When Will It Stop?

Eric Garner. Michael Brown, Akai Gurley. When. Will. It. Stop?

I drew these cartoons a long time ago, but seems like the story is always the same.

And the same.

A Community Trapped in a Kafkaesque Nightmare: American Violet

Just came back from a sneak preview of the based-on-way-too-real-and-common-events film American Violet. Here's the trailer:

Like Milk, it's the kind of film where you leave the theatre wanting to march in the streets.

Toon: Transcendental

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_ is not the new black and other thoughts from Holly at Feministe

My carpal tunnel problems keep my blogosphere browsing time to a minimum, but I wanted to highlight two recentish posts by Holly over at Feministe: What's in a Name?" (regarding some good news for transgender folks seeking name changes in New York State) and Really? The last? Really? (about the Advocate's awful "Gay is the New Black" cover).

By the way, the good news about name changes is due to the hard work of the excellent Sylvia Rivera Law Project, in case you're looking for worthy causes for year-end donations.

Toon: The Blame Game

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I'll have more thoughts on Proposition 8 and all of this divide-and-conquer bullshit later.

In the meantime, Barry has three excellent roundups of links/posts/articles about the awful "blame black folks" meme and the nasty "black people are all homophobes" meme or the ridiculous "there's a black vs. gay war" meme: "If you call me a faggot, I will call you a...", "Two more posts on blaming the brown," and "Prop 8: The Rush To Blame The Brown People."

Extreme Makeover: Conservative Pundit Edition

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This isn't any particular conservative pundit, just a composite general depiction of the amazing whiplash so many of the nastiest Obama-bashers went through the day after the election. Didn't last long, did it?

Awesome Matt Bors cartoon...

This cartoon is just awesome.

Toon: The Dream and the Nightmare

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Yes, I cried during Obama's speech. I actually also got up and danced around the room at 11 when CNN called the election. I'm sure I'll be jaded and cynical about the whole thing in no time, but I was definitely pinching myself in thrilled disbelief that night, and I even wore a sparkly sequined blue skirt and red sweater the next day (for real).

By the way, this is of course the same couple I drew reacting to Obama's likely nomination back in June. They were pretty psyched at the time about the possibility of marriage equality in California, but that dream is now deferred (hell, STOLEN), thanks to the efforts of some well-funded bigots.

P.S. No, Obama's election does NOT prove that racism is dead. And I'm kinda annoyed with the editorial cartoonists who never draw anyone of color in their cartoons EVER unless the cartoon is about race who are suddenly drawing touchy-feely multicultural cartoons where black parents tell their kids that they too can grow up to be president, etc. Seriously--if you only ever draw white people as the "everyday" Americans reacting to the news, you're just part of the freakin' problem. Also, I just don't want to see a single other editorial cartoon involving the goddamn Lincoln memorial.

Toon: McCain's Remaining Supporters

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The KKK garb is a slight exaggeration, but most of those shouted epithets are of course from actual Palin or McCain rallies.

Clinton equates "white" with "hard-working"

I know I said I was totally over the primaries, but now I'm even more disgusted and fed up. Barry has the details and a commentary roundup.

Toon: Again. And Again. And Again... (Sean Bell)

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This is a followup to my post about the families of the victims of police brutality killings forming a sad fraternity. The New York Times reported that at Sean Bell's wake, the mother of Patrick Dorismond was heard crying out: “Again? Again? Again?”

There were some protests throughout the city today, but the detectives are still off the hook. And it's hard to believe the story will ever change.

My previous cartoon about the Sean Bell case (with a very similar theme) is here.

R.I.P., Mildred Loving

You've probably all heard about this already, but Mildred Loving (of the famous Loving vs. Virginia Supreme Court case that legalized interracial marriage) died last Friday. Here's a snippet from a much-quoted recent statement by Ms. Loving, "Loving for All", made on the 40th anniversary of her landmark case:

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

On Sympathizing With the Killers

The outrageous Sean Bell verdict is still weighing on my mind. And I am getting really, really sick of people in the media and in person falling all over themselves to have sympathy for the undercover detectives who shot an innocent black man 50 times.

They say it is SUCH a hard job to be a police officer. It is just so SCARY. They were just SCARED, and DISORGANIZED. The implication is: wouldn't ANYONE be SCARED of an (innocent unarmed) black man?

We always hear this after incidents of police brutality. dNa sums it up at Racialicious ("On Sean Bell: fear is cause for slaughter only when victim is black"):

The Bell verdict will only cement the NYPD’s indifference to wasting black life. They simply aren’t held accountable. All they have to do is say they’re “scared”, and the media sympathizes, because they’re scared of us too.

You know, if being a cop is such a hard job, why not take one of those nice easy jobs?

Like the EASY job of being the mother or father of a (murdered innocent unarmed) black man?

Like the EASY job of being the fiancée or daughter of a (murdered innocent unarmed) black man? (see above photo)

Or the EASY job of being a little black boy who will someday grow up to be an innocent unarmed black man?

Doing a search on some of the history of police brutality cases in NYC, I came upon a moving NYTimes piece ("Police Shooting Reunites Circle of Common Loss") about the way that the families of the victims have formed a friendship network based in shared pain, and the Sean Bell funeral was cause for a painful reunion:

“I don’t know what I would have done without them,” Mrs. Dorismond, a Haitian immigrant who came to New York at 18 to study nursing, said of the relatives of Amadou Diallo and others who died in encounters with the police. “Nobody can understand that pain but me, Mrs. Diallo and the others. When it was my turn, everybody came.”

