Pretty Basic

I love these Internet GIFs they posted recently. Just golden.

L.M.: We got into some very heated debates in the writers’ room about which character it should be. And ultimately Jenji made a point that has really stuck with me, and that I’ve used as my centering device throughout the season — and that is, whatever character we chose, she wanted it to feel like that character had a future on the outside of prison ahead of them, so that the loss of that future would really be felt. Her point was that would be most clearly seen through Poussey, which I completely agree with.

Honestly this is really dehumanizing. This is also a huge testament to the amount of ignorance and white privilege it takes to convince yourself that it’s more important to show the black person with the most potential DIE than it is to see them LIVE and SUCCEED. What’s crazy to me is that white people still think this concept is groundbreaking. Killing the innocent peaceful black person, the beacon of hope is not f*cking revolutionary. Didn’t y'all read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school? Haven’t you seen The Hunger Games by now? THIS. IS. NOT. INVENTIVE. It is literally the worst trope to plague black people since the dawn of Western media.

L.M.: It was important to everybody that we find a way to make it as gray as possible — like when two forces of good collide, a tragedy can result, instead of there is evil in the world and good in the world, and evil will prevail. We did flashbacks for Bayley to humanize that side of the experience. I hope it’s in there that racism can be a very subtle thing. And I’m hoping that the viewer walks away wondering, “If that person had been white, would they still have been on the floor that long?

All of this is messed up. There was no acknowledgement of racism in this case. Racism is not is not “two good forces of good colliding”. Racism is one hundred percent evil, there is no grey area. By making this an accident, by trying to humanize the law enforcement (WHO ARE ALREADY HUMANIZED BY THE LAW AND THE MEDIA) they completely missed the point and really, just continue to keep police in a positive light. They mimicked the Eric Garner case which wasn’t even slightly ambiguous. Several officers were literally crushing him to death. There was no riot or other distraction going on, they were just relentless. There is no grey area. What they depicted was more a series of unfortunate events instead of deliberate racial profiling and excessive force. That ambiguity shows the lack of understanding regarding this issue and is why they shouldn’t have tried to tackle it in the first place. Poussey died for nothing.

Samira about filming the scene.

S.W.: To be honest, that was one of the things that wasn’t hard, because everyone else had just found out that this was happening. So they were all dealing with this shock that I had been dealing with for months. I had already gone through so many stages: I was mad; I was happy to be embarking on something else; I was so sad; I remember sobbing. So I felt like there was part of me that had to take care of them, to let them know that it was O.K. — that I’m all right — especially that day. I couldn’t sit there and cry because everyone else was.

I (First Nations, Mohawk) used to have hair past my chest but my middle school forced me to cut my hair because “boys couldn’t have hair past the tips of the ear” (I’m not a boy either, but they assigned me ‘boy’ as a gender) but even when I begged them to let me keep my hair because of spiritual beliefs, they forced me to cut it. A classic move of the white school system against native children. I got a referral everyday for the 65 days I refused to cut my hair. I cried for two weeks after the principal took scissors to my hair. I’m still growing it back.

My best friend (who is an aboriginal Egyptian) was once told to remove her hijab (also a gift I had given her) because “hats weren’t allowed” (a mixture of racism and islamophobia), she reluctantly took it off.

In middle school again, my friend Nemo ( First Nations, Navajo) was told she couldn’t wear her traditional clothing on her 13 birthday, celebrating her reaching puberty. She was sent home and forced to spend her birthday alone while her parents worked.

Tomorrow is my 18th birthday, an important life event in Mohawk culture (becoming an adult) and I want to wear my traditional clothes to school, especially because I’ll have to celebrate all alone this year since I live far away from my nation. Even though my school doesn’t have uniforms or a strict dress code, I’m afraid they’ll tell me that my clothes or very light face paint are “distracting” and tell me to take off my traditional jewellery (headband, choker, bracelets) or wash off the face paint.

Sandy Rougely, the victim’s mother, claims the cause of the incident was racial bias.

Sandy Rougely’s daughter was on an overnight campout with her sixth-grade classmates April 28 when a rope swing got caught around her neck.

Authorities want to know how a 12-year-old girl got a severe rope burn, but the student and her mother believe they know the reason - the girl is black and attends a predominantly white private school (Live Oak Classical School, Waco, Texas). They believe she was the victim of a racially motivated attack, the apogee of months of bullying by her classmates.

The girl said she was helping classmates pull a rope to move the swing when she stopped to watch. 

She said she felt nothing except the rope wrapping around her neck from behind and being pulled against her neck. She fell to the ground and was tugged backward. 

None of her classmates moved to help her, so she removed the rope, looked back and saw three boys, all of them white, who she said had been picking on her. Sandy Rougely is planning to file a lawsuit against Live Oak Classical School.

They haven’t been covered much in the mainstream media but Boko Haram have been terrorising Africans with devastating, widespread and long-lasting consequences.

Responsible for more deaths than ISIS

According to the Global Terrorism Report, they have overtaken ISIS as the world’s deadliest terrorist group. It should be noted that in March this year, they pledged allegiance to ISIS. The two groups are responsible for more than half of all terrorist attacks in the world.

Who are they?

Boko Haram promotes a version of Islam which makes it “haram”, or forbidden, for Muslims to take part in any political or social activity associated with Western society.

This includes voting in elections, wearing shirts and trousers or receiving a secular education.

Boko Haram regards the Nigerian state as being run by non-believers, even when the country had a Muslim president - and it has extended its military campaign by targeting neighbouring states.

800,000 people have fled their homes since June

Since the beginning of Boko Haram’s attacks in 2009, 2.1 million people have been forced to leave their homes with a staggering 800,000 having fled between June - September 2015.

