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#rip george floyd
radicalgraff · 10 months
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Memorial murals around the world for George Floyd, whose murder by Minneapolis police on 25 May 2020 sparked uprisings in cities around the US, and protests against police racism in various cities around the world.
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yes, george floyd’s death was a terrible thing, and we should absolutely be outraged and doing things about it, but STOP USING KIDS AS TOOLS FOR YOUR POLITICAL STATEMENTS. THERE IS NO. REASON. I SHOULD SEE A LITTLE 7 YEAR OLD GIRL RUNNING HER SOLO ON A STAGE AND SHE SHE HAS A PICTURE OF HIM ON HER ANKLE, AS SHE SCREAMS “I CANT BREATHE” MULTIPLE timesin WHAT world is that appropriate?? Children should NOT be what you use to advocate for you cause!!! LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE.
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screwedupclick · 1 year
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RIP George Floyd-DJ Screw - Big Floyd ft. Chris Ward & AD - Sittin On Top Of The World Freestyle
RIP to George Floyd aka Big Floyd (of the S.U.C.) Rest in Peace to honorary SUC soldier, George Floyd, known professionally as Big Floyd, who collaborated with DJ Screw and the Screwed Up Click members on at least 4 Screw Tapes while living in Houston in the 1990s.   Another fallen soldier. Remember George and that at one time, he was “Sittin On Top Of The World”   Enjoy this Freestyle: DJ…
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boopsloop656 · 2 months
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The answer to the current crime wave is not simply to get a gun and learn how to use it. Arming granny with a 45 isn't gonna change the fact that her neighborhood has been going to shit and is being overrun with people who are being taught to hate her, gun or not she's still an easy target to these people and it only serves to give you and your grandma a false sense of security
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uvmagazine · 10 months
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William Spriggs, a chief economist who advocated for racial equity in economics, has died. He was 68.
Spriggs, who was also a professor at Howard University, was one of the profession’s most prominent Black voices, being outspoken about the way his colleagues handled racial issues.
Following the death of George Floyd in 2020, Spriggs, who went by Bill, wrote an open letter to economists warning their methods were “perpetuating the very things they wish to recoil from” and urging them to “reflect and rethink how we study racial disparities.”
"Bill was a towering figure in his field, a trailblazer who challenged the field’s basic assumptions about racial discrimination in labor markets, pay equity, and worker empowerment,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “His work inspired countless economists, some of whom work for our administration, to join him in the pursuit of economic justice.”
https://www.unheardvoicesmag.com
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Graffiti on the side of a store next to what was a O'Reilly Auto Parts store on Nicollet Avenue.
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fakeosphere · 2 years
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21 years for his 40+... not enough.
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clonehub · 11 months
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Fandom anti-Blackness can reach violent levels and every single time (normally, but not always) white fans engage in it, they quickly flip to the innocent card. "IM the one who's being harassed!" they claim as they say the ppl talking abt racism are ripping the fandom apart
Somehow they always know what real racism is. I was accused of harassing people for saying the bad batch was racist on my own blog to my own followers. I also had white people stalk me and lie both to and about me.
I complained about the George Floyd fic being a gross exploitation and how it's mere presence, regardless of how little attention it got, was a sign of some major racism issues. Someone called me a psyop, multiple accused me of being pro censorship, and a third
Said that we actually need racist books to show people that racism is wrong even though this was a stupid fanfiction and also that's not how racism works in the slightest. I said the world would blow up before ppl respect Black ppl and they changed their URL and
Acted like i had put a target on their back for being snappy.
Other Black fans get doxxing and death threats and have their jobs targeted. Some others get the cops called on them. The only thing that ever really rips fandom apart is racism, not Black people talking about it
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comfortfoodcontent · 22 days
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2024 X-Men #35 cover by Pepe Larraz
2019-2024 - RIP Krakoa Era X-Men
I love this cover. The art is amazing. It marks the end of the Krakoa era X-Men. It's been on my mind a lot lately and I had to get some thoughts out on it. If you know me, if you ever followed me or my comics site or whatever, you know I was a very loud, very big fan of the Krakoa era at the start, basically up until X of Swords and Hickman's decision to leave. It's finally ending.
