Rose tint my world

keep me safe from my trouble and pain

9 notes

rljd:

My sister texted me “Woah, the video for No Church In The Wild!” (It was very diligent of her to do all that capitalizing in T9) so I pulled my head out of the sand and went and found it.  I did not know it existed!

I think that song is on some super genius shit.  The music, the hook, both rappers.  I guess I don’t love The-Dream on it, but I don’t hate his part either.  Jay-Z paraphrases Socrates and Kanye describes my life for me.  Frank Ocean tears down hierarchies of moral authority.  Hell yeah.

This is not the video I would have envisioned for the verses to this song, although I can see how it meshes with the hook.  What I’m most worried about, though, is how it meshes with itself.  It seems to me that it’s doing two different things, both very valid, but which may undermine one another in terms of message.

Thing one is showing a group of protesters taking on the state security and really kicking ass.  It’s almost too romanticized, but the setting seems European (I’ve read that it’s Prague - I do not know the history of civilian-police clashes in Prague, I’m afraid), so I don’t take it to be intended to represent common comportment of protesters in North America.

Thing two is showing unwarranted brutality on the part of riot cops intent on suppressing public expression by assembled groups.

Either of those things, I can see the value of.  I don’t relish violence but  I can sympathize with a fantasy of just mowing down a phalanx of cops equipped to harm the bodies and interests of the populace.  I know anarchist kids who don’t like to admit that the G20 Security Forces in Toronto set their own cars on fire because they like to feel like their side struck a real blow… and maybe it beats feeling powerless and outgunned?  So that video I could see making its point well.

And I can also see a very good reason for a video depicting police violence against protesters and other civilians.  That’s going on even, and perhaps especially, in situations where no molotov cocktails or chunks of mortar or great big sticks or knees or fists are being thrown.  That’s an awareness issue, but it might not feel very empowering as the visuals accompanying a song like this one.

When you put the scenes from those two different concepts together, however, you get what resembles a two-sided clash, and all of a sudden the police actions, while still seeming ugly, don’t appear as unprovoked as they more commonly are in real life.  I know that the theme from the song that’s being extrapolated into the video is one of wildness, and muddy morality, and grandiose conflict… but there isn’t a great, balanced war between popular dissent movements and state security.  There’s a very determined effort to be heard and better served, and a very determined effort to disrupt and batter that effort.  The power is extremely unbalanced, and the violence is extremely unbalanced.  The bulk of the power rests with state security, and the bulk of the violence is visited upon the civilian population.

I wish this video wasn’t so ambiguous.  But I don’t think it’s BAD, you know?

Hot damn, when did this come out?? I have looked for an official video for this before, to no avail.

I don’t love this video, either, but I ain’t mad at it. This song is so good, it’s impossible for them to ruin it for me.

833 notes

[Flash 10 is required to watch video]

wetheurban:

TRANS RAPPER MYKKI BLANCO FREESTYLES IN HARLEM

This is a must see. As one of the best gay rappers in the game (and soon to be the first to cross over to mainstream success), Mykki Blanco is a sick enigmatic gem that is here to stay! In a recent mini-documentary with Glasnost NY, Mykki hits the streets of Harlem and the subway’s of NYC freestyling like the beast that she is. You just have to see for yourself.

p.s. Look out for Mykki in Issue 5 of WeTheUrban Magazine on newsstands this summer!

(via fuckyeahfeminists)

3,478 notes

stfuconservatives: str8nochaser: thedailywhat: Controversial Facebook Photos of the Day: Air National Guard members Terran Echegoyen-McCabe and Christina Luna recently posted to Facebook several pics of themselves breastfeeding in fatigues — which they do all the time on Fairchild Airforce Base in Spokane, Washington – and their photos have prompted outcry from around the world. No matter that there are no rules in military conduct against breastfeeding in uniform; one disparaging Facebook comment compared the images to “urinating and defecating.” Fellow soldier Rita Trujillo commented:  “I as one of many women who fought long and hard to be accepted and respected as fellow soldiers and the right to wear these uniforms feel shocked, angry at these published photos.” The photos were taken for the Mom2Mom Breastfeeding Support Group,which raises awareness of women’s right to breastfeed in public. [dailymail] America hates mothers in a way that is so insipid, you have WOMEN disparaging other WOMEN for doing what the breast was intended to do and being active engaged mothers. And why? Because “I as one of many women who fought long and hard to be accepted and respected as fellow soldiers and the right to wear these uniforms feel shocked, angry at these published photos.” This is a statement made by a woman about how women feeding their children in their work fatigues damages her status and acceptance as a female soldier. Meaning motherhood is seen as something “weak” and breastfeeding is “dirty”. Patriarchy is a hell of a drug.   flawless commentary

stfuconservatives:

str8nochaser:

thedailywhat:

Controversial Facebook Photos of the Day: Air National Guard members Terran Echegoyen-McCabe and Christina Luna recently posted to Facebook several pics of themselves breastfeeding in fatigues — which they do all the time on Fairchild Airforce Base in Spokane, Washington – and their photos have prompted outcry from around the world.

No matter that there are no rules in military conduct against breastfeeding in uniform; one disparaging Facebook comment compared the images to “urinating and defecating.”

Fellow soldier Rita Trujillo commented: 

“I as one of many women who fought long and hard to be accepted and respected as fellow soldiers and the right to wear these uniforms feel shocked, angry at these published photos.”

The photos were taken for the Mom2Mom Breastfeeding Support Group,which raises awareness of women’s right to breastfeed in public.

