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A mom of three in northern California has turned a feminist battle cry into a work of art that is speaking to many parents. 

On Feb. 7, while the Senate considered Senator Jeff Sessions’ nomination for U.S. attorney general (which was later confirmed), Senator Elizabeth Warren attempted to read a letter Coretta Scott King wrote in 1986 that condemned Sessions. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell described Warren’s denied attempt with three sentences:

Privett told The Huffington Post she experienced perinatal depression while pregnant with her third child and postpartum depression after giving birth. During this, all of the hurtful remarks she’d heard over the years came flooding back to her. 

“All of those little words I’d heard transitioned into invasive thoughts and it overwhelmed me as it became part of my depression,” she told HuffPost. “I felt disconnected from everything and had trouble working through the steps necessary to do even simple things like change a diaper or make a sandwich.”

With medication and individual and group therapy, Privett was able to recover. She said she is lucky because she knows many moms don’t have the resources to do the same. That personal experience (as well as some suggestions from her Instagram followers) sparked her motivation to create a work of art for moms who persisted, “nevertheless.” She hopes her work can be an encouragement for both moms and dads.

“I’m hoping to encourage parents that it’s OK to do what is right for their specific situations, and also for all people to be more aware of how they speak to others,” she said. “Words matter, especially when directed toward vulnerable people.”

She also stressed the importance of asking for help and practicing self-care.

“There is nothing wrong with asking for help, especially if our mental health is at stake,” she said. “Self-care is as important as caring for our families, and we won’t be able to do the latter without the former.”

See more of Privett’s work on Instagram and Facebook. 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Just like me in high school, this administration will look back one day and realize that four years has yielded very few presentable or shareable photos.

On Tuesday night, as President Trump made his first address to a joint session of Congress, the cameras were ready once again. These photos are really all you need to know about this night.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

TLC has finally set a release date for their fifth and final album.

On Monday, the group’s longtime manager, Bill Diggins, posted an update on the album’s Kickstarter page thanking fans for their support of the project, which is tentatively set for a late June release.

“I am thrilled to let you know that the album is tentatively scheduled to be released at the end of June and you will receive your advance album prior to that,” Diggins wrote. “We are working out the official date in the next couple of weeks and once it is final we will notify you.”

Launched in 2015 by surviving members Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas, the album’s crowdfunding campaign exceeded the group’s 30 day goal of $150,000 and has raised over $430,000 to date. Artists including New Kids on the Block, Katy Perry, and Bette Midler were among the many fans who contributed to the campaign, which will go toward production sessions.

The album was initially scheduled for a September 2015 release and the group received backlash from supporters after postponing the project. According to Diggins, the delay came as a result of the group’s 2015 North American tour.

“I could go on in more detail to explain how TLC’s touring, schedule, writing schedule and producing schedule was delayed,” he wrote. “But the simple fact is that Tboz & Chilli were inspired to make a record that they could be proud of and they would not settle for less and sometimes you just cannot rush art.”

“They demanded of themselves a record that would stand up to the great body of work created in the past and that you would be proud of,” he continued. “Because your belief and support is the greatest form of love and we want you to be proud.”

The as-yet-untitled album will mark the group’s first studio album since their 2002 platinum album, “3D,” which was released seven months following the death of member Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

On the eve of Women’s History Month, President Trump referenced three historical male figures to make a point about America’s potential for greatness.

In his first address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, he spoke of the Centennial Exposition of 1876 when thousands of American inventors and artists came together to present. As he read off of a teleprompter:

Alexander Graham Bell displayed his telephone for the first time. Remington unveiled the first typewriter. An early attempt was made at electric light. Thomas Edison showed an automatic telegraph and an electric pen. Imagine the wonders our country could know in America’s 250th year.

These men are indeed worthy of praise and recognition. After all, there’s a reason most American schoolchildren would recognize their names. But if President Trump and his speechwriters did a bit more digging, they would have discovered the women who made history during the Centennial Exposition of 1876, too.

As he faced rows of Democratic women wearing suffragette white, the irony was lost on the president that, during the very Centennial he spoke of, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage presented their Declaration of the Rights of Women.

According to PBS, at the expo, which lasted from May to November in 1876, “some 30,000 exhibits from the ‘Arts, Manufactures and Products of the Soil and Mine’ filled massive exhibit halls spread over 450 acres in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park.”