2019-2024 - RIP Krakoa Era X-Men
But truthfully it may as well be 2019-2019 -RIP Krakoa Era X-Men. It pretty much failed from the start. I loved HoxPox when it dropped. It was, embarrassing to say now, life changing for me. I thought Hickman was a genius and had found a way to reinvigorate the line and render death as a cheap storytelling gimmick useless. A bunch of my faves were being used and ressurected. I was happier than a pig in shit. I joined Twitter and all the insane X-Fans on there. I started a website and a podcast dedicated to comics. Soon the Covid pandemic started. I was terminally online, my brain rot started and grew worse by the day. It was an insane wild ride that started high and died soon thereafter.
It's hard for me to separate my pretentious Comfort Food Comic media brand time with the pretentious Krakoan Era. Both started out so happily, so full of potential and optimism. To run a site or a podcast in these hellish times you must also play the social media game. Constantly be on there, constantly push your product. Being on Twitter during that time and being part of the X-Community, you start to see how much being on social media fucks you up. You constantly feel like you need to have an opinion on everything, and that it actually matters. You need to be a critic to every piece of media, every decision, every little thing someone says or posts. You lose your grasp on reality, the real world, how to function and interact like a normal human being not stuck hidden behind a screen with your dual public twitter profile and private locked one (something I'm glad to say I never stooped to). It brings you attention. It brings you friends. It pushes your product or brand. It gives you validation and the dopamine rush. It's an addicting, disgusting, fake as hell experience. I was fully caught up in it. It didn't help that I was quarantining and barely leaving my house for a few years. It got me through the pandemic but it also left me so much worse than when I started. Much like how the Krakoan Era treated the X-Men franchise.
Why am I talking about social media so much when I started with X-Men? Well, it felt like this era of publishing went hand in hand with what was being put into the comics. Every creator was constantly on Twitter interacting with fans, always seeing what they had to say. Even Hickman was on there. Dude just wanted to post photos from movies and talk about like what Gen X members he liked. He eventually left because insane X-Men fans wanted him to talk about George Floyd and compare real world race issues with some superhero comics and weigh in, OH GOD WHY ISNT HE WEIGHING IN PUBLICALLY??. It was really weird how fans dealt with that one. Vita Ayala, Tini Howard, Leah Williams - constantly interacting with fans, friends with many of them. A pretty cool thing really, but that shit started influencing their comics throwing in characters or scenes specifically to make some X-Men fan they know on Twitter squee real loud. Shatterstar is not your favorite AEW wrestler. We do not need a book of human X-Men fans who pretend to be mutants influenced by dorky X-Men fans online. We do not need longtime villain Apocalypse to become our "Blue Dad". Jordan White should be editing or at the very least reading any old X-Men comics instead of being on Twitter. We don't need to know what the X-Writers do on their Slack, or worse, what X-fans do on their own incestuous Slack. Gerry Duggan, a writer I loved and thought could do no wrong, joined this group and upped his Twitter usage and the brain rot commenced and his work was so influenced by it. I'll never forget when white people started using fuck around and find out on Twitter and then it was in like 3 of his books the next month. My point in this ramble is the books were being influenced by and written for the loudest X-Men fans on Twitter. The art was dead. The books were a product made in that echo chamber for that echo chamber. They got bad real fast because of our society's addiction to social media these days.
Now that the honeymoon phase is over and I've revisited a lot of these books I do still feel HoXPoX was a wonderful series, one of the best X-Men series, masterfully executed and a perfect jumping off point with so much to explore. I also see the usual Hickman faults. The my series starts some time later, not really addressing anything prior to it that all his books share, the insanely detailed long term plans that he nor the comics business machine will actually follow through on after a year or so, and the shadowy superior group of power that exists in all of his comics. The Moira retcon, while brilliant, quickly falls apart when they never develop her further, or deal with the fact Xavier and Magneto went on to have an entire publishing history knowing what amounts to their entire future until the Krakoa Age must be established. That never really worked and was ignored by the creators and fans alike, including me. So it never really worked from the jump.
