Let’s Give Credit Where Credit Is Due: Women’s March Organizers Tamika Mallory, Bob Bland, Carmen

POLICE BRUTALITY IN FRANCE

Video translation: My name is Aïssa Maïga. I am proud to be here, standing alongside Assa [Traoré] and all the families who have suffered police brutality in France. I am here in remembrance of all the people, too many of them to list, who endured this violence and paid the price of it with their lives.

I am a actress and a director. The fight we are leading in French cinema, television and theater is the same fight. It’s a fight for fair, positive and decent representation of French people of African descent, of Asian descent and of Arab descent.

We will not leave this alone. We will not leave French cinema alone. We will not leave the French justice system alone. We will not leave France alone. Not as long as there is injustice and not as long as our brothers, our sisters, our children risk dying at the hands of a police force that is supposed to protect them.

02/06/20 - 20,000 protesters gathered in Paris to demand justice for Adama Traoré, a young black man who died in police custody in 2016 after being pinned face down on the floor by the weight of three cops. The demonstration went ahead despite the chief of police waiving their right to march a few hours before the agreed upon start time. Protesters were later gassed and violently dispersed by the police.

The spotlight is on the US right now and obviously it’s vital for us to show our support, but it’s equally important to engage in the work that needs to be done at home. There is plenty.

Last night’s protest comes on the heels of mounting and widespread police brutality being used in repressing demonstrations against pension reform earlier this year, as well as heightened and disproportionate policing in black and brown neighbourhoods during the Covid-19 lockdown (link contains footage of violence).

The French Ombudsman has published several reports pointing to systematic racially discriminatory practices in the French police as well as its disproportionate use of force. He has also called for a ban on the use of rubber bullets and GLI-F4 grenades. France is the only country in the EU to allow for the use of these grenades and they are directly responsible for multiple people being permanently maimed in recent protests.

An internal affairs investigation was launched in January after a black officer reported his colleagues for insulting him in a whatsapp group, which later turned out to be full of cops bandying around racial, homophobic and antisemitic slurs, hate speech and conspiracy theories. I have listened to excerpts and cannot overstate how violent and disgusting the language and the content were.

In response to French cops regularly smashing phones being used to record them, Amal Bentounsi launched the Urgence Violences Policières app, which allows for footage of police misconduct to be directly uploaded to the cloud and sent to a collective monitoring police brutality in France. Now a draft bill is being put to Parliament aiming to limit our right to document police misconduct. People could face a €15,000 fine and 6 months in prison for sharing any footage of a police officer during the performance of their duties.

Last week, Camelia Jordana, a French singer, said on television that she, like thousands of French citizens, was afraid of a police force that routinely killed people because of the colour of their skin. Our Minister for Home Affairs immediately slammed her on twitter, calling her statement shameful and defamatory and then went on to say that he would “not let the Republic’s honour be sullied”.

All of this to say that our government is complicit, and our government as well as the media establishment and French police unions are finding it very easy to point fingers across the Atlantic while denying that the same violence is being perpetrated here.

If you’re French please sign the petition against the draft bill on police footage, sign the petition to legally ban unsafe forms of restraint used by the police, educate yourself further (x, x, x, x), contact your representatives, download the UVP app, and join the protests if you are able. Black lives matter the world over and now is the moment to push for change that’s been a long time coming.

Video courtesy of Taha Bouhafs on twitter

family (???) feud

Tears fill my eyes as I read the words on my screen. The world seems to stop spinning for the slightest second as I re-read the anonymous message over and over again, gripping on to the hope that the words will magically disappear. But they didn’t. Anon had done it; they’d figured out that the only way to make me take off my hijab was to call my hair ugly. My one weakness.

A tear streams down my left cheek.

Eight years of academy hijab training…wasted. I had to prove this extremely relevant and good-looking anonymous person wrong, I cared too much about what they thought. How could I live my life knowing that there is one person out there who thinks probably my hair is ugly maybe? How could I look myself in the mirror? How could I face my family? My shoulders shook as I cried silently, and my chair squeaked ever so slightly at the vibrations; as if it, too, was crying in sorrow.

It wasn’t until that moment that the second part of the message dawned on me… how would I prove them wrong without breaking the rules? Was it really against the rules? I reach into my hijab and pull out a scroll. At the very top, in cursive jet-black inked letters, the word ‘Rules’ stares back at me. My heart is racing as my eyes frantically read the scroll.

‘Rule #1: no killing people,’ it reads. I let out a whimper. There go my evening plans. 

Suddenly, my eye catches the next words. The scroll is rustling in my trembling hands as I turn my face away, tears spraying out of my eyes like the spit of a white person as they try to justify racism. The cursive words felt more like a curse of words, vivid and refusing to disappear as if I were still staring at them even through my closed eyes.

Rule #2: don’t show ur hair girl it’s ugly lmaooooo

Curse Nobara

working in customer service

exorcised, ingested

Episode 17: Yes, I’m still occasionally doing this when I can make myself scrap some time out, lmao. But the episode was so stunning, it deserves a few words!

I think the thing standing out the most in this episode, whether we look at Nobara vs. Momo or Maki vs. Mai, is that: none of them is wrong.

Poor Miwa, lmao. Mai really set her up like this because she’s too prideful to admit out aloud how strong Maki actually is T_T

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this is a 20K fic about Opal’s first year of kindergarten. i just finished reading it and i probably cried for over half an hour. this is such a beautiful fic and it’s heavy but also happy at the same time. i already loved opal before i read this but now i love her even more. not only do you get to know opal better, but you also get an outside perspective of ronan, declan, adam, and more.

if you love reading good things read this.

suguru geto