Women weren’t allowed to exhibit independently, so Elizabeth Duane Gillespie and a committee of 13 women dreamed up the Women’s Pavilion ― a building that showcased inventions only by women. History Professor Sally G. McMillen of Davidson College told HuffPost that Gillespie and her team had to raise money on their own for the Pavilion, and did so in record-breaking time.

Of course there were corsets, heavy dresses and household items displayed, but women also presented work that was relevant outside of the domestic sphere, suggesting a slow but steady shift toward gender equality. According to Harvard’s library page, the American Medical Association admitted its first woman member during the fair.

Women’s Studies Professor Jennifer Scanlon of Bowdoin College told HuffPost that inside the Women’s Pavilion, more than 75 women demonstrated the inventions they had secured patents for.

“Emma Allison was on hand to run a six-horsepower steam engine that powered six looms and a printing press,” she said. “Artists were there as well, from the renowned sculptor Edmonia Lewis, whose work often celebrated the emancipation of slaves, to Caroline Shawk Brooks, a celebrated butter sculptor.”

At the time, Gillespie did not want to be associated with the “radical element in the women’s movement at the time” ― a.k.a. the suffragists.

Professor McMillen told HuffPost that when suffragist Lucy Stone tried to show a taxation without representation exhibition ― which highlighted how unjust it was for women to pay taxes without the right to vote ― her work was basically hidden. 

At first, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wanted no part of the centennial. They felt their goal of securing women’s right to vote was so far away, there was nothing to celebrate. Professor McMillen says that, eventually, the women realized they had an opportunity to get their message across. 

The suffragists requested to read a new Declaration of Rights they had written at the Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia on July 4, 1876. They were denied, and had to come up with a new plan.

Here’s a page from the National Woman Suffrage Parlors in Philadelphia outlining their plans. Story continues below photo. 

During the reading of the Declaration of Independence on that day, Anthony and four other women stood up and walked through the aisles. She handed their document to the Vice President, and to various audience members. According to Rochester’s library site, she proceeded to read the Declaration to a small crowd in front of Independence Hall. 

The documented ended:

We ask of our rulers, at this hour, no special favors, no special privileges, no special legislation. We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever.

Women’s Day at the Centennial was celebrated on November 7, Election Day. “It was argued, men would be at the polls and would not mind missing this event,” according to the Centennial Exhibition Digital Collection. 

This Women’s History Month, remember that we have the power to make history every day. And in 2017, that feels more urgent than ever. Follow along with HuffPost on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in March using #WeMakeHerstory.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Internationally renowned chef José Andrés declared “I am an immigrant” in front of an audience of hundreds at a black-tie event in South Florida.

The high-profile restaurateur was the man of the night as the annual South Beach Wine & Food Festival held a dinner with other top chefs in his honor Saturday, according to The Miami Herald. 

Andrés made a moving plea for all hardworking immigrants ― regardless of status ― at the auction dinner, which raised money for Florida International University’s hospitality school. During the speech, he took off his chef coat to reveal a T-shirt that read “I Am An Immigrant.” 

“Many of those immigrants are undocumented and that unfortunately, yes, many of them came crossing the frontier or they overstayed their visa,” the Spanish-born chef said in his speech, which The Miami Herald posted on Facebook. “But they are working every day with the same pride as you and I, documented or not; working hard every day with a smile, sometimes underpaid, sometimes without health insurance, sometimes under hardships, working 12, 14 hours under the hot sun ― but working because they are proud to be part of the system.”

In a reference to President Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, Andrés said he does believe in building certain types of walls.

“We need to build a very big wall, the biggest wall … we need to be building walls to build communities, to build schools, to build hospitals, to build community centers, soup kitchens, to build an America we all believe in,” Andrés said as the crowd applauded.

Andrés owns the Think Food Group, the company behind his restaurants in Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami and Puerto Rico. The chef made headlines last year after Trump sued him for backing out of plans to open a restaurant in a Trump hotel. 

As an activist for the immigrant community, Andrés showed solidarity by closing all five of his D.C.-area restaurants on Feb. 16 for a national strike dubbed “A Day Without Immigrants,” and rallied other restaurateurs to do the same.

In his speech at the South Florida event, Andrés told the audience that “we are all immigrants” and that only united can the country succeed.   

