I like the pretty lights.

Josiah Henson was born #OTD in 1789, enslaved in Charles County, Maryland. He escaped to Canada after an unsuccessful attempt to purchase his freedom. There, he assisted fellow escapees via the Underground Railroad and later helped establish Dawn Settlement, a prosperous Black community. 

Newly Released Police Body Cam Footage Shows Moments Before Rayshard Brooks Was Murdered by Police

For those who don’t know, Rayshard Brooks, 27 yr old father of, was shot and killed by an Atlanta police officer at a Wendy’s parking lot in Atlanta Friday night.

In the video, Mr. Brooks is seen calmly and politely speaking with Officers after falling asleep at a Wendys parking lot because he said he was “Too intoxicated to drive.” The officers could have done the right thing and stayed with him until someone picked him up, allowed him to walk to his home (which he offered to do) or even offered him a ride home, but instead they decided to escalate the situation and kill him. 

Source / Source / Full Video

How do you not know Madame Zeroni?

The Supreme Court just issues a ruling allowing Ohio and other states to purge voters from their election registration rolls due to their failure to cast a ballot in previous elections.

This is a major victory for the Trump administration and the GOP, and a direct consequence of the Supreme Court being stacked with more conservative judges (the votes were 5-4). This is also a huge part of what Trump/the GOP were counting on to save them in the 2018 midterm elections, which is where Democrats have been hoping to take back a majority in the House, giving them more power to combat Trump’s abuses of power and Republican legislation.

What this means is YOU CAN NOT ASSUME THAT YOU ARE REGISTERED for the 2018 elections, just because you SHOULD be. Thanks to this decision, red states can purge voters’ registration based on their not having cast a ballot in even just previous federal elections, NOT just the national Presidential elections. Effectively, if you haven’t voted in previous senate races or for congressional representatives in the past few years, that’s all they need now to say you’re no longer registered and need to register again.

They’re deliberately counting on people assuming they’re still registered and so not checking until after registration deadlines have passed, or showing up to vote this November and only then finding out they’re no longer registered, when its too late to do a damn thing about it.

And this is absolutely targeted at marginalized communities, low income voters, disabled voters, and basically anyone who simply can’t always AFFORD to keep on top of every federal election and show up to vote in every senate race, etc. Which not so coincidentally happen to be all the communities and voters who have the most to gain from Democratic victories in the 2018 midterms and are the least likely to cast votes for GOP candidates at this point.

This was absolutely a calculated effort aimed specifically at keeping the GOP in power with a majority control of the government come November, and unfortunately, it has a DAMN good chance of accomplishing just that if it goes by unacknowledged. I’m not looking to alarm or panic anyone, simply to say:

[Image: A tweet from @akatookey, which reads: “funzies tip for my friends with medical debt; when collectors hound you, demand an itemized invoice. If they don’t give you one, you have grounds to contest the debt. If they do give you one, someone violated HIPAA and you can contest the debt.“]

Now here is some ding-danged useful information! Another user pointed out that over half of small debt collectors lack this information because they buy their debts in bulk for cheap and in return get really disorganized paperwork. They encourage folks to look up “debt validation letter” online to get more information on this.