Rather than keep the line condensed and maybe just let Hickman write his own story, they expand it out from there involving a bunch of different creators and new ongoings. Plenty of series to explore the ramifications of these retcons, the perceived ethnostate the mutants have established and their abandoning of the coexistent dream the X-Men always fought for, grappling with identity and what it means when death no longer matters, and the conflicts that would arise from having all these villains live with them now. Sadly we instead basically just got Utopia 2.0. Surface level shit where the mutants are on an island surviving that rarely ever went in on all the amazing story ideas we could have explored. But hey certain fans were happy because they could go "Hey Synch is here for a few panels!" or "this horrific out of character gladiator death ceremony is TOTALLY the same thing as my real life transitional phase". Nobody really wanted to question any of this in the comics or in real life. And hey sour grapes aside, we did get some cool stories and some fun character interactions and moments, mostly in the Hickman books. But even from the start, some of it is horrible, more of the same schlock - Fallen Angels a great example, or Hickman's more boring Giant Size issues or his Shi'ar issue, or half of every other title. What should have been being explored or dealt with in the text often went ignored and we got X-Men being superheroes or Otherworld nonsense, which at the time I ate up because I'm such a fan of the old Captain Britain material. Sadly that never really went anywhere either, just making nebulous dimensions that were out there somewhere, don't question it LOOK IT'S JIM JASPERS! ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED! Even things that should have been celebrated like Betsy and Rachel pushing through Gal Pals territory to being together felt largely flat and hollow and forced rather than natural or fun. And that was a common theme as it kept going. Everything felt forced, felt wrong, the writing felt amateurish and simple as it ignored more major issues or reasons to exist. Things just seemed to start happening for no real story reasons. No real further development or exploration. A ton of plots don't make sense as established history and characterization is thrown out the window. Nothing really matters. Rockslide is ruined forever just because. Arrako will never REALLY make sense, Loa and Mercury are psychopathic sex fiends, Pixie of all people is a callous death pervert, Banshee is a Ghost Rider, Warlock's doing something, Colossus joins the Quiet Council and just sits there, Children of the Atom is designated a "red" important book and does nothing of value or import, Moira gets pissy so she turns into a no shades of gray villain robot who skins her soul mate and wears his skin and joins Orchis, mutants are fucking so much and I guess just quickly going to term and they just abandon countless babies in the forest, Anole and a few others are brainless dolts who love the Shadow King, Onslaught is bouncing around, there's an old X-23, Synch is now the best and can recall any power ever magically but never talks to any member of his old team or deals with his death, Inferno as a whole essentially just didn't happen or matter, Sinister isn't Sinister at all he's a clone and there's 3 more of them, Casandra Nova is on a team, Doug knows secrets, Magneto buys a lighthouse, characters are randomly and indiscriminately put into The Pit, Shaw and Selene are maybe the only two villains ever that get examined in a way where maybe they shouldn't be buddy buddy with the X-Men - I need to stop now before I get more angry and depressed but I could go on and on and on. Point is things got bad. Like a ton of this was just bad writing and bad comics. I'm sorry. I get it. I was blinded too. I ignored things. I made my own head canons. I focused on the good stuff.
By the time Hickman actually announces he is leaving, things are already falling apart due to him and Marvel deciding to expand and stretch this shit out instead of just letting him do his shit and end it as a complete story or era. He does Inferno which as I said did nothing and didn't matter. It's good but it's a big ball of nothing. From there the books get worse and worse. Duggan's superhero X-Men book is fluff. Nearly every other series declines more and more. Hellions is a fun dark comedy, but sloppy and lacking that depth and exploration. Al Ewing's work tries hard to reach those Hickman highs and I found myself quite enjoying his work on SWORD and later on X-Men Red but mainly because it all ends up divorced from Krakoa as part of his larger Marvel Cosmic work, with great characterization. I really dig that work and it's common theme is really how off to the side not involved it is.
Later writers, including some real Literal Whos? and pretentious "novel authors" further dilute the line with their less talented work(I like Steve Orlando as a person but I desperately wish he'd try harder to write actual stories instead of being a human youtube video that summarizes obscure 90's comic characters for modern day zoomers). Kieron Gillen, bless him, tries to be the new Hickman and he does have some of the best Krakoa era material, but even he starts failing pretty badly. Sins of Sinister was a clusterfuck of boring nonsense for people who want to seem or sound smart, same goes for this current Dominion plot.
