Month: March 2017

It was a big week for hate. It was no different than last week.

Acts of violence and intimidation against minority groups are becoming so commonplace that they’re tough to track ― though we’ve been trying. This week, reports on three incidents highlighted how fear and hatred have permeated the everyday lives of Americans.

In a township outside of Indianapolis, Indiana, school officials confirmed that a group of fourth-graders on a winning robotics team were told to “go back to Mexico” by other students ― and that parents joined in to hurl racist slurs their way. The Indianapolis Star reporter who brought the February incident to light this week characterized the backward thought process behind the verbal assault:

If you allow racism and hate to dictate these things, minority students from the Eastside, poor kids from a Title I school, aren’t supposed to be smart. They aren’t supposed to be talented. They aren’t supposed to be technologically savvy. And they definitely aren’t supposed to be able to best white students from surrounding communities.

Over in Orange County, California, a waiter was fired for demanding patrons’ “proof of residency” in the United States. “I need to make sure you’re residents before I serve you,” the waiter reportedly said to Diana Carrillo, a 24-year-old Californian, her sister and two of their friends.

Carrillo was quick to invoke President Donald Trump, whose administration has been criticized by civil rights groups for failing to respond in a meaningful way to hate crimes across the country.

“I feel that’s the direction we’re headed in, given who’s the president,” Carrillo told the Orange County Register Friday.

Often, Trump’s name is brought up during actual crimes. On Thursday, a man was charged with aggravated harassment after allegedly kicking a Muslim Delta employee at John F. Kennedy International Airport and promising that Trump would kick the victim out of the country.

“Are you [expletive] sleeping? Are you praying? What are you doing?” the suspect, 57-year-old Robin Rhodes said to the victim, according to a complaint that KTLA obtained.

“You did nothing but I am going to kick your [expletive] ass,” Rhodes said. “[Expletive] Islam, [expletive] ISIS, Trump is here now. He will get rid of all of you. You can ask Germany, Belgium and France about these kind of people. You will see what happens.”

There are now so many instances of hateful acts carried out in Trump’s name or policy that saying hateful people are “emboldened” by this administration borders on cliché.

At least 150 civil rights groups agree. Last week, Amnesty International, the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Muslim Advocates and the National Bar Association were among a long list of groups to sign an open letter condemning the Trump administration’s lack of action ― or even acknowledgement ― after so many acts of violence and intimidation.

Jewish leaders and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are enraged over the lack of response to bomb threats made to Jewish community centers over the country. Though the Department of Homeland Security has pledged its full involvement into the investigation of more than 125 threats made to 85 centers across the country since January, the federal reaction has been widely criticized as hollow and sluggish.

The past few weeks have been no different across America.

We watched as two Indian men in Kansas were shot after being told to “Get out of my country.” We watched as four mosques were burned down in less than two months. We watched as a Sikh man was shot in Washington; as gravestones were overturned; as Latinos in California and New York were assaulted; as transgender women of color were murdered; as Jews were under siege in their homes, places of worship and community centers.

We will continue to watch as lawmakers, civil rights groups and the American people wait for the Trump administration to draw a line in the sand and condemn the rise in American hatred.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

PEORIA, Ill. ― Nikita Richards has thought about running for public office for as long as she can remember. She just figured she didn’t fit the mold.

Richards, a 34-year-old public relations consultant who lives in Bloomington, doesn’t mingle with the Democratic elite. She’s not rich. She’s an African-American single mom in a predominantly white Republican area. Her closest brush with politics has been working with clients who are local elected officials.

But something changed after Donald Trump won the presidency in November. Richards’ initial feelings of shock and devastation gave way to a sense of urgency. She started getting involved with local progressive groups, meeting up with others to write letters to their congressman, Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), about preserving free preventative care services amid health care reform. She met a woman running for town supervisor ― a Democrat, roughly her age, running for a seat Republicans have held for years. The woman told Richards that Democrats needed her, too, and that they would have her back if she decided to run for office. 