“The American dream of the 21st century is to be an America of inclusion not of exclusion,” he said. “And we need to work hard to provide the same that we want to provide for us, to the other people that are left behind. So, I am an immigrant and I am proud of American immigrants. I am José Andrés and together, with a message of inclusion, we can keep moving this amazing country forward.”

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

The White House wants to cut one-quarter of the Environmental Protection Agency’s funding and eliminate 1 in 5 EPA employees, three sources with knowledge of the proposed budget told The Huffington Post. 

The fiscal year 2018 budget proposes axing funding for a vast array of programs, including those aimed at low-income people, minorities and indigenous groups.

“While this ‘zero out’ strategy would impact nearly every community in the United States, a close examination shows the burden of these cuts will fall hardest on the health of low-income Americans and people of color,” Travis Nichols, a spokesman for Greenpeace USA, said in a statement. “This is environmental racism in action.”

The reductions target the implementation of the Clean Power Plan, the sweeping Obama-era regulation aimed at slashing carbon emissions from the utility sector, the country’s biggest emitter by far. The initiative has been stalled since the Supreme Court granted a stay last year in a lawsuit spearheaded by then-Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, whom President Donald Trump named EPA administrator.

Axing the initiative undermines the country’s commitments in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the first global deal to include the U.S. and China, the world’s biggest polluters.

The cuts the Office of Management and Budget put forward Monday do not appear to include reductions to the EPA’s capitalization fund, roughly $2 billion set aside as loans for states to improve sewers and drinking water infrastructure. That means the 25 percent reduction targets the EPA’s critical functions, including scientific research and enforcing rules against polluters.

“No cut like this has been proposed for the EPA since the early 1980s, in the first phase of the Reagan administration,” Stan Meiburg, a former acting deputy EPA administrator who spent 39 years at the agency, told HuffPost. “That didn’t ever get implemented, but it created a lot of chaos.”

The EPA budget totaled nearly $8.2 billion last year, a 0.22 percent sliver of federal spending. The agency employed about 15,300 people ― one of its smallest workforces since 1989. Eliminating more than 3,000 positions would be “unprecedented,” Meiburg said, and would require buyouts and layoffs.

The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

I won’t have the resources to be able to go and educate my community or educate even just my family about the environmental hazards in our community.
Cheryl Johnson, executive director People for Community Recovery

The EPA has a brief window to appeal the budget cuts, after which time the proposal goes to Congress for approval. The OMB routinely puts some programs on the chopping block ― including the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act, which helps pay for repairs to outmoded diesel engines, and a different program aimed at reducing exposure to lung cancer-causing radon gas ― but Congress typically amends the budget to reinstate the funding.

“The OMB cuts, Congress puts them back,” said Meiburg, who oversaw the EPA budget for years. “They go through this dance every year.”

Public health programs were among those recommended for phaseout, including grants that cover screening for chemicals that disrupt endocrine systems. 

The budget proposed cutting funding to programs that benefit communities of color, including grants to improve water and living standards for Alaska Native villages, grants for restoring nature along the U.S.-Mexico border, a program supporting minority-owned small businesses, and multi-purpose grants that can go to states or Native American tribes.

Funding for scientific research and education ― a sort of boogeyman among conservative lawmakers of late ― took a hit, with proposals to zero out the Science to Achieve Results, or STAR, program, which funds research and provides recipients with a living stipend; environmental education and justice programs; and research into how to adapt to global climate change.

“It’s almost like I might as well just kill myself because I will have no protection,” said Cheryl Johnson, executive director People for Community Recovery, a 37-year-old nonprofit aimed at cleaning up polluted parts of Chicago’s inner city. “I won’t have the resources to be able to go and educate my community or educate even just my family about the environmental hazards in our community.”

The OMB also proposed eliminating basic programs for addressing pollution from beaches, fisheries, ozone-deteriorating gases, as well as programs for mapping out Lake Champlain, the Long Island Sound and San Francisco Bay.

Even programs targeting revitalization of old properties or land ― which could go hand-in-hand with Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan ― were proposed for elimination, including grants for brownfields, which are properties zoned for redevelopment but hindered by toxic waste.

The cuts should come as no surprise. Trump has assembled the most openly polluter-friendly Cabinet in recent history, putting climate science skeptics and fossil fuel executives in key environmental posts.

