Leonard Nimoy - Zachary Quinto Lectures 2011 10 13

The Berlin Celebration Concert - Beethoven, Symphony No 9 Bernstein 1989

Star Wars IV: A new hope - Binary Sunset (Force Theme)

The triskellion is my favorite symbol. I doodle them everywhere.

Holderisms [Part 5]

Roland Fischer photographs building facades

A Very Short Fact: On this day in 1865, The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. The amendment outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude, and was the first constitutional amendment in 60 years. It was the first of three Reconstruction Amendments that followed the American Civil War.

“The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery, but it did not set things right. Following emancipation, African Americans waged profound struggles to make their freedom meaningful. Some set out on the roads or placed advertisements in newspapers to search for family members from whom they had been forcibly separated during slavery. Black communities, sometimes with help from the federal government’s Freedmen’s Bureau and missionary teachers from northern denominations, established schools for both children and adults. Freed people established independent churches free from white supervision, and they often housed schools in the sanctuaries. Some freed people established businesses. African Americans advocated in state legislatures for the right to serve on juries, the right to testify in court against whites, and most importantly, the right to vote.”

[P. 115-American Slavery: A Very Short Introduction by Heather Andrea Williams]

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Image credit: Harper’s Weekly cartoon depicting celebration in the House of Representatives after adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment by Internet Archive. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The Florida Douglas High School Shooting Was an Anti-Semitic Hate Crime And Nobody’s Talking About…

Yesterday, February 14th 2018, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz took an Uber to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the institution he had been…

” Why is nobody talking about the fact that the Florida shooting was an anti-Semitic hate crime except for Jews? The school was more than 40% Jewish. The shooter was a part of a white supremacist organization, actively and openly hated Jews more than anyone else, would beat up Jewish kids, etc. The head of the white supremacist organization made a public statement that the organization had nothing to do with the shooting but if he had to guess why Cruz did it, it was because the school was predominantly Jewish. “We’re not a big fan of Jews,“ Republic of Florida Militia leader Jordan Jerub stated in an interview with The Daily Beast. “I think there were a lot of Jews at the school that might have been messing with him.”

It seems like only Jewish news sources are reporting on this and the comments on the articles by non-Jews are sickening. People are saying that “Jews want to be oppressed so badly. He shot up the school because they expelled him, not because he hated Jews.” People are saying we’re “appropriating struggles of people of color” by claiming that he killed Jewish kids because he’s a white supremacist. I’m sorry, why can’t we acknowledge that someone shot up a Jewish school because he was anti-Semitic without it taking away from the struggles of other minorities?

When Jews say we are oppressed, people often respond with “show me real hate crimes against Jews and then we’ll believe you when you say you’re discriminated against,” but then someone who talks about wanting Jews dead shoots up a school that’s mostly Jewish and people still refuse to acknowledge that it’s a real hate crime.

The Jewish community is not a large one. I know people who knew some of those kids, who went to Jewish summer camp with them, whose parents were family friends etc.  Fuck anti-Semites and fuck people who shoot children and fuck people who refuse to acknowledge that people are targeted, assaulted, and even killed for being Jewish on a regular basis. According to the FBI, 1.7% of Americans are Jewish, but last year 54.2% of religiously motivated hate crimes were against Jews and 11.5% of overall hate crimes were against Jews.

If your intersectionality doesn’t include Jews, you’re doing social justice wrong.”

Historic: With a landslide victory, Ireland is the first country in the world to pass the freedom to marry by popular referendum! Reblog this to celebrate this wonderful step forward: http://bit.ly/1AlvMNy