“I’d never had anyone say that to me,” said Richards. “She was just like, ‘I see something in you.’”

This is how Richards came to be one of a few dozen people who gathered in Peoria in late February for Build the Bench, an all-day boot camp designed to train Democrats on how to run for local office. Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) organized the event, which offered attendees an extraordinary level of nuts-and-bolts details on how to run a successful campaign, with presentations from organizers of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and representatives of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

By the end of the day, Richards was brimming with determination and armed with a binder full of notes. She even had a local office in mind that she planned to run for, though she didn’t want to give it away. “I was scared,” she said. “Now I’m ready.”

The Democratic Party is seeing an explosion of interest around the country from people like Richards ― progressives who have realized, in the wake of Trump’s win, that the future of the party is up to them.

These newly galvanized people are organizing protests locally and nationally. They’re flooding the phone lines in Congress. And they’re ready to run for office. One grassroots mobilization group, Run for Something, has already had 7,500 millennials commit to running for state and local office, according to co-founder Amanda Litman ― and they just launched on Jan. 20.

Build the Bench is also looking to channel that energy. Bustos says one of the most effective things Democrats in Congress can do is recruit and train people to run for local seats in their districts ― town council, school board, maybe even the county coroner (yes, this is an elected position in some places). The point is, it’s getting more Democrats started in politics.

“People are energized. We’ve got to do something about that,” she said. “I can’t think of a better thing to do than to get people ready to run for office. That’s what this is all about.”

Bustos came up with the idea for Build the Bench last year, when, as vice chair of recruitment for the DCCC, she noticed the party was struggling to find good candidates. “I was like, how in the heck can we not find someone great to run when there’s 700,000 people who live here? But we couldn’t, in several areas.”

She realized there may be lots of people interested in public service but they just don’t know how to get started, or they feel intimidated. She began personally recruiting people in her district ― sometimes just random people she met who impressed her ― for Build the Bench. She’s the only Democrat in Congress spearheading a program like this.

The boot camp is an intensive but casual affair. Bustos rented out a union hall in Peoria from 9 to 5 on a Saturday and provided granola bars, doughnuts and coffee. Turkey sandwiches arrived later for lunch. Campaign veterans rotated in throughout the day, giving crash courses on digital marketing and how to construct an effective stump speech. They gave insider tips on how to ask someone for $1,000 without making it totally awkward: Take a long sip of water immediately after asking, which seems bizarre (remember Marco Rubio’s swigs of water?) but apparently it keeps you from rambling. There were exercises, too, like writing a 30-second campaign pitch and practicing it in front of the room.

Prospective candidates cheered each other on throughout these exercises and offered advice on what worked and what didn’t. In between sessions, they mingled and traded stories about their political plans.

It’s not as easy for a woman to pick up and go into a field like this as it may be for a man.
Nikita Richards of Bloomington, Illinois

Bustos developed the program with political advisers like Emily Parcell, an Obama campaign alum who’s worked on local, state and national campaigns. It costs only a few thousand dollars to put it on, said Bustos, who paid for it out of her campaign money. She held her first boot camp in May 2016 and capped it at 25 people to keep it more personal. She had to increase the cap to 34 people for the February session due to interest ― and still had a few dozen people on a waiting list.

Bustos is thinking beyond local politics. Grooming stronger Democratic candidates at the local level means a stronger set of candidates for statewide and national runs down the road. Sometimes all it takes to get someone interested in public office is asking if they’ve considered running, Bustos said, and pointing out the potential they have. That’s how it happened for her when she was first asked to run for East Moline City Council in 2007.

“It wasn’t something that I thought of,” said the three-term congresswoman. “I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been asked.”

She told the group she was initially put off by the idea of running for office and declined. She worried about being able to financially support her family while running, and her husband was opposed to it. But she found a way to make it work and got her husband on board.