An estimated 1,100 schools have been destroyed this year alone

The UN have stated that over a thousand schools have been destroyed in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria in 2015 so far.

This is a list of their major attacks so far in 2015:

Although the figures of deaths are numerical, please remember that these are people who had jobs, lives, families, dreams, hobbies, just like you. They are more than numbers on a screen.

January 3 - 7th: The town of Baga in the north-eastern state of Borno is attacked.  Bodies lay strewn on Baga’s streets with as many as 2,000 people having been killed.

January 9th: Following the Boko Haram massacre, 7,300 flee to neighbouring Chad while over 1,000 are trapped on the island of Kangala in Lake Chad.

January 18th: Boko Haram militants kidnap 80 people and kill three others from villages in north Cameroon.

January 28th: Boko Haram fighters killed 40 people while on a rampage in Adamawa State.

February 15th: A suicide bomber kills 16 and wounds 30 in the Nigerian city of Damaturu.

February 20th: Boko Haram militants kill 34 people in attacks across Borno State and 21 from the town of Chibok.

February 24th: Two suicide bombers kill at least 27 people at bus stations in Potiskum and Kano.

March 7th: Five suicide bomb blasts leave 54 dead and 143 wounded in Maiduguri.

March 18th:  A mass grave of 90 people is discovered in the city of Damasak .

March 29th: Voting in the Nigerian general election is delayed for a second day. 25 people have died in Boko Haram attacks.

June 12th: Several days of nighttime raids on six remote villages that left at least 37 people dead in Northeastern Nigeria

June 16th:  Twin Suicide Bomb attacks in Chad capital killed 24 people and wounded more than 100.

June 17th: Bombs found at Boko Haram camp kills 63 people in Nigeria

June 23rd: Twin female suicide bomb attacks at busy fish market in Maiduguri kill 30 people.

June 28th: Five dead in suicide blast at Nigeria hospital

June 30th: Militants attacked Muslim residents after they had finished prayers, leaving 48 men dead.

July 1st: Attacks on Muslims praying in Mosques before breaking their Ramadan fast kills  97 people in Kukawa.

July 2nd:  Two female suicide bombers attack a village in Borno state killing at least 10 people

July 3rd: Militants slit the throats of 11 people

July 3rd: Several suicide bombers killed dozens of people in Zabarmari village.

July 7th: Bomb attack kills at least 25 people and wounded 32 others in northern Nigeria’s Zaria city

July 11th: At least 14 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack at a crowded market in Chad’s capital 

July 17th: Suicide bombs have killed more than 60 people in multiple blasts in the north-eastern towns of Gombe and Damaturu.

July 22nd: A double suicide attack killed at least 11 people in the far north of Cameroon

July 25th: A child and a middle-aged woman detonated suicide vests in two separate attacks, killing 34 and wounding over 100 people

Aug 2nd: 13 people killed and 27 injured in an attack on Malari village in northeast Nigeria’s Borno state

Aug 3rd: Eight people were killed and about 100 others were kidnapped in an overnight raid on a village near Cameroon’s northern border

Aug 5th: Militants behead a policeman in Nigeria

Aug 7th: Boko Haram attacks on two villages in Yobe kill nine people

Aug 11th: A bomb attack on a packed market in north-eastern Nigeria killed about 50 people.

Aug 17th: Insurgents raided a village in Borno state, Nigeria, near the border with Niger, killing 7 people

Aug 18th: Up to 150 people drowned in a river or were shot dead fleeing Boko Haram gunmen who raided a remote village in Nigeria’s north-eastern Yobe state

Aug 23rd: Army Chief’s convoy attacked, 11 people killed, 5 injured

Aug 25th: Extremists killed 28 people during attacks on remote farming and fishing villages in northeast Nigeria.

Aug 30th: 56 villagers are killed in in Baanu village of Nganzai 

Sept 1st: Gunmen on horseback kill 79 in trio of attacks

Sept 3rd: Militants killed about 30 people and wounded 145 others in attacks on a market and infirmary in northern Cameroon

Sept 20th: More than 100 people were killed in northern Nigeria in a quick succession carefully coordinated bombings

Sept 24th: 15 people killed in an attack by Boko Haram militants on a border village in south-eastern Niger

Sept 27th: 9 people killed in attacks on Mailari Village 

Sept 27th: Militants attacked the town N’gourtoi, a Nigerien village, killing the village head and 14 other civilians.

Oct 1st: An attack on a village in south-eastern Niger killed two soldiers

Oct 3rd: 15 killed in bombings in Nigeria’s capital city, Abuja

Oct 4th: Militants killed three civilians and a soldier in a double suicide attack in Niger

Oct 6th: 11 Chadian soldiers killed in a surprise attack near Lake Chad

Oct 10: Five suicide bombers targeted a market and a refugee camp in Chad killing 36 people and wounding 56 others.

Oct 6th: Suicide attacks in northern Nigeria kill at least 17 people, injuring 11

Oct 7th: At least 12 worshipers have been killed in set of twin suicide attacks on a mosque in Borno State

Oct 22nd: 20 people were shot dead outside the Jingalta village Borno state, Nigeria

Oct 23rd: 23 people were killed in a bombing in a mosque in Borno State

Oct 28th: Thirteen people were killed and three injured in an attack on village in south-east Niger 

Oct 29th: Many killed and houses burnt to the ground in Bara town of Gulani 

Nov 8th: A twin suicide bombing near Lake Chad on Sunday killed two people and wounded 14 others

Nov 11th: 25 dead in raid on a village in southern Niger 

Nov 12th: The government of Chad has imposed a state of emergency on the northern region by Lake Chad

Nov 17th: At least 32 people have been killed and 80 injured in a night-time suicide bomb attack at a truck stop in Yola, Adamawa state, Nigeria