Looking at the art now I'm struck by how none of these characters are TRULY changed from this era, let alone had a lasting or defining story. It's crazy to me we went 5 whole years with this and really what has changed, ESPECIALLY with the current Orchis wrap-up story. X-Men fight some nasty humans who don't like them. We're back to that ALREADY. We aren't getting to the end of the Krakoan Era, we've been in it for quite some time. As I look at this art I see only 3 wholly new characters, which they'll be lucky if they are used after this. One of them is Pogg-Ur Pogg, a perfect example of this era. A big Aligator man, not much thought behind it, that fans LOVED. Sadly, he wasn't actually an alligator man. It was all a fakeout. That was some suit a little boring gremlin wore. A little boring gremlin. Nothing unique, nothing fun. Same old shit you've seen in thousands of comics. That's what the Krakoa Era was. Something that seemed SO DAMN COOL, SO DAMN THOUGHT OUT, but really it didn't have much thought behind it. It was a flashy suit of potential hiding the same old gremlin you've always seen. Even after the eternally online creators saw how popular he got, they didn't change any of this, they just thought we've got it. The suit/gremlin thing is good. It wasn't and they tried to bring it back for further stories but it was so lame at this point it was pathetic. Much like the repeated attempts to salvage and course correct after Hickman.
So here we are at the end. I can't believe I'm actually THANKFUL it is ending. That I actually want to regress and return to the X-Men as superheroes fighting their villains again. I've been rereading old X-books and I crave that big, bold excitement of what truly made the X-Men superhero team work. It's such a bummer and such a failure of execution with so many to blame. What DISGUSTS me so much is already seeing fans eulogize this era as perfection that was cut short by Marvel and not a fun experiment that was botched from the start. I'm with you, I was the biggest believer and supporter at the start. I joined Twitter, I examined every panel, made countless threads of discussion, debated and discussed every little thing with fellow fans. I wanted so much for this to be what it could be. Please, examine it honestly and critically. It's a failure. It's time to pull the plug.
It's ironic to me that I deleted my Twitter this year, the Krakoan age having the same amount of life my Twitter fandom life did. It went from such excitement and fun to soul sucking everyday nonsense. It seems fitting and emblematic of what this age was and turned into. This era, just like Twitter which influenced it so much, is/was a stupid, ugly, brain rotted mess dotted with sparing gold with the unrealized potential for so much more. I for one, welcome it.
Peace Out Krakoa Era, you won't be missed.
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mariacallous · 5 months
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These are different situations in a lot of ways ofc but I've seen the argument made on twitter that the far left is doing the same kinda damage to the free palestine movement that they did to police reform with defund the police/abolish prison rhetoric. They're taking the most extreme stance with 'from the river to the sea' and defending Hamas and ripping down hostage posters and that could turn off moderate people in the same way 'abolish' turned people away from real discussions being had post George Floyd. I just wonder come a year from now when it's time for 2024, what the general public will think of all this rhetoric + Biden's take on the war. What do you think?
I think there’s some validity to that, tbh. I think that when it comes to I/P, people tend to be more vociferous and polarized as they try to “show support” or “advocate”, in a way that isn’t helpful to anyone involved. There is almost no other issue that triggers people’s berserk buttons quite like this topic, to say nothing of the conspiracy and aggressive thinking that comes along with it.
You also get some of the worst people involved being the loudest, which doesn’t help either.
You would think some of the core issues at stake would be universally agreed upon - civilians shouldn’t be targeted, Palestinians have been suffering for a while and deserve rights and freedoms and their own territory (just like Israelis have), and the situation is complicated and has not been handled well by basically everyone - and yet so many people apparently don’t see it that way.
There’s also this zero-sum mentality, where if you acknowledge the atrocity on 10/7 and what was involved, you’re automatically denigrating and ignoring the mistreatment of Palestinians, and vice versa.
The Palestinians have suffered in many ways, and one of those has been to have some of the worst fucking “advocates” in the west and elsewhere.
Rigid thinking, like rigid nationalist ethnostates, helps no one, but people like both of those things.
I’ve said before that people will rhetorically and otherwise use the pro-Palestinian cause to boost themselves and attack Israel and Jews, while doing nothing to actually help the Palestinian people. So much effort has been spent in vanity projects and ineffective campaigns that could and should have been used more successfully elsewhere.
And all of this plays into the hands of people on the right, both in the US and Israel, plays into the hands of “Zionists”, plus into the hands of Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran, and makes real progress much harder.
Fundamentally, the only viable choice is a two-state solution, with freedom of movement. Fundamentally, 10/7 should be a permanent disqualifying failure and shame for Likud and the other parties in Netanyahu’s government.