Richards could relate to Bustos’ concerns about work-life balance. “That’s real life,” she said. “It’s not as easy for a woman to pick up and go into a field like this as it may be for a man.”

Every boot camp attendee HuffPost talked to said Trump was a factor in their decision to look at running for office. But they had other reasons, too. Jodie Slothower, 57, is already running for clerk of Normal Township. Democrats haven’t had a seat on the board since 1971, and the current slate of board members is almost entirely white Republican men. There are six Democrats vying for eight seats this year, and five of them are women. Slothower thinks the surge of progressive momentum in her town can push them to victory in the April 4 race. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) even gave their small township election a shout-out recently.

“We’re engaging people,” said Slothower. “People are upset, and a lot of them are women that, even before the Women’s March, got involved. We’re just so frustrated on a very personal level.”

Slothower, a former college teacher, made her foray into politics in November, when she and a friend launched Voices of Reason, a group aimed at mobilizing Democrats in central Illinois to fight Trump’s agenda. It’s a traditionally GOP region, so she expected maybe a couple of hundred people to join. But they’re at 1,600 members and growing. Amid some of her activism ― which has included protesting Rep. Davis for not holding a town hall on health care ― Slothower heard about the upcoming Normal elections and decided to run.

“This is something where I want to put my money where my mouth is,” said Lee, who lives in Sterling with his wife and 4-year-old child. “I do civil rights and employment law. We don’t make as much money as other attorneys. But I get to wear my pink tie and go fight for people.”

Lee’s father is the mayor of Sterling, and while he had thought about running for statewide office, it seemed daunting. He didn’t want to choose between politics and his legal career or parenting. But running for a county seat seems doable.

“I used to think I was chickenshit for not making any change. But now I have a Democratic county board appointing a Republican to state’s attorney. This is an important seat,” Lee said. “I couldn’t get him fired, but I can say, ‘I’m going to cut his budget. I can tie his hands.’ That is real.”

Others, like Shanna Shipman of Peoria, left Build the Bench clearly energized but more reluctant about the timing of a run for office. Shipman, 37, is a single mom of four who works full time at the American Institutes for Research. She wants to make sure her kids remain her priority for now, so she’s giving herself four years before considering a campaign.

“I do not take lightly the profound shift that will happen once pursuing a public servant life,” said Shipman. “And it’s something, when I do it, I’m going to do it full-out.”

She followed up with The Huffington Post after the boot camp to with updates on the surge of activity in her community. “Momentum going strong in my town,” she texted weeks later, in early March. “You could attend a different meeting every day of the week if you wanted ― women’s rights, religious tolerance, environmental issues… Energy seems to be sustaining, and I really do feel this new urgency and participation is a silver lining that may impact outcomes next cycle.”

In the end, Shipman may decide to run for office for the same reason she’s not ready to right now: her kids. “I look at my 14-year-old, who knows that I’ve been upset about how certain things are happening, and I would like, rather than her impression be that mom is complaining … that mom’s acting. You know?”

Bustos is already planning her next Build the Bench boot camp in a different town in her district, and she’s hoping to franchise it for other Democrats. She’s been working with the DCCC to present a template to colleagues to roll out the program in their districts. She has also talked to newly elected Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez about it.

“This is not a major time commitment for anyone,” she said. “You just ask somebody to commit a full day, where they will walk away from that event and be prepared to run for office and to know what it takes to win.”

Looking around at the group of enthusiastic Democrats she assembled, Bustos added, “I hope there’s a future congressman or woman here.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Arkansas legislators voted Friday afternoon to separate Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from the holiday that celebrates the memory of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. 

According to The Associated Press, the proposal cleared the state House by a vote of 66-11. Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is expected to sign it into law Monday, has been a proponent of Senate Bill 519 since it was filed.

“The support for a separate holiday to recognize Martin Luther King far exceeded my expectations and speaks well of the General Assembly and our state,” Hutchinson wrote on Twitter.

The legislation will move Robert E. Lee Day from the third Monday in January, which it currently shares with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to the second Saturday in October.

With Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert E. Lee both born in January, Arkansas voted to combine the two holidays in 1985, according to the AP.

Mississippi and Alabama will be the only remaining states to honor both Lee and King on the same date after this bill is signed into law. A small town in Mississippi faced outrage in January for not giving Martin Luther King Jr. Day its proper title. Even Google came under fire to marking the wrong day on some posts. 

The bill not only separates the two commemorative dates but will also require the state’s Department of Education to create a special curriculum on the fight for civil rights and the Civil War, starting with the 2018-2019 school year.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

If you don’t know who JJ Smith is, you better ask somebody—perhaps one of the more than 1.2 million folks who keep up with her on social media. Or the hundreds of thousands of people who purchase her weight loss books, which have created a cottage industry for the 47-year old Fredericksburg, Va., native.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

This piece by Sam Riedel originally appeared on The Establishment, an independent multimedia site founded and run by women.

Content warning: discussion of homicide and assault

Here are some facts: Mesha Caldwell lived in Canton, Mississippi. She studied at Jackson State University and worked as a hair and makeup artist, winning competitive “hair battles” and mentoring younger beauticians in the Madison County area. She was also a black transgender woman.

I know these things because Mesha was found shot to death on January 4, the first of seven trans women of color to be murdered this year. But the first thing I read about her was the one thing I never wanted to know: the deadname she was assigned at birth.

For transgender people, our relationships to our names are complicated, to say the least. What we’re called has power, and hearing a blatantly masculine or feminine name applied to you when you’re trying to realign your gender in a different direction can be a source of profound, dysphoria-inducing anxiety. Hearing or seeing one’s old name can induce a visceral sense of terror that no matter how much progress one makes in their transition, the person they used to be (or pretended to be) is still there.

Hearing or seeing one’s old name can induce a visceral sense of terror.

Hence the term “deadname”: a name that shall not be spoken, for it invokes a restless spirit. Many trans people will go to great lengths to prevent people from finding out their deadnames, destroying irreplaceable photos and documents in an effort to ensure that who they really are is the only identity most will remember. We may not be able to make our families forget what they used to call us, but we can change how we’re known to the rest of the world.

Except when we can’t.

Breaking the news of Mesha Caldwell’s murder, MS News Now reporter Waverly McCarthy chose to position Caldwell’s deadname as the first piece of information readers would learn about her (after being informed that she was trans). In doing so, McCarthy violated a deeply personal boundary that perpetuated the single most harmful misconception about trans people all over the world: that our true gender identities — who we are at our core — are the ones we were assigned at birth.

This has become a pattern in reports on transgender homicides: CNN and Slate both deadnamed Kayden Clarke when he was shot by police in a hospital last year; The Daily Mail printed Mayang Prasetyo’s deadname directly under a 2014 headline that referred to her as a “young man”; Reuters deadnamed and called Jennifer Laude “the transgender” when reporting on her murder at the hands of a Marine; and so on.

In addition to Mesha, the other trans women of color murdered in January and February didn’t escape this trend. In reporting the murder of Keke Collier, the Chicago Tribune deadnamed her twice: once in their initial report, and once in their follow-up after Collier’s true name had been established. WTOL has yet to correct their report deadnaming Jojo Striker, and in a shocking display of cognitive dissonance, LGBTQIA news site PinkNews reprinted Chyna Gibson’s deadname while noting that initial reports had misgendered her. (They have since removed that information, nearly four days after the fact.)

This represents a systematic process of denying trans people not just our identities, but our humanity — one that I wrote about in 2015, when Kathy Sal was assaulted in front of her apartment in Queens (and deadnamed on WCBS, naturally). That was my second column as an out trans girl. As I waded through the litany of abusive comments and misgendering media reports, I wondered how to fix society’s preconceived notions of what it means to be trans, and if such a thing was even possible.