They had come and been there for her, rushing to her side to introduce themselves — at her son’s wake, at his funeral, at the protests on the streets. Amadou Diallo’s mother, Malcolm Ferguson’s mother, Nicholas Heyward Jr.’s father, Abner Louima himself.

Save your sympathy for the real victims, please.

50 Shots and an Outrageous Verdict

Morning outrage: the police officers who shot (and killed) an unarmed young man on his wedding day got away with murder. They shot Sean Bell 50 times but were declared not guilty on all counts. Business as goddamn usual--the police get away with killing another young black man, on the excuse that they were "scared" and "confused" and "disorganized."

Here's my original cartoon about the case, and a much older cartoon on police brutality.

Kevin Moore has "Snappy Answers to Stephanopoulos Questions"

Fellow Cartoonist With Attitude Kevin Moore sums up the worst of the latest debate in this awesome cartoon.

Cartoonists of Color Sit-In

This Sunday a dozen or so cartoonists of color (and a few allies) got together to protest the glaring lack of diversity on the comics pages and in editorial cartooning with a comic strip "sit-in." Participants included Cartoonist With Attitude Keith Knight, as well as Corey Thomas, Darrin Bell and others. Here are the details, via editorial cartoonist Tim Jackson:

Cartoonists of Color Unite for February 10 comic strip demonstration

On February 10, 2008, about a dozen cartoonists of color (and a few who are not) united to help bring attention to the lack of diversity on newspaper comic pages. In order to show the world that our comics are not all interchangable, we all did our own version of a strip that was originally done by Cory Thomas. Unless you have ever been in our shoes, it may be very difficult to see the uniqueness and frustration of our predicament. And when you see the responses to our "protest" (and you will), I'm sure you'll hear things like "Black cartoonists are given the same shot as everyone else" and " we pick strips based on quality, not race."

To see all the cartoons in one place, please visit:
http://mamasboyz.com/news/protest.html

That link seems to be down right now, but I'm sure it'll recover once everyone stops trying to visit. There's also a video about the protest on the CBS website. CBS notes that only 25 percent of newspapers in this country have even one strip by a black creator.

And you can read a spirited pre-discussion of the protest by many well-known cartoonists in the comments here.

Bigot Responds to Personal Border Wall Cartoon

This was posted over on Flickr in response to my Personal Border Wall cartoon.

Do you have one for uninsured drunk illegals crashing and killing innocent Americans?

Or how about one of a drophouse packed full of endentured slaves?

Or of an illegal killing a police officer in a sanctuary city?

How about the fragile desert environment full of trash?

BTW: I love Mexican food. Just hope an illegal with a contagious disease that wasn't screened at the border doesn't work at my favorite restaurant. Kinda challenging to draw a cartoon of that.

Seen by searching 'illegal immigrant'.

(Bolding added by yours truly).

What we can learn from this little racist rant:
• This just makes me all the more convinced that we need to encourage manufacturers to actually produce personal anti-immigration walls for xenophobes like this guy. He'll be so encumbered behind his wall and sunglasses and headphones that we won't have to listen to his racist rants. Maybe we can even pipe in a little Lou Dobbs to keep them sated.
• Anyone who claims that the huge rise in anti-immigrant sentiment has nothing to do with racism or bigotry is crazy.

I have to admit my response comment wasn't so restrained:

Oh please. Sounds like you could really use one of these walls yourself, it would protect you from all that "scary" Mexican food and protect us from your racist rants. Lay off the Lou Dobbs and get a life.

Pam debunks all that "Post-Racial Election" nonsense the media has been drinking

Over at Pam's House Blend.

Conservative commenter claims Martin Luther King Jr. supported segregation

I am so sick of this argument. Check out her comment and my response.

For more on why this is so ridiculous, see Brownfemipower.:

This is the wonderful and self explanatory logic of racism. MLK didn’t die because a racist white man shot his ass, and the racist white man didn’t shoot MLK’s ass because he was advocating for FUCKING DESEGREGATION–MLK died because he didn’t want white folks to lose their place at the top of the food chain!! He didn’t want black folk to be JUDGING on white folk!

And lordy lord, MLK didn’t get thrown in Birmingham jail (or any of the other jails he was thrown into) because his black ass was protesting SEGREGATION (note from MLK: Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States.) he was thrown in jail because he was upset beyond all reason at how black folks were hating on white folks with their reverse racist calls for desegregation. HE WAS PROTESTING BLACK FOLKS!! Didn’t you KNOW???

I stand corrected! I must have been watching Eyes on the Prize backwards.

Brown v. Board lawyers: Roberts twisted our words

From the NY Times ("The Same Words, but Differing Views")

In an unusual effort to cement his interpretation of Brown, [Roberts] quoted from the transcript of the 1952 argument in the case.

“We have one fundamental contention,” a lawyer for the schoolchildren, Robert L. Carter, had told the court more than a half-century ago. “No state has any authority under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens.”

Chief Justice Roberts added yesterday, “There is no ambiguity in that statement.”

Oh yeah? Too bad for Roberts that Carter, now 90, is still alive to call bullshit:

“All that race was used for at that point in time was to deny equal opportunity to black people,” Judge Carter said of the 1950s. “It’s to stand that argument on its head to use race the way they use is now.”

Jack Greenberg, who worked on the Brown case for the plaintiffs and is now a law professor at Columbia, called the chief justice’s interpretation “preposterous.”

“The plaintiffs in Brown were concerned with the marginalization and subjugation of black people,” Professor Greenberg said. “They said you can’t consider race, but that’s how race was being used.”

William T. Coleman Jr., another lawyer who worked on Brown, said, “The majority opinion is 100 percent wrong.”