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shashiatnight · 4 months
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This is a must listen interview of Mohammed El-Kurd.
This is a difficult listen but an important one. Difficult by the way because listening to humans being dehumanised for nearly a century is not easy but fuck is it IMPORTANT.
In the first part of the interview El-Kurd touches up on the horrors of how colonial powers created the Zionist project. Some of these are facts I've been familiar with since I was a kid.
I'm not Palestinian or Arab; but I have known of Palestine since I was a kid (from the womb even) as is the experience of Muslim kids.
Yes, a lot of what drives my interest for the Palestinian cause - comes from my parents teaching me when I was a child about the oppression the Palestinians faced and believe me - the gap between what I knew then and what I've learned now after 30 odd years - has not changed the main facts of the situation. It is not complicated. Palestinians are native to Palestine; in 1948 during the Nakba - their lands and wealth were stolen, they were dispossessed, tortured, raped and murdered. Babies were thrown into bakery fires, men were thrown into mass graves they were forced to dig and pregnant women had their bellies cut open before being killed by Israelis. (There is more history of oppression that came before the Nakba but that's for another time.)
El-Kurd's interview also touches on an important point regarding the Israeli 'left'. It echoes the sentiments of many of us.
I do not appreciate seeing Israelis being DEIFIED for being oh so brave for doing the bare minimum. For winning awards by making documentaries on the inception of their cannibalistic rapist state while Palestinians have been describing their history in books and media for nearly a century to the world's deaf ears. Those of you who lionize whistleblower Israelis who ultimately face little harm (which by the way they will admit) in comparison to the people whose occupation they ultimately benefit off of - those of you who do that are the same people who will center white activists during BLM.
On a related note when people lionize those who outgrew their racism - at best I'm like well I suppose that's nice. When I'm feeling facetious I'm like - congratulations on realising other people matter too I guess?
The start of the interview also touches upon on the atrocities El-Kurd and his people faced growing up in occupied West Jerusalem. The reality of squatter settlers in West Bank that are being funded by Zionist organizations in the UK and US (which often receive tax dollars and tax exemptions). They ship off these unemployed miscreants who then - abuse Palestinians in every way.
There are many important things El-Kurd speaks on - like the way the media interrogates Palestinians facing harm yet having the utmost compassion for war criminals who enable the occupation of Palestine.
The world owes its respect to Palestinians for the immense grace they have when they speak on international platforms - God knows the world doesn't deserve it. El-Kurd is passionate but my God, the man has nerves of steel, there's a determined look in his eyes at times as he gives his answers - that remind me of Ghassan Kanafani.
Everything El-Kurd says honestly are things to be heard with utmost attention. Some of my favourite parts -
- He believes a people should not have to be sainted nor should they have to act like or be portrayed as saints in order to demand their human rights. We are all imperfect humans; something he thinks of when he remembers his grandmother Rifqa. His belief in this - also comes up when he briefly discusses George Floyd.
- He's at times wickedly funny - the Europeans should go to therapy for their guilt about the Holocaust rather than once making the rest of the world suffer. On a related tangent, not every Palestinian is the same of course but I hear they use a lot of black humour - which reminds me of Refaat Alareer (RIP).
- El-Kurd talks about how he's not interested in examining the humanity of settlers - the people who are locking up him and his people in cages. I always find it absurd at best and revolting at worst, when Palestinians are asked questions like this and I'm not a very civilised person tbh - I would spit on you if you did that to me. But I have had the privilege of growing up in a world and culture where every force who has oppressed my people are openly reviled for their actions by us and our anger is deemed acceptable. Unlike the West who gets off scotfree for what it does to Palestine; hopefully not for long in Shaa Allah.
- El-Kurd touches up on this interview as he has in his other works that the West cannot give sound explanations for the anger and resistance of Ukrainians towards Russia while condemning Palestinians who have suffered for nearly a century.
- Ash Sarkar asked at one point in the interview, aren't you tired of being treated in a such a dehumanising way (by imperialism's media arm) and El-Kurd says were he to complain about this to Palestinian refugees they would have told him to go fuck himself. He speaks of his people from a place of gravity - that the Palestinian cause is bigger than he, as an individual.