But more than anything, I wondered — and still do — what the news will say about me when I’m dead.

I have a handmade clay coffee mug with my deadname on it that I still can’t bring myself to throw away. Though seeing it emblazoned on bills and checks makes me depressed, and I can’t wait to legally be Samantha, there’s a small spark of sentimentality in me that can’t let that little souvenir of my past go — maybe because it’s one thing that ties me to my father, who I lost to cancer five years ago. I was named for his favorite playwright (I’m sure some of you can guess who). Disposing of that shard of history, both cup and name, feels like a slap in the face, if a necessary one.

If trans folks’ feelings about their deadnames were easy to parse, we could hardly call this problem a trans issue — after all, nothing about transitioning is simple. It’s important to know that some of us have an amicable relationship with our deadnames; during the period of time I identified as genderfluid, I had no feelings at all about what was on my driver’s license. It was only after I reexamined my transness that I began feeling upset at how obviously male my name was, and started looking into the long process of changing my name to a more feminine version. 

If trans folks’ feelings about their deadnames were easy to parse, we could hardly call this problem a trans issue.

I’m not the only one whose feelings about their given name have changed over time; one friend of mine took a permanent marker and scissors to anything bearing her deadname immediately after coming out, and experiences some dysphoria at the mere thought of anyone knowing it.

We also have to consider the feelings of trans people who transition in the public eye, whose deadnames are plastered on books, movies, albums, and so forth. The Wachowski sisters are a prime example, as is comics creator Lilah Sturges, whose old name appears on a swath of publications (some of which have been nominated for high-profile industry awards). Though she’s ecstatic to have her name changed legally now, Lilah told me in an interview that personally, she doesn’t even use the term “deadname.” “It makes me a little dysphoric to see it and hear it, but I respect it, just like I respect the things that I did in order to make it through life,” she told me. “Some books I feel belong to that name, in a strange way that I can’t quite elucidate.”

Trans people all have different relationships to the concept and even terminology surrounding deadnaming — and that’s okay, because this is an integral part of our struggle to self-determine our identities. The problems come when cisnormative media and society at large decides to make those decisions for us.

We have to consider the feelings of trans people who transition in the public eye.

One of the best examples I can use to illustrate this is Caitlyn Jenner.

I don’t bring up Cait because I think she should be a spokeswoman or icon for the broader trans community (on the contrary, one of the only things almost all trans people agree on is that we wish she’d go away), but because hers is a deadname that virtually everyone knows. While Caitlyn is reportedly still “dad” to her kids, she’s been clear that she isn’t who she used to be anymore. Whereas many trans people consider themselves to have been “born this way,” a la the prevailing gay rights narrative, others feel like their identity has actively changed over the years, and Caitlyn has often referred to her pre-transition self as though she were talking about a totally different person.

No matter where Caitlyn falls on that spectrum or how comfortable she is personally referencing her deadname, it’s no longer appropriate to refer to her as anything other than her chosen name. Even if you haven’t read GLAAD’s style guidelines on the matter, Caitlyn Jenner is a name that almost everyone invested in pop culture recognizes; she’s arguably far more famous now than she was as an Olympian. Did you notice I managed to get through that last paragraph about her deadname without using it? You still knew who I was talking about, right?

But mainstream media outlets can’t seem to get it out of their mouths. Tabloids like the New York Post are obviously the most egregious violators (our old friend the Daily Mail can’t resist deadnaming Caitlyn even in passing), but this extends to larger publications as well. Forbes, Inquisitr, the International Business Times — even Vanity Fair, the magazine via which Jenner once famously asked the world to “Call Me Caitlyn,” bizarrely referenced her deadname four times in the course of an article about David Foster.

All of these examples are from the past two months, and none of them are necessary or appropriate. Regardless of Caitlyn’s own willingness to use her deadname in certain contexts, it’s obvious that the media at large isn’t doing this because she granted them permission; these reports reference her deadname as though doing so is imperative.

