Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. BlueSky: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
Philando worked with my friend Jean. He volunteered for many activities (reading groups for example) at Mpls/St Paul school district. He worked with kids and was passionate and devoted to his work.
That is his story. An educator murdered by police while his daughter was in the car, shot on Facebook Live while reaching for his documents.
Jean and her wife recorded the FB live video of the shooting and got it to local and national BLM. Facebook took down his entire account, apparently.
But before any other narrative gets out, that’s what I’ve got for you from people who knew him for years. Philando Castile was a teacher, and he was murdered in front of his preschool daughter.
Keep Lavish Diamond Reynolds, her child and the entire Castile-extended family in your prayers today. Lavish is said to have finally been released from police custody. Now she must begin to work to rebuild her and her child’s life, after witnessing and documenting Philando Castile’s execution by Minnesota police. We uplift their courage, and mourn for a loss no one should have to face. #farfromover
My thought is that it’s easier to control guns in this country than it is to control racism. The two are intertwined. But, legally, it is easier to control the production and sale of an object than it is to control the production and proliferation of a belief, no matter how abhorrent.
Generally speaking, my views on gun control and regulation are extreme. Extreme in that I deeply believe we shouldn’t have them, not at all, and police have gotten by just fine with nightsticks and flashlights (while never flinching from a long and storied history of brutality).
Getting rid of guns won’t stop racism or police brutality, but it will slow the slaughter of young black men and women, because it *has* to. And maybe, just *maybe* that will give everyone a little more space, a space in which maybe we can finally legislate that, no, you can’t just walk around killing people on sight, regardless of whether or not you wear a uniform. It’s an imperfect solution, hell, it’s not a solution–but it’s got to help stem the flow of blood.
There is one group of people in this country who may consider themselves to truly be “safer” for having guns, and that’s white men. That’s it. Break apart statistics on domestic violence, and women–of any ethnicity–are certainly not safer for there being a gun in the home. You don’t have to look hard to find that children, any ethnic minority, LGBTQ people, and all the places where those groups intersect, none of them are safer for the gun proliferation in this country. So, let’s pick it apart a little. The 2014 census reported white men as being roughly 31% of the entire US population.That’s it. Not even a full third of our population. To draw this out wildly, that means you have a minority deciding for a whole that it’s okay if everyone else gets shot and killed–young black men, children, gay people, women–so long as they can have access to a gun. For safety. Not to kill anyone, ever. They promise.
That’s privilege in its ugliest form. It’s also racism, because, there is an not-at-all subtle message that only white people should wield guns, men in particular. Gun ownership is tied so deeply to the idea of white American masculinity, that I could fill an entire post with nothing but action movie posters with a white guy holding a gun as blatant reference to his penis. (To be fair though, your wife, she can have a pink AK-47 if you get her one for Valentine’s Day. Oh, I’ve visited a gun show, thanks. And no, I’m never going back.)
But here, here’s the grossest false logic of all that white male privilege around guns. Most gun deaths in the US are suicides. Here’s a nice article on that. Most suicides by gun are committed by men. Oh, and here, look at a racial divide on gun deaths in the US. Basically, white men kill themselves and do so with guns. Do we count that as white-on-white crime or some other such nonsense? Any idea of gun safety, particularly our white American idea of gun safety–it’s a lie. All of it. We just don’t care when the mentally ill die, even if they happen to be white and male. So… okay, that’s even LESS than 31% of the US population that’s “safer” for having guns.
Which means there’s a very small number of ridiculous assholes out there who really don’t care when the rest of us die. Or worse, relish in the killing.
I don’t know how to stop racism. I always thought it was through reading, education, getting to know people, listening, and just trying. But that’s too slow and people are dying. I don’t know how to stop police brutality, or the fact that people are being hunted and others are being taught to hunt.
It seems pretty freakin’ clear what can be done to stop shootings, and it’s cut off the guns.
To not cut them off, we are saying:
It is okay for police to murder black people
It is okay for people to be shot for their sexual and gender identities
It is okay when women are shot in domestic disputes
It is okay to let our mentally ill die
It is okay to kill children
To be clear: none of that is okay, and we can’t pay for any of it anymore. And the number of black lives that have been lost for the “comfort” of less than 1/3rd of our population is beyond shameful.
I don’t like to stick my stupid white woman voice in on an issue where better people have more powerful things to say. I don’t like to stick my white woman voice in where it’s not needed or wanted, but goddamn do I have a stake in this. One of those statistics follows me around every day of my life. I don’t know how to stop systemic racism, but I damn well know one thing we can do to help keep people alive until we can fix it. SO. DO. YOU.
During a promotional event in Australia, John Cho confirmed that beloved Star Trek character Hikaru Sulu is gay.
Sulu was originally played by George Takei, who in later life has become a prominent activist for LGBT rights. In a tribute to his ongoing legacy as an icon of the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek Beyond writer Simon Pegg and director Justin Lin decided make Sulu canonically gay in the upcoming movie.
“I liked [Pegg and Lin’s] approach, which was not to make a big thing out of it, which is where I hope we are going as a species, to not politicize one’s personal orientations,” Cho said.