Trump named Myron Ebell, a once-fringe conspiracy theorist who shares the president’s view that global warming is a hoax, to lead the EPA transition team. He also nominated Pruitt, who sued the EPA 13 times as Oklahoma’s top cop and has deep ties to oil and gas companies, as EPA administrator. Pruitt was narrowly confirmed by the Senate last month.

“The Trump administration clearly sees corporations as its true constituents, not the people of this country,” Nichols said. “For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency has helped protect people’s health and safety when corporations have put them in danger, and the Trump administration now wants to undo all of that. These proposed cuts negate any goodwill Trump may have shown during his Congressional address, including his empty promises to promote clean air and water.”

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

At this point, the struggle to swipe right in a world of profiles that truly deserve a swipe left is all. too. real. 

Below, 21 relatable tweets from people who are just as over Tinder and online dating as you are. 

The HuffPost Lifestyle newsletter will make you happier and healthier, one email at a time. Sign up here.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

President Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress last night has been widely applauded because of his tone and behavior. It appears that the fact that he did not misbehave or act in a belligerent or insulting way gave him high marks by many analysts and pundits. Before we all exhale, I remind you, we’ve witnessed these momentary outbursts of balance before, to then be followed up in days – if not hours – by tweets and abrasive behavior and language.

One thing is consistent: Whether Trump’s on good or bad behavior, the policies he represents and reiterated in his speech last night are bad, regardless of if you take them with sugar and sweeteners, or if you take them straight with no chaser.

For those who may have been sidetracked by his delivery, here’s a quick reminder of just a few of the items a Trump Administration is proposing.

First, there’s immigration reform designed to exclude people and target them based on nationality or religion. Then there’s repealing the Affordable Care Act with no clear measure on how to protect the tens of millions that now have insurance because of this historic legislation, and how to maintain those key elements that are critical to the American public – i.e. children staying on their parent’s insurance until the age of 26, health insurers no longer discriminating against those with pre-existing conditions, etc.

Trump wants to improve education, but education through vouchers and charter schools without investing and buttressing public education is not how you deal with the “civil rights issue of our time.” And, of course, let’s remember, that strengthening police without strengthening their accountability so that we do not add to the tensions that only help criminals is terrible policy and has proven to not work in the past.

Trump’s historically low approval rating for a new Commander-in-Chief may have pushed him into this softer, seemingly more restrained manner last night, but don’t be fooled, the agenda remains the same. Have we gone so far to the bottom in American politics that we now congratulate heads of state for not insulting us and excuse that they are still harming us? We do not need a kindler, gentler ride in the wrong direction. And that is precisely what this is. The President may have been on his best behavior last night, but he is still advocating ideas that will harm some of our most vulnerable communities and turn back the clock on so much of the progress that we have achieved.

When I look at the fact that on the 5th anniversary of the horrific killing of young Trayvon Martin whose death sparked massive calls for justice, and a movement that I was in the center of, there are troubling indicators of where we are headed next as a country.

The new Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, promises to stop auditing local police department behavior and drops the part of the Department of Justice lawsuit that challenged Texas’ voter ID law which makes it harder for people of color, the elderly, the poor and students to vote.

The Texas voter ID law is one of the harshest in the nation and allows IDs like licenses to carry concealed handguns to be used as proof at the ballot box, but not government employee IDs or student IDs. Reversing course on this lawsuit and reversing course on police accountability are the very first actions taken by Sessions and obvious signs of where the Trump Administration is leading us.

It has become evidently clear that what we have fought for tirelessly through the decades and achieved with much sacrifice is now greatly at risk. We no longer need to speculate on where Trump and his team will take the nation – they are making it blatantly obvious. The question is, are people paying attention? The softer tone and the good performance are just that – a good performance. It will take more than decent behavior to sustain where we were and where we need to be as a society.

As any bad student can tell you: good behavior may keep you in the classroom, but it doesn’t mean you pass the test or get an A.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Facebook just revealed a really intriguing secret behind their “like” button options.

The company’s algorithm weighs your “reactions” to posts ― love, haha, wow, sad and angry ― over just regular “likes” to determine what sort of content to put in your News Feed.

In conjunction with the first anniversary of reactions, Facebook has determined over the last year that if someone takes the extra step to select a reaction, it’s “an even stronger signal that they would want to see that type of post than if they left a Like on the post,” a spokesperson told us.