Why, when Caitlyn Jenner is one of the most recognizable names in the world? Maybe because, on some level, many still think transgender people are play-acting and don’t believe us when we assert our true selves. (Did you look up my deadname when I referenced it above? What made you think you needed to?)

On some level, many still seem to think that transgender people are play-acting.

And make no mistake: This rhetoric is harmful. When mainstream news reports constantly reference deadnames like Caitlyn Jenner’s, they propagate the idea that transphobia is just a difference of opinion — that when sites like Breitbart stubbornly deadname and misgender her, it’s simply a political disagreement.

But in what universe does the idea that “trans women are really just men” not directly lead to violence? Almost one in 10 respondents to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey said they’d been physically attacked in the past year because of their identity; over half of those attacked for any reason had been assaulted multiple times. Many shared harrowing experiences, like this woman’s:

I was found in a ditch after being brutally raped for three days. I was taken to an ER. There I met an officer who told me I deserved it for attempting to be a woman and should have died.

Stories like hers don’t exist on the fringes of the trans community. Jennifer Laude, Gwen Araujo, and untold others have been murdered because people “found out” who they “really were” — and somehow that’s not related to the media’s reckless weaponization of deadnames?

If you’re friends with a trans person and they give you permission to use their deadname in the past tense, fine. That’s their personal choice. But in any other context — especially a journalistic one — that information should be strictly confidential. Sharing it is violence under the guise of reportage, and any writer who engages in it should feel personally ashamed.

Because until they learn, we’re going to keep losing people like Mesha Caldwell. And those of us who survive are tired of being the only ones who remember the names of the dead.

You can support The Establishment’s independent media work by purchasing a ‘Member of the Resistance’ tee or making a donation here.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

CeCe Peniston realized her dreams by landing on the music charts with her multi-platinum single “Finally.”

Peniston’s breakout hit, featured on the singer’s 1992 debut album of the same name, catapulted the then-21-year-old to the top of Billboard’s Dance/Club songs chart, and peaked at No. 5 on Billboard’s Top 100 singles chart. 

Peniston’s seminal track, which was followed by hits like “Keep On Walkin’” and “We Got a Love Thang,” helped earn the Arizona native the 1992 Billboard award for Best New Artist, Dance.

Over two decades since her meteoric rise in the music world, Peniston has launched her own publishing company, CeCe Pen Inc., and is currently recording two new solo studio projects, as well as developing an as-yet-untitled reality show.

In celebration of her forthcoming nationwide tour commemorating the 25th anniversary of “Finally,” Peniston spoke to The Huffington Post about the song’s success, taking control of her music, and the significance of becoming the first foreign female entertainer to perform in post-apartheid South Africa.

Congratulations on the 25th anniversary of “Finally.” How does it feel to commemorate the song’s success?

It feels really good, and we’re definitely going all out. I finally put back on the “Finally” hat from 25 years ago on the album cover. Not everybody gets a classic. Sometimes people get songs on the radio, but to have a song that stands 25 years. All over the world, I’m traveling and I still hear it. Just to have that one classic that people want to hear all over again, it’s definitely a blessing and truly feels epic for me.

What was the inspiration for writing the song at age 21? 

I was in college and I started writing poetry as a way to express myself. And while I was in college I wasn’t dating that much and I was like, “I don’t have a man, what would I say if I found him, finally? And what would he look like?” And I just put in the description of what he would look like to me. And it’s funny how that happened. So the inspiration was a real-life experience for me being in college and not having somebody and just saying what I would say.

Following the song’s release, did you finally meet your man?

I did, sweetie. [Laughs] I did meet him afterwards, and we ended up getting married. We were married for about a year. I started traveling around the world and sometimes that’s weird when you’re young and trying to travel the world. And being married, that’s a whole new experience. But yeah, I found him for a little bit. [Laughs]

Through the years, you’ve remained active in music by releasing a string of dance singles. However, your last full-length solo album was released in 1996. What has prompted your decision to record singles instead of an album?

