Yum & Yuk

"President Obama, the son of a black man from Kenya, who is part of a mixed status family who had an undocumented aunt and has a formerly undocumented uncle with a conviction, says, "If you're a criminal -- you'll be deported... Felons, not families ... Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who's working hard to provide for her kids." We denounce the President's statement and the insensitive and criminalizing language that needlessly pits people, families, communities and movements against one another. People with felonies have families. People with criminal records have children. Working mothers and their children have been criminalized through gang databases. We are all family and friends...Sadly, President Obama's recent speech fits a historic and racist framework through which we can describe the exclusion and banishment of people with felonies who are detained and deported. It is simply felony disenfranchisement that further strips people of their human rights." People With Felonies, Criminal Records and Gang Affiliation Are Our Friends and Family.

Image: source.

Really thought provoking: I believe Shia LaBeouf – a person doesn’t have to be likable to be a victim: "And if you feel comfortable speculating – as most of the media has for the past decade – that LaBeouf might be grappling with some mental health and/or addiction problems, you should feel just as comfortable believing that mental illness or addiction could have impaired his consent. We are so gleeful with the diagnosis, but so dismissive of the consequences."

Gorgeous and devastating. On grief, love, and life: The American Man: Growing Up, by Thomas Page McBee.

"My son wants me to reassure him, and tell him that of course Darren Wilson will go to jail. At 10 years old, he can feel deep in his bones how wrong it was for the police to kill Michael Brown. 'There will be a trial, at least — right, Mom?' My son is asking me a simple question, and I know the answer. As a civil rights lawyer, I know all too well that Officer Wilson will not be going to trial or to jail. The system is legally rigged so that poor people guilty of relatively minor crimes are regularly sentenced to decades behind bars while police officers who kill unarmed black men almost never get charged, much less serve time in prison." Telling My Son About Ferguson by Michelle Alexander. 

Incredibly powerful: Last Words.