Strangely, all reactions are weighted the same, which means the News Feed prioritizes things you “love” equally to things that make you “angry” or “sad.” And it prioritizes all of those over things you merely “like.”

So, if you wondered why you were constantly seeing that random high school friend’s wedding photos, it’s probably from that time you were scrolling through Facebook after a night out and felt particularly generous with your “love” on their engagement photos.

H/T Mashable

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s first speech before a joint session of Congress earned high marks on Wednesday from many pundits, who welcomed its optimistic tone after nearly two years of Trump’s doomsaying about the level of “carnage” in America.

Stylistically, at least, Trump acted and sounded presidential.

Yet many key assertions Trump made were patently false. America is neither crime-infested nor still mired in a recession, as he portrayed. Moreover, some of his bold rhetoric on issues like the environment, immigration, civil rights, women’s rights and child care are directly undercut by the policies he has pursued or promised to pursue since taking office on Jan. 20.

Immigration Reform

In noting the end of Black History Month, Trump said, “We are reminded of our nation’s path toward civil rights and the work that still remains.”

If the president is truly serious about advancing civil rights, however, he could start with protecting the right to vote. On Monday, Trump’s Department of Justice reversed its position in an important voting rights case involving a Texas voter ID law. The government is no longer arguing, as it had under Obama, that Texas enacted its voter ID law with the intention of discriminating against minority voters.

“If Donald Trump was extending an olive branch to the African-American community, it fell completely flat. We’re not interested in words, we’re interested in deed,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told The Huffington Post following Trump’s speech on Tuesday night.

Clean Air and Water

Similarly, Trump promised in his speech that his administration would “promote clean air and clear water.” But earlier on Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order that would dismantle the Waters of the United States rule, also known as the Clean Water Rule.

That 2015 rule was issued to clarify which waterways should be protected under the federal Clean Water Act to ensure that streams, wetlands and the smaller waterways that feed into them are protected. The rule affected waterways that 117 million people in the U.S. rely on for drinking water.

Trump’s budget proposal would also slash funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by a reported 24 percent. Those cuts would affect, and in some instances even shutter, agency programs that deal with water and air protections. Trump also picked an EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, who repeatedly sued the agency to stop environmental regulations.

Women’s Rights

Trump promised to protect the rights of women, particularly “to invest in women’s health.” But a central promise from both him and the GOP-led Congress is to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, which provided significant protections for women. Before the passage of the law, insurance companies were allowed to deny health coverage to women who were pregnant or were thinking of becoming pregnant. In other words, being a woman was considered a pre-existing condition that was grounds for denial of coverage.

Obamacare also provided a number of preventive services for women, including free contraception, breastfeeding support, sexually transmitted disease screening and annual well-woman visits.

And in one of his first acts in office, Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which bans U.S. funding for international health organizations that counsel women on family planning options that include abortion. Experts have warned that the policy could be deadly for women and girls in developing countries and conflict zones, who often resort to dangerous methods of ending their pregnancies when they lack access to safe abortion.

Affordable Child Care

Trump spoke about the need to make child care “accessible and affordable” by ensuring that new parents have paid family leave. That a Republican president included the issue in his speech ― and found applause from House Republicans seated in the chamber ― is remarkable in its own right.

But the plan Trump has proposed allocates resources to the families who need them least. According to an estimate by the Tax Policy Center, 70 percent of the benefits included in the plan will go to families making more than $100,000 per year.

“The devil is in the details, and if these are the details, they are devilish indeed, leaving behind those most in need of leave and least likely to have access,” Ellen Bravo, co-director of Family Values @ Work, told HuffPost on Tuesday.

Scientific Research

Trump envisioned a nation in which “cures to illnesses that have always plagued us” are easily found. A smart way to accomplish such a goal would be to boost funding for scientific and medical research at agencies like the National Institutes of Health. Trump’s planned budget, however, would raise defense spending by $54 billion at the cost of $54 billion in non-discretionary spending, which includes funds for scientific and medical research.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) addressed some of Trump’s inconsistencies in a speech on the Senate floor.

“His actions don’t match his words. His words in the campaign are not matched by his actions. His words in his inaugural speech are not matched by his actions,” Schumer said on Wednesday.

Jen Bendery and Laura Barron-Lopez contributed reporting.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices