Yum & Yuk

From Dear White Allies: Stop Unfriending Other White People: “This is the time to remember that the outrage you feel can in no way match my own and therefore you have way more emotional capacity than I do to talk some sense into the ‘other side.’ This is the time to remember that your 'solidarity' does not render you powerless; in fact, the entire point of your solidarity is to lend the power you DO have to folks who do not. And by the way, this is the time to remember that you do have power.” h/t Love In The Time of Ferguson.

Great story and storytelling: Dollree Mapp, 1923-2014: “The Rosa Parks of the Fourth Amendment”

Currently reading: "We Are Not Ourselves" by Matthew Thomas. Just read "The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair" which was AWFUL. Recently added to my "too reads" list: "Girl in a Band: A Memoir," by Kim Gordon, "The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion"  by Meghan Daum, "Fire Shut Up in My Bones" by Charles Blow, and "The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace" by Jeff Hobbs.

Image from NYC protest: Eric Garner’s eyes.

Why Poor People Stay Poor: "Because our lives seem so unstable, poor people are often seen as being basically incompetent at managing their lives. That is, it’s assumed that we’re not unstable because we’re poor, we’re poor because we’re unstable. So let’s just talk about how impossible it is to keep your life from spiraling out of control when you have no financial cushion whatsoever. And let’s also talk about the ways in which money advice is geared only toward people who actually have money in the first place."

Always a favorite, always I need reminding: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” - Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

"History produces not only the forces of domination but also the forces of resistance that press up against and are often the objects of such domination. Which is another way of saying that history, the past, is larger than the present, and is the ever-growing and ongoing possibility of resistance to the present’s imposed values, the possibility of futures not unlike the present, futures that resist and transform what dominates the present." - Elizabeth Grosz