- El-Kurd's truthful statement that - the West doesn't really care about antisemitism it just profits off of Israel for its regional interests and weaponizes identity politics for the sake of it's nefarious goals.
- Heck even Netanyahu who cheapens the Holocaust for greedy purposes - doesn't care about antisemitism.
- Honestly every part of this interview is a treasure . El-Kurd talks about how he's not very interested in the idea of states and borders but he does want a free Palestine obviously. The interview ends on a beautifully fierce and powerful note - when people whine about what will happen to settlers should Palestine be liberated as Palestinians deserved it - he said he asks those people in return if they ever think about the millions of Palestinian refugees in the world.
- Finally, I am always inspired by Gabor Maté, whom I idolize, to pay attention to a people's entire self when they speak. El-Kurd is passionate but he keeps himself in check. One of the touchingly human ways, his identity (something he is protective of and loves) is expressed in a seemingly unconscious manner - like when - he says ya3ni (which I from my knowledge of Urdu and Hindi which have Arabic loans words means if I am correct - this is to say). You can hear the ع when he says words like 'mine' and the way his teeth (often) don't click together when he uses English words that have the letter 't'.
(Fadi BouKaram explains the concept of phonological deafness and why we are not able to pronounce or differentiate between similar foreign language sounds in this episode of Sarde after Dinner -
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I'm a personally huge fan of accents whenever I hear them in whatever language. It informs me of a person's background, their experience and it provides me, in both personal and professional capacities, a route to connect with them.
Anyway, I do hope readers will go watch this wonderful Novara Media interview of Palestinian poet, writer, journalist and activist Mohammed El-Kurd.
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beardedmrbean · 10 months
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A pair of senior partners at the California-based mega-law firm Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith split from the company last month to build their own “compassionate” firm, but internal emails show they used wildly offensive and demeaning language — repeatedly referring to women as “c–ts” and a judge as “sugar t-ts.”
Many of the shocking missives — exchanged between John Barber, 55, and Jeff Ranen, 45, and obtained by The Post from the pair’s former firm — were also racist or anti-LGBTQ.
Before the two labor lawyers suddenly defected in May and took more than 100 Lewis Brisbois employees with them, Barber spent more than 25 years with the firm and Ranen worked there for 20.
Their rationale for leaving was to “build something that’s reflective of our values and our beliefs,” Barber told Above The Law.
“We wanted to lead with empathy, collaboration and compassion, to do it our way and not have any baggage,” Ranen told the Los Angeles Business Journal about the formation of Barber Ranen.
But emails from their time at Lewis Brisbois ­– which were redacted to remove any specific client information before being viewed by the Post – raise serious questions about the virtue-signaling.
“Kill her by anal penetration,” Barber emailed Ranen in June 2012, reacting to an overtime request from another Lewis Brisbois attorney.On at least three occasions, Ranen described female attorneys as “c–ts.”
In a March 2022 missive, a Los Angeles judge was described as “sugar t-ts.” when Barber joked about how the judge liked to be addressed.
In a November 2012 note, Ranen noted to Barber that another partner has “huge t–s.” That female partner has since decamped to Ranen and Barber’s new firm.
In November 2013, Barber was told by a Lewis Brisbois partner that people were upset during a mediation because of a witness’ frequent use of the N-word.
“She doesn’t want the word n—-r used in her presence. She claims it was used with great liberality, unnecessarily so… and she found it very offensive,” the partner emailed him.
Barber responded snidely. “Got it. N—r. Don’t use.” He spelled the slur out in full.
In October 2012 Barber responded to an email about attending a baby shower with the subject line “N—r” — again spelled out in full.
On May 31, 2020 — just days after the death of George Floyd — Ranen emailed Barber, “F–king looters came within a mile and a half. I can’t even imagine what it was like living in Larchmont [Los Angeles] in 1992 when the savages decimated Koreatown.”
Barber responded: “Just to illustrate my enlightenment . . . As buildings burned within a mile or so that night, we had a party, got wasted, and yelled inappropriate things from the balcony.”
In June 2012, Ranen wrote to Barber, “Gypsy is my new word to describe about half of the minorities in California.”
The partners made frequent use of the word f—-t and other anti-LGBTQ slurs as well.
“Don’t be a f—t,” Ranen responded to a partner testily in April 2015. “What’s this f—t’s problem,” he emailed another colleague in November 2014, asking of a rival attorney.