I just think that people get bored. Because sometimes, there’s so many projects. For instance, I’m working on a Christmas project, which probably won’t be done until May, but the single route is easier. I have another live project that I’m working on and then I have my own dance music. So between putting out too many albums at one time and just doing singles and doing things that you like to do, you never know what’s gonna hit. And it prevents me from having to be in a box. And also, I’ve been on different labels where they’ll say, “Hey, we’ll just put out a single here and a single there,” and you’re in different places putting out singles.

Now, I’m doing stuff myself ― independently, paying for stuff, putting out my own music, getting my own publishing. Everything. When you own stuff it makes it a lot different than having to get permission from somebody else. So those are the things that I’m doing this year, as I take charge of my business.

What are your thoughts on some of today’s R&B/pop artists, such as Rihanna and Usher, recording dance music, in comparison to the ‘90s?

I just think that the beats are different. I think the tone and the format has changed. When we were doing dance music [in the ‘90s], you had a verse, a chorus, a verse, a chorus, a bridge, and your outro. Now, you may have the chorus, say 20 times, whereas we had a different format. We didn’t do a lot of extra singing. Sometimes people don’t like a lot of extra singing, especially on EDM [electronic dance music] songs, they want it easy and as singsongy as possible, because that’s what people remember the most.

Who are some of your favorite artists that have successfully transitioned from R&B to dance music?

Well, if you look at how Chris Brown and Usher transitioned from R&B to do some of the dance music, some of the beats that they have are like that. I feel like it’s hard to choose a favorite, because with us [during the early ‘90s] it was clear-cut [dance songs]. Right now they don’t have a real genre. Like Jamie xx, he does a lot of funky stuff that’s different. Drake has beats that’s like that. People don’t know this, but Travis Scott sampled my song “Finally” for his song “Whole Lotta Lovin.’”

Have you experienced any challenges adapting to today’s era of music?

What I try to do is listen to what’s out there. And I probably have some of it. I just released a song called “Believe” last year that did well on the Billboard charts and another called “Nothing Can Stop Me Now,” so there’s some EDM stuff in there. But I just feel like I don’t like to put myself in a box and limit myself.

When people tell me I can’t do something, I just say, “OK, I hear you. I’m still gonna do what I want to do.” And so, I just let the people decide, because they’re definitely gonna decide if they like it or not.

In 1994 you became the first foreign female entertainer to perform in post-apartheid South Africa. Talk about the historical significance of the performance. 

When I went over there it was like, “Oh, my God, I’m in the motherland. Where everything started. It’s our history.” I just looked out at the crowd and when I was performing I just got goose bumps on my skin off the fact that I was over in Africa and I was one of the first women, historically, to be able to come over to Africa ― right after apartheid when people felt beaten down ― and feel the depression and the sadness of what’s been going on in the world.

I got to go bring a piece of heaven to them, and bring the gift of song and be able to experience things after that happening. So I felt honored to go over there and do that.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

The newly released Nielsen report has shown that a large percentage of non-black TV viewers watch shows with predominantly black casts. These shows include ABC’s “Black-ish,” which has an audience that’s 79 percent non-black, and HBO’s “Insecure,” which has a non-black viewership of 61 percent. Other shows with black leads that have a high percentage of non-black viewers also included “This Is Us,” “How to Get Away With Murder,” “Pitch,” and “Scandal.”

So, what does it all mean?

It means that the habits of TV watchers are changing thanks to television being far less segregated than it was 20 years ago. According to Indiewire, by the late ‘90s networks like Fox, UPN, and The WB aired 16 of the 20 primetime sitcoms that featured black casts like “Martin,” “Living Single,” and “One on One.” This presented a stark contrast to the major networks that had mostly white shows. 

