society are not as marginal as I might have hoped.”

Anti-Semitism often functions as a readily available language for all manner of bigotry—a Rosetta Stone that can translate animus toward one group into a universal hate for many groups. “Ever since St. Paul, Christianity and all the religions born from it—Islam, the secular philosophies of Europe, etc.—learned to think about their world in terms of overcoming the dangers of Judaism,” said Nirenberg. “We have these really basic building blocks … for thinking about the world and what’s wrong with it … by thinking about Judaism.”

In the world sketched by white supremacists, Jews hover malevolently in the background, pulling strings, controlling events, acting as an all-powerful force backing and enabling the other targets of their hate. That’s clear in statements made by people like Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who proudly marched with other white supremacists in Charlottesville. Jewish Zionists, he complainedto a gathered crowd, control the media and American political system.

“The extreme right considers many people their threat. But it always, always, always comes back to the Jews.”

Anti-black and anti-Jewish sentiment have long been intertwined in America. When the Jewish factory worker Leo Frank was wrongfully convicted of murder and lynched in 1915, two new groups simultaneously emerged: the ADL, which fights against bigotry and anti-Semitism, and the second Ku Klux Klan, which began by celebrating Frank’s death. Later in the 20th century, Nazis became a natural model for white-supremacist movements in the United States, said Marjorie Feld, a professor of history at Babson College. The logic of white supremacy was similar: Hatreds became universalized through common archetypes. Jews were seen by white supremacists as capitalists undermining local businesses. Black Americans fleeing the South in the Great Migration were seen as taking away crucial labor. Catholics were seen as immigrants stealing American jobs.

After the Holocaust, neo-Nazi movements were largely consigned to the country’s political fringe, although they never fully left the American landscape. In 1978, for example, a Nazi group pushed to demonstrate in Skokie, Illinois, deliberately selecting an area densely populated by Holocaust survivors. The proposed march caused a national uproar, and the American Civil Liberties Union famously defended the group’s First Amendment rights in court. Eventually, they ended up demonstrating in Chicago.

The Charlottesville demonstration differed from the planned Skokie march in two important respects, Nirenberg said. First of all, there’s a political context for the “Unite the Right” demonstration. It fits into debates over free speech and college campuses as the front lines of cultural battle, he said. The Skokie march was also widely and vigorously condemned by political leaders. “That strong, clear commitment to certain values of inclusion from our political leaders is not present in the same way,” Nirenberg said.

On Monday, President Donald Trump held a press conference about the violence in Charlottesville. “Racism is evil,” he said. “Those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.” This statement came two days after his initial comments on the protests, in which he condemned the “hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides.” The suggested equivalence between the white-supremacist demonstrators and their counter-protesters shocked politicians and public figures in both parties, who quickly criticized Trump’s unwillingness to condemn neo-Nazis and the KKK. “It’s very clear that the people marching in Charlottesville felt very supported by the shape of the public statements made by President Trump,” said Nirenberg. On Tuesday, the president held another press conference in which he reiterated his previous claims, saying, “What about the alt-left that came charging … with clubs in their hands? Do they have any problem? I think they do.”  

Greenblatt argued that the backlash against Trump’s comments is not about politics—it’s about recognizing a pattern of anti-Semitism. There was the Holocaust Remembrance Day statement that didn’t mention Jews; the conspiratorial meme of Hillary Clinton and a Star of David that Trump retweeted during the campaign; the infamous Nazi salute and shouts of “Hail Trump!” at an alt-right conference following the election. In the past several days, a number of groups have renewed their calls for Trump to fire Steve Bannon, his chief strategist, in part based on Bannon’s role in heading Breitbart, which he called a “platform for the alt-right.”

To people like Greenblatt, these are all signs that, at best, the White House does not take anti-Semitism seriously enough. At worst, the Trump administration indulges bigotry so as not to alienate some supporters. “Heck, there’s Jewish grandchildren running around the White House,” Greenblatt said. “But make no mistake, the extreme right considers many people their threat, but it always, always, always comes back to the Jews.”

“You just can’t say this as a historian, but I feel like we’re at this critical juncture.”

As Nirenberg pointed out, the violence in Charlottesville was part of a broader political context. The fringe right is reacting to other political movements with nostalgia, Feld said—a yearning for people, including minorities like Jews and blacks, to “know their place.”

“It makes sense to me that just as … we’re seeing people of all backgrounds be brave enough to insist that these monuments about slavery” be toppled, Feld said, “these people would come out and say we would want to return to the way things were.”

The identity politics of the intersectional left are radically different from the generalized bigotry of the far-right fever swamps. And yet, they are in relationship: Universalized movements that aim to fight oppression against all peoples in all of their identities necessarily invite backlash from those who feel that they’re losing their place in society. “It would really reduce and impoverish debate to see this example as primarily an anti-Jewish rally … [or] as entirely an anti-African American rally. It’s all those things,” said Nirenberg. “To the extent that we separate those and claim, ‘No, it’s only about my identity,’ we fail to understand basic aspects of identity politics in the present.’”

Of course there are neo-Nazis in our time. There are those who hate Jews in every time. It’s a hatred that easily flickers between the universal and the particular, melding with the similarly particular hatreds of blacks and immigrants and other minority groups. “You just can’t say this as a historian, but I feel like we’re at this critical juncture,” Feld said. “I don’t feel like the world is unsafe for Jews. I really don’t. But I do feel like all social groups need to pay careful attention and speak out against what’s happening.”

Like Nirenberg, Feld was trained to look at the images coming out of Charlottesville and see not a freak occurrence, but the echoes of history.

“God,” she said. “It’s fucking scary.”

#anti-semitism #charlottesville #neo-nazis