Tag: movement

The Chief Counsel For The Protest Movement, Fred Gray To Get Medal Of Freedom For His Civil Rights Work
SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Chief Counsel For The Protest Movement, Fred Gray To Get Medal Of Freedom For His Civil Rights Work

Over the past seven decades, longtime Alabama civil rights lawyer Fred Gray represented Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and the victims of the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment, in which the U.S. Public Health Service refused for decades to provide readily available treatment to Black men who had the disease. Gray played important roles in landmark Supreme Court decisions that outlawed segregated public transit and affirmed the strategy of the Montgomery bus boycott organizers. He protected the freedom of association guaranteed by the First Amendment by preventing Alabama officials from obtaining the NAACP’s membership list. He argued in the Supreme Court a case on racial gerrymandering that redefined the city boundaries to exclude 400 Black people – but no white people – from the ...
Celebrating And Empowering Stylish Older Women: The #Advancedstyle Movement
FASHION, STYLE

Celebrating And Empowering Stylish Older Women: The #Advancedstyle Movement

Until recently, the idea of paying close attention to mature women’s style would have, at best, been met with little interest from other consumers and the fashion industry but most likely completely ignored. After all, to be fashionable and feminine has typically been viewed as requiring youth. What could older female consumers possibly teach us about being stylish? Following the unexpected popularity of what’s known as the “advanced style” phenomenon, discussions about ageism, gender and fashion have been attracting increasing attention in the popular media, including the New York Times. The @advancedstyle Instagram account, created in 2008 by American street style photographer Ari Seth Cohen, helped fuel these critical conversations. Cohen’s celebration of the personal styles of regul...
How Women Are Taking Over The Labor Movement ‘This Is Our Time’
IN OTHER NEWS

How Women Are Taking Over The Labor Movement ‘This Is Our Time’

As she considered striking at the grocery store where she had worked for a decade, the dozens of moments that had pushed Ashley Manning to that point flooded back. She vividly recalled the indignities she endured throughout the pandemic, starting with child care. When schools shut down, no one could watch her 12-year-old daughter. She wouldn’t allow her elderly grandmother, Ruby, to do it, fearing she would get sick. And her store, a Ralphs in San Pedro, California, where she is the manager of the floral department, refused to work with her schedule, she said. No one can cover you, she said they told her. Your contract is for six days a week, we need you six days a week. Unable to work and care for her daughter, she burned through three months of unpaid leave at the end of 2020 as she w...
How Youth Have Changed The Climate Movement
Journalism

How Youth Have Changed The Climate Movement

“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children,” affirms the Oglala-Sioux version of a belief common to several indigenous cultures. To David Brower, the “archdruid” founder of Friends of the Earth, and other environmentalists, “stealing it from our children” better characterizes modern humans’ degradation of the earth. The only hope, Brower declared nearly 50 years ago, is “what young people can do before older people tell them it’s impossible.” The youth-led climate strikes in September that drew some 4 million marchers worldwide demand a far broader concept of democracy if the environmental goals they advocate are to be won. The climate-strike revolution represents a huge new step for human rights that expands hierarchical oppressions to include the dim...
Preventing Burnout Among Black Movement Leaders
SOCIAL JUSTICE

Preventing Burnout Among Black Movement Leaders

I’m not a good friend anymore. I am burned out and have little emotional energy left to cultivate the community I’m told I’m supposed to lean on for support. I am writing this three years into my role as executive director of Power Shift Network, a climate justice organization, and parenting a toddler, during what we now just call “these unprecedented times.” This is not a unique experience, especially for Black organizers and leaders. But it feels distinct now that it’s happening to me. What is actually a widespread, sector-wide problem has been pushed behind closed doors and turned into a private problem for individuals to solve using their personal resources. The truth is, burnout among Black activists and the organizational refusal to address it has serious implications for who remain...
How Far Has The Black Lives Matter Movement Come?
SOCIAL JUSTICE

How Far Has The Black Lives Matter Movement Come?

Kwasi Konadu, Colgate University and Bright Gyamfi, Northwestern University Black Lives Matter has been called the largest civil movement in U.S. history. Since 2013, local BLM chapters have formed nationwide to demand accountability for the killings of dozens of African Americans by police and others. Since the summer of 2020, when tens of millions in the U.S. and around the world marched under the “Black Lives Matter” slogan to protest a Minneapolis police officer’s murder of George Floyd, the movement has risen to a new level of prominence, funding and scrutiny. BLM has long been seen as a coordinated yet decentralized effort. Lately, the movement and its leading organizations have become more traditional and hierarchical in structure. Public opinion is also changing, as BLM chapters ...
There are many leaders of today’s protest movement – just like the civil rights movement
POLITICS, SOCIAL JUSTICE

There are many leaders of today’s protest movement – just like the civil rights movement

The recent wave of protests against police brutality and systemic racism has inspired numerous comparisons with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Commentators frequently depict the charismatic leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in sharp contrast with the decentralized and seemingly leaderless nature of the current movement. Despite the efforts of activists and historians to correct this “leaderless” image, the notion persists. Such comparisons reflect the cultural memory – not the actual history – of the struggle for Black equality. Heroic struggle led by charismatic men Through collective remembering and forgetting, societies build narratives of the past to create a shared identity – what scholars refer to as cultural memory. The civil rights movement is...
SOCIAL JUSTICE

The #MeToo Movement’s Roots in Women Workers’ Rights

An unsung shero of the early 20th century, Rose Schneiderman organized women to fight for laws to protect them from sexual harassment and assault in the workplace. Whenever new protest movements emerge, people look to history for lessons from activists and thinkers who came before. We all stand on the shoulders of those who struggled, sacrificed, and organized to push for a more humane society. #MeToo is one such movement. It has not only raised awareness about the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and assault—particularly of women—but is also an example of what happens when those who are relegated to a second-class citizenship status come together to speak out. History is filled with courageous and heroic women who launched crusades for women’s liberation and workers rights, and c...
What will the #MeToo movement mean for Cosby’s next trial?
Journalism

What will the #MeToo movement mean for Cosby’s next trial?

Jurors couldn’t agree the first time around whether to accept a woman’s story that “America’s Dad,” Bill Cosby, sexually assaulted her over a decade ago. Now he faces a retrial in less than 90 days in a vastly different cultural climate, one in which powerful men from Hollywood to the U.S. Senate are being toppled by allegations of sexual misconduct. The jury in Cosby’s case was deadlocked on charges he drugged and molested a woman in 2004, and the judge declared a mistrial in June. But that was before the revelations about movie producer Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement burst into the public sphere. The shift is clearly on Cosby’s mind. He quipped to a reporter after shaking her hand Wednesday outside a Philadelphia restaurant: “Please don’t put me on MeToo.” Legal experts say ...
Black Lives Matter: A Movement of Deception
Journalism

Black Lives Matter: A Movement of Deception

First, I encourage everyone to go the #BlackLivesMatter website and read the "About Us" and "Herstory" pages. Please read "the call to action" by the women who created the #BlackLivesMatter slogan and who affirm, "We are working to (re)build the Black liberation movement." What I found interesting is the point the women made in the "Broadening the Conversation" section which stated, "Progressive movements in the United States have made some unfortunate errors when they push for unity at the expense of really understanding the concrete differences in context, experience and oppression." To that point, their statement reminds me of the beginnings of a well-known terrorist organization who called themselves "kuklux" which understood the concrete differences in context of the post civil war ...