[dailymail]

America hates mothers in a way that is so insipid, you have WOMEN disparaging other WOMEN for doing what the breast was intended to do and being active engaged mothers.

And why?

Because “I as one of many women who fought long and hard to be accepted and respected as fellow soldiers and the right to wear these uniforms feel shocked, angry at these published photos.”

This is a statement made by a woman about how women feeding their children in their work fatigues damages her status and acceptance as a female soldier. Meaning motherhood is seen as something “weak” and breastfeeding is “dirty”.

Patriarchy is a hell of a drug.  

flawless commentary

159 notes

stfuconservatives: teaandcrumpets submitted: “A friend shared this on facebook today. “NO. Just NO. There is still cotton because people PAY for it. If there are no taxes, who will pay for the roads? If there is no way to pay for it, how can it be built? Are the materials just going to materialize out of thin air? Are the machines just going to magically run themselves? Even if the materials didn’t cost anything, the people laying the roads kind of need to eat and have a place to live, you know! Use your brains!” —- I can’t tell you about a cotton shortage, but I can tell you a great story about the collapse of the economy in the south after the abolition of slavery. I know, I know, using historical examples to explain things to Libertarians is about as effective as giving a fish a bicycle. If anything, their complete and utter disregard for American history is a reason we should *increase* taxes. Our schools clearly need more funding for social studies classes. I love how Paulbots feel totally justified comparing taxes to slavery. Yeah, paying a tiny portion of your salary to cover roads and schools and other social programs that benefit you is totally like being owned by another human being. Totally. My head pretty much exploded when I saw this meme. Like, I cannot believe someone even made this.

stfuconservatives:

teaandcrumpets submitted: “A friend shared this on facebook today.

“NO. Just NO. There is still cotton because people PAY for it. If there are no taxes, who will pay for the roads? If there is no way to pay for it, how can it be built? Are the materials just going to materialize out of thin air? Are the machines just going to magically run themselves? Even if the materials didn’t cost anything, the people laying the roads kind of need to eat and have a place to live, you know! Use your brains!”

—-

I can’t tell you about a cotton shortage, but I can tell you a great story about the collapse of the economy in the south after the abolition of slavery. I know, I know, using historical examples to explain things to Libertarians is about as effective as giving a fish a bicycle. If anything, their complete and utter disregard for American history is a reason we should *increase* taxes. Our schools clearly need more funding for social studies classes.

I love how Paulbots feel totally justified comparing taxes to slavery. Yeah, paying a tiny portion of your salary to cover roads and schools and other social programs that benefit you is totally like being owned by another human being. Totally.

My head pretty much exploded when I saw this meme. Like, I cannot believe someone even made this.

1,446 notes

Real women have curves” was a marketing slogan thought up to sell people overpriced, ill-fitting pants. It does NOT promote body positivity – it only perpetuates body policing by turning the tables on people who don’t fit into yet another arbitrary ideal.
The job is to BUST THE FUCKING PARADIGM APART, not shift it a little bit toward the fat side. The job is to remind people, bodies are not public property and your opinion about an individual’s body is only an opinion, not a valid judgment of their worth as a human being. The JOB is to destroy systemic oppression of nonconforming, rebellious bodies no matter what those bodies look like.
(via blck-grrl)

(via stfuconservatives)

624 notes

When neo-soul singer Erykah Badu announced her third pregnancy in 2008, some fans attacked her for having children outside of marriage with more than one father. One online commenter labeled the singer, known for rocking a mega ’fro, ‘trash with great hair.’ A Zimbio.com article that referred to Badu’s ‘growing list of baby daddies’ featured a ‘Knocked Up Again’ headline. A blog article wondered baldly if the singer was ‘a ho.’ She was derided as a poor example of black womanhood. The storm got so heavy that Badu bit back in a lengthy and poetically unapologetic online post about her family that ended with an entreaty to ‘Kiss my placenta.’


Three years later, when Beyoncé announced she was expecting, she was publicly applauded for doing pregnancy ‘the right way,’ and celebrated for being a model of black womanhood. Even Diddy’s 18-year-old son, Justin Combs, weighed in on Bey’s proper use of her uterus. Combs tweeted: ‘Beyoncé dated, married, THEN got pregnant…young ladies take notes.’ (No word on whether Combs’s dad, who has never married but has five children, is also taking notes.)

Tamara Winfrey Harris

I think this proves my point[s] again regarding the fact that Beyonce’s pregnancy & birth were applauded, while overall Black motherhood is degraded. Mainly because Black motherhood is stereotyped. Black mothers are seen as vile, crude, loud-mouthed ghetto bitches and ho’s , welfare queens, unmarried womyn who have children out of wedlock. They are seen as violent towards their children and their children’s father, as birthing the unwanted, the excess. However, when someone like Beyonce, who falls well within the politics of respectability, who’s rich, light skinned, thin, with no visible disabilities, and married, has a child; folks use her as a example of what black mothers SHOULD be, how they SHOULD rear a child. Essentially, they are using her body to uphold standards of respectabiltiy and white supremacy, simultaneously degrading those “regular” black womyn while not examining the privileges that Beyonce has. Once again, this is also true because Blue Ivy’s birth is within the confines of a heterosexual marriage, which assumed monogamous dating preceeded. Blue Ivy is not the excess or the unwanted, ze’s the prized because hir mother “did it the right way.” She reproduced into a capitalist, heteronormative familial structure. That’s when its all good, that’s when its ok & cool to be a Black mother, when you’re Beyonce.

Hmph.

(via hiphopcheerleader)

(via stfuconservatives)