Barber and Ranen went on a crude back and forth about an unnamed attorney from Mintz, another law-firm, in March 2008. In their exchange they mocked his past service in the Israeli Defense Forces.
“He’s a f-g. Israeli Defense Force hand-to-hand combat instructor? Yawn. I’ll kick his ass,” Barber wrote to Ranen.
Ranan replied, “his bio gave me a stiffy. Does that make me a homo?”
Later on Ranen made fun of Barber for using the expression “oh snap” — noting that he wasn’t sure if “that makes you more akin to a tween or a fudgepacker.”
Critics ripped the two men’s behavior and the firm’s hypocrisy.
“Though they may pretend to have founded their new firm in pursuit of ‘empathy and compassion,’ it is beyond any doubt that they are incapable of doing so,” civil rights activist Al Sharpton told The Post. “I am calling on The State Bar of California to conduct a full review of their character and licenses to practice law. Though these emails alone are beyond sufficient to question Barber and Ranen’s integrity, it is easy to imagine they are just the tip of the iceberg of their intolerance toward communities of color, women and the LGBT community.”
Lewis Brisbois has more than 1,600 attorneys working in offices around the world including one on Water Street in downtown Manhattan.
A Diversity, Equity and Inclusion mission statement on their website touts the firm’s commitment to diversity hires.
In a statement to The Post, the company said they were “shocked” by the behavior of the former partners and promised a probe:
“Following their departure from our firm, a complaint was lodged against John Barber and Jeff Ranen to a member of our management committee. In keeping with our firm’s policies and our responsibility to our personnel, an investigation was undertaken and the firm was shocked to find dozens of emails between John Barber and Jeff Ranen containing highly inappropriate and offensive content.
“The firm is continuing to conduct a broader review of the behavior and conduct of John Barber and Jeff Ranen. We are deeply troubled by their use of prejudiced language and racial and cultural slurs aimed at colleagues, clients, attorneys from other firms, and even Judges,” the company said.
Barber and Ranen did not return multiple messages seeking comment.
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According to plenty of tweets in my feed these past few days, it sure seems like a lot of people can excuse stripping people of their reproductive rights—but draw a hard line at noise complaints.
Following Politico’s blockbuster scoop last week of the Supreme Court’s draft decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, people took to the streets. Pro-choice protests sprung up all across the country over the weekend, from DC to Baltimore to Oakland. But what has gotten folks most riled up is that the protesters took their outrage straight to the source: the steps of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s and Chief Justice John Roberts’ houses.
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Footage from various news outlets show that protesters, armed with raincoats and homemade signs with snappy, pro-choice slogans, gathered outside of the judges’ home to exercise their freedom of speech and assembly. While their anger and frustration were palpable, the protests were far from violent. Yet by the way some people have described the demonstrations outside Kavanaugh’s home, you would’ve sworn that the protesters ripped him and his family out of their beds and executed them in the middle of the street. (Spoiler alert: They didn’t.)
In a 13-second clip by Daily Signal news producer David Blair, you can see dozens of people standing outside of Kavanaugh’s house. They’re chanting, “We will not go back,” presumably to a time before abortions were safe and accessible.
According to Blair, this was “one of the scariest things I’ve ever witnessed.”
“This is an attempt at intimidation,” said Blair in an interview with Fox News, apparently clueless to the decades-long history of violent anti-abortion protests outside of clinics across America. “And I think it really says a lot, too, that the Biden administration is willing to absolutely let these Justices out to dry. They’re not going to say, ‘It’s not acceptable for you to go to somebody’s house and yell and scream.’”
But Blair underestimated the power of milquetoast white liberalism. At 9 a.m. this morning, White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted the following in response to the demonstration:
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Everyone from the far-right to the center-left seems to be way more concerned about the optics of the protests than the systemic injustices that people are protesting against. We saw something eerily similar with the racial-justice protests in response to the death of George Floyd in 2020. Remember Tucker Carlson describing the Black Lives Matter protesters as a “mob,” warning his viewers that the protesters will “come for them”? Or Eric Trump describing them as “animals” during one of his father’s campaign rallies? (And despite only 3.7 percent of protests containing violence or vandalism, several Democrats, including Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, stepped forward to condemn the violence at the demonstrations)
Asking for civility in the face of systemic violence is playing right into the oppressors’ hand. If we spend all of our time policing how people protest, then, conveniently, nothing will get done to attack the root of the issue. It’s nothing more than an attempt to derail the public conversation surrounding reproductive rights.
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According to experts, if the courts overturn Roe, people’s lives will be at risk. Miscarriages could be criminalized. Abortion providers could be sued. But above all, people would be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies. This clearly is a sacrifice that the Supreme Court’s conservative Justices are willing to make.
And if a Supreme Court Justice losing a few hours of sleep seems worse to you than people dying from the complications of an unwanted pregnancy, it’s time to reevaluate your priorities. And to Kavanaugh, Roberts, and any other Justices in favor of taking away people’s rights, if you can’t take the heat, stay out of people’s uteruses.
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tsunpopularopinions · 10 months
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Matty Healy - Claiming he was the Messiah - Using the f slur in a song even though he’s straight, a song which he’s hinting at playing live soon - Promoting his song on Twitter during the George Floyd protests (he got ripped apart on Twitter and left social media for a year after this) - Islamophobic views - FKA twigs allegedly dumping him for staying friends with Shia (her abuser) supporters - Continuing to work with a videographer for years despite allegations of grooming underage fans (even worse, he recently mocked a DM on his ig story asking him to address it)
i have no words...
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comeupkid415 · 1 year
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Math rip george floyd
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memento-morri-writes · 7 months
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Had the very strange experience today of being complimented by my professor and thinking to myself "you can thank tumblr for that".
(explanation/angry ramblings about the world under the cut. tw for racism and police violence)
So on Monday in class we watched a dashboard cam video of an altercation between a policeman and a black man that took place in my state. (My professor got called as an expert witness to the trial and got permission from the court to share the video.) After the video, the professor asked us what we thought about it, and what we thought either party did right/wrong/could have done better.
Most of the class was pretty wishy-washy, either not willing to get "political" in class, or hiding more extreme prejudices. But the absolutely insane thing was that most of them said the cop "handled it fine". My dude. The cop broke this man's window, attempted to rip him out of the car, and then later pulled a gun on him, leaving the man begging for his life. How the fuck is that "fine" behavior from someone who is supposed to make people feel safe???
Obviously being the opinionated, not-afraid-of-starting-fights little shit that I am, I had to call bullshit. I was the very last person the professor called on (by virtue of sitting in the far back corner) and I was really one of 2 or 3 people who actually said any words that meant anything.
I opened with the words "Have any of you actually had the police called on you? Anyone?" and went from there. I brought up that even as a literal child, and a privileged white one at that, I was terrified of the police. To the point that when a school employee told me (lying) that she had called them on me, I panicked, barricading myself in a room, and attempting to run as soon as someone opened the door. I was 12, and white. I had no reason to fear cops, having been raised on cop propaganda.
Now imagine how an adult black man must feel, living in the U.S., especially post-George Floyd. Every few weeks/months he's seeing on the news "black man shot by police, black man killed by police, black person beaten by police" and on and on and on. Of fucking COURSE his first reaction when he's pulled over (completely alone, no witnesses around) by a cop is to flee. Is that the "rational" thing to do? No. But people don't act rationally when they're terrified for their fucking lives.
Anyways, I brought that up, as well as pointed out the fact that the cop was the first one to get aggressive (swearing, raising his voice), as well as the fact that the cop had the nerve to later say "oh look, I have glass in my hand. This sucks." as if it wasn't his own fucking choice to break this poor man's window.
Some other classmates seemed mildly emboldened by my long rambling defense of the black man, and instead of saying wishy washy nothing spoke up a little more. Which was nice to see. But still... they didn't say much of substance.
Anyways, fast forwards to today, and when I walk into class the professor calls me over and says that my analysis of the video was "Something he'd expect out of a graduate student." While that was nice to hear, it was also disheartening, because my "analysis" was just pointing out things that happened in the video and linking them to real world events, as well as using common sense. So it's kind of sad to think that that level of critical thinking and just plain "don't be an idiot"-ness is rare.
I also didn't know how to feel about the fact that I have tumblr to thank for my education on that kind of thing, because god knows my 90% white, mildly conservative hometown didn't teach me shit about racism, or make me anti-cop.
I have the people who were spreading resources here on tumblr during the protests of 2021 to thank for that.
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