But now, with shows like “Black-ish” and “Scandal” dominating on major networks, it’s becoming clearer that diversity on TV is a win-win. It means better representation for the underrepresented, and it makes business sense for networks who want to attract a wide range of viewers. Hopefully, this will encourage more networks to green light even more diverse stories about people of color. 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Cyrus Aaron is all too familiar with the injustice that abounds in America.

The pain from watching national news events unfold ― like the police slayings of black lives, the devastating water crisis in Flint and the fight to protect sacred tribal sites in North Dakota ― has overwhelmed Aaron, a writer and poet from Chicago, in ways that have also motivated him to speak out about the agony.

While Aaron, who identifies as a creative artist, is deeply committed to creating social change, he says engagement and momentum can sometimes be hard to sustain in many movements. “We see the names so much we forget the people, and their lives become fossils, dried up moments of humanity buried under time,” Aaron told The Huffington Post. “The information we acquire has to be stretched, pulled apart and wrung into action.”

This is why he decided to create his own modernized method to fuse storytelling and social justice, and help mobilize people across the country to get involved ― and stay involved. Behold The People’s Campaign.

On Wednesday, Aaron launched a GoFundMe page to crowdfund the project, which he hopes will be able to take a small team of creatives to 15 cities across America that have been affected by injustice, including in Ohio, where Tamir Rice was killed; Maryland, where Freddie Gray died; and South Carolina, where Walter Scott was fatally shot.

They will then team up with local activists to co-organize an event that will tackle a local social justice issue and identify solutions that will leave community residents feeling more empowered. Aaron plans to lead the team, which will use digital platforms like YouTube, Instagram and SnapChat to profile local community members, as well as produce livestreamed and edited content for the general public. 

“The People’s Campaign is a journey of streamed content that marries action in the digital space with action in the real world,” Aaron told HuffPost. “We will democratize social change, simply by tapping into the power already in our hands. So that people like myself, everyday people, have the information, the ideas and the access to action.”

Aaron, who aims to raise enough money to donate $10,000 to an immediate area of need in each city, said he hopes The People’s Campaign will help residents realize the power of their voices. He believes people are very interested in getting involved, tired of feeling powerless and are ready to move simply because, he says, we can’t afford to wait any longer.

“I want the nation to show up at the front door of communities in need.”
Cyrus Aaron

“I want people to take this journey and be empowered every step of the way,” he said. “I want people to know they can contribute, and even though social issues are large they are not impossible. We just need enough eyes and ears locked in at the same time.”

For Aaron, tackling injustice has evolved into a lifelong commitment. Following Sandra Bland’s death in July 2015, Aaron was so overcome with grief that he quit his job in hospitality, essentially locked himself in his room for a month and fully focused on writing. In that time, he wrote a powerful book of poetry called “Someday” that is primarily centered on the complexities of race, and wrote and directed a 12-part play of the same title that followed many of the book’s themes. He will be using the hashtag #SomedayMustCome to merge his past project with his current one and help drive momentum to The People’s Campaign by asking people to post a picture with the hashtag.

“I want the nation to show up at the front door of communities in need,” he added. “I want people to use their smartphones, or their laptop like a key and have a seat in a home that doesn’t stand like their own. I want people to understand difference and not criminalize it. I want us to challenge ourselves, and if nothing else, then out of curiosity, see how much good we can achieve together.”

The People’s Campaign aims to fundraise $150,000 and, as of Friday, has raised more than $1,600. Aaron says he is confident it will reach its goal, but if that doesn’t happen, he still plans on using the available funds to create events in whatever cities possible. The campaign plans to kick off its first social event in New York ― but first, it’s asking members of communities everywhere to support its mission and embrace their own power.  

“We have to awaken collective power now, build a bridge of access between interest groups now, or the cycle of injustice will continue at the expense of the people sharing the margin,” Aaron said.

“We’ve been waiting patiently and politely long enough,” he added. “It’s all hands on deck!”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

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— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices