No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.
Assata Shakur (via arianathepoet)
‘Worse than death row’: Gitmo hunger strike reaches Day 100 — RT News∞
Close this base. It’s a torture resort and costs us way too much money with no benefits. They’re not even charging these people with crimes.
Deadspin Infographic: Is Your State’s Highest-Paid Employee A Coach? (Probably)
This entire country needs to have a therapy session. We’re not doing this.
There are now more Americans in jail than were in Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago
May 9, 2013There are now more Americans in jail — 6 million — than there were in Stalin’s Gulag, reports Fareed Zakaria, in a column called “Incarceration Nation.”
And it’s not just a relative population thing.
The U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. How does that compare to other countries?
It’s 7-10X as high:
- Japan has 63 per 100,000,
- Germany has 90 per 100,000
- France has 96 per 100,000
- South Korea has 97 per 100,000
- Britain has 153 per 100,000
And it’s a rapidly exaggerating trend: In 1980, the U.S. only had 150 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. More than half of America’s 6 million prisoners are in jail for drug convictions, with 80% of those in jail for “possession.”
Had you any idea that Emmett Till’s final words were some of boldest in American history?
Milam: “You still as good as I am?”
Till: “Yeah.”
Milam: “You still ‘had’ white women?”
Till: “Yeah.”
Keep in mind that that’s after two grown men had tortured him for hours. Milam would later say that, following that exchange, he had no choice but to kill the 14-year-old boy:
“Well, what else could we do? He was hopeless. I’m no bully; I never hurt a n*gger in my life. I like n*ggers—in their place—I know how to work ‘em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, n*ggers are gonna stay in their place. N*ggers ain’t gonna vote where I live. If they did, they’d control the government. They ain’t gonna go to school with my kids. And when a n*gger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he’s tired o’ livin’. I’m likely to kill him. Me and my folks fought for this country, and we got some rights. I stood there in that shed and listened to that n*gger throw that poison at me, and I just made up my mind. ‘Chicago boy,’ I said, ‘I’m tired of ‘em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I’m going to make an example of you—just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.’”
still less than 60 years ago white folks.
Just 57 years ago. Think long and hard about that. 57 years. That’s not that long.
That’s how privilege sounds.
“I like them, but in their place. I like them, but they’re not as good as me. I like them, but I’ll kill/assault/make life hell for them because I feel it is my right to do so.”
He calls it “poison” - being denied his ubiquitous privilege for even a moment - was venomous to his psyche.
No way in hell that fucked up mentality just evaporated from his generation - we all know, it was instilled far further back - yet that’s the beginning of every “we’re not like that” excuse: that somehow THIS time period was one of great justice and change.
If that mans words don’t make your stomach turn, you just might be a white supremacist/sympathizer. I got chills. I’ve read it before, but god damn, it is so hateful and HIS words are poisonous. Racism is a poison, a disease in society, and it has not been eradicated. I mean, my grandmother was 12 when this happened, and she’s not yet an ‘old woman’.
You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
Ray Bradbury (via vindicat-d)
We spend the first year of a child’s life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There’s something wrong there.
