Latest Posts by witchvspatriarchy - Page 5
Black women are just on another level
Greta Thunberg as an angry druid I drew back during the Australian fires.
#BLACKLIVESMATTER
I finally finished my black lives matter masterpost, here it is.
It is my attempt at compiling activism (the post includes petitions and donations suggestions), mental health and educational sources (videos, podcasts, books, articles…) anything to help you grow in understanding and get involved with the cause.
What “every white person is racist” means
Everytime I see a post of “you can’t be white and not be racist” or something along those lines, there’s always a white person jumping in saying “i’m white and i’m not racist, you saying that is racist” and here’s the thing:
YES. In the USA specifically you cannot be white and not be racist. Why? Because in USA history white people have opressed black people and they have built a system in which they are benefited from their status as white folk.
So you may not consider yourself racist, and maybe you’re not, in the sense that you’re not hateful, or pro-salvery or part of the KKK - but you benefit from the systematic racism in your country. If you don’t recognize your privilege and actively try to deconstruct that system that benefits you while giving black folks the shorthand you are being racist cause you’re enabling that systematic racism - and because if you’re aware that you benefit from it and you don’t want to tackle it and deconstruct it is because you don’t want to lose that privilege. So, yes, it is racist. That makes you racist.
Plus, segregation was “abolished” in 1954 - 66 years ago, your grandparents and your parents were alive and learned the segregation way, you probably have been subconciously taught racism while you grow. Maybe little comments here and there, maybe you’ve been taught to not trust a black person when they come to your home, or you have been taught to lock your car doors when you’re inside and a black person passes by. Keep in mind these arent taught in a verbal way, this are little reaction-habits that are learned subconciously. So yeah, you are most probaly racist in one way or another. The same way all men are sexist, one way or another.
My dad for example, he doesn’t consider himself sexist, and most people wouldn’t either, he isn’t violent, or actively treats women as a lesser kind BUT every time we talk about celebrities his only focus is on the physical attraction of the female celebrities, ive hear him say many times “she’s not pretty enough to play that role”, while his focus on the male ones are about talents and scores and awards and stuff. Those are sexist comments, that is a very sexist pov to look at celebs, so yes, he is sexist.
THIS is what people need to understand, being racist, sexist, lgbtqphobe doesnt always present itself in an ugly oppressive agressive “im better than you and you dont deserve human rights” kind of way, sometimes its subtler and unintentional, and that’s where its dangerous cause most of this people really think they arent like that and when it gets pointed out they get defensive. They take pride in something they think they are, but arent willing to listen and grow.
Y'all wanna preach about the importance of bi/pan visibility but none of you mean it.
In 2018 two girls on a bachelor show fell in love with each other and quit the show. They were later seen at a Pride event and one of the girls was holding a bi pride flag but everybody still calls her a lesbian
Janelle Monáe came out as bi and everybody celebrated. Cool. She later specified as Pansexual and nobody listened. People still refer to her a bi and ignore fans who say that pansexual is more accurate for her. People even "jokingly" call her song "PYNK" a lesbian anthem.
Recently a "lesbian" wedding photoshoot went viral on Twitter and Tumblr. Both brides were bisexual.
Nobody cares about what bi men have to say unless it's to shit on pansexuals. Nobody even notices nonbinary bi/pansexuals unless it's to validate them as wlw/mlm.
The community revived terms like mlm, wlw and sapphic to be inclusive but it's obvious that nobody actually uses them in practice. It's absolutely exhausting to say this constantly and nobody wants to admit they're guilty of doing this shit.
Do better
Let👏kids👏hate👏their👏parents👏
Stop👏saying👏children👏have👏to👏love👏their👏parents👏just👏because👏they👏gave👏them👏basic👏human👏 necessities👏required👏by👏law👏
Disabled Person: I can’t do this.
Ableist: Yes you can. Quit using your disability as an excuse. The only disability in life is a bad attitude.
Disabled Person: I can do this.
Ableist: Then you’re not really disabled. You’re just faking, which is offensive to actual disabled people.
Honestly I could care less about the fucking phone call - people are focusing too much on the he said she said when everyone should've been pissed at Kanye from the start for what HE DID.
On his famous mv Kanye portrays 11 celebrities (+ himself) naked on bed. And little has been said about Kanye deciding to exhibit naked people without their consent in a music video. And even less has been said about the fact that he decided to exhibit that same bed with the 12 silicone life-like, anatomically correct and BREATHING figures as part of a "pop-up art exhibition" in Los Angeles' Blum & Poe gallery, exhibition that was open to the public and Kim and Kendall advertised on social media.
TWELVE people: George Bush, Donald Trump, Rihanna, Amber Rose, Taylor Swift, Anna Wintour, Bill Cosby, Chris Brown, Ray Jay, Caitlin Jenner, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West himself. And we can assume that he probably had NO consent from TEN of those people. This figures were created by DONDA in collaboration with two Los Angeles studios that I wish I had the names of.
And guess who called Blum to get the exhibition done? SCOOTER BRAUN.
Scooter was part of Kanye's management team and he knew Blum beforehand. Blum said Scooter called him himself and that the reception of the "show" was extremely positive by all accounts.
KANYE PUBLICALLY EXHIBITED TEN PEOPLE NAKED WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT ON HIS MUSIC VIDEO AND A GALLERY FOR "ART" - THIS GOES BEYOND JUST TAYLOR (even though I agree she took the biggest blow) AND A GASLIGHTNING PHONECALL WITH A MANIPULATIVE ABUSER. HE ABUSED 10 PEOPLE. TEN. AND GOT PRAISED FOR IT WHILE TAYLOR HAD TO HIDE FOR A WHOLE YEAR BECAUSE SHE GOT HATE BECAUSE OF WHAT HE DID.
Men not being allowed to be emotional & rampant homophobia are the reasons men commit suicide 3.5x more than women… most men are given no outlet to feel feelings. To the point that they kill themselves.
Dark Brett show us the forbidden ideologies
Hyper-forbidden ideologies:
Posadism
LaRouche thought
Songun Politics Study Group USA-Rural People’s Party thought
Christian Identity
Esoteric Nazism
Cultish, supremacist black nationalist movements (NOI, radical Black Hebrew Israelites, etc.)
Sovereign citizen thought
Transcendental meditation thought (see: Natural Law Party)
Forbidden ideologies:
National Anarchism
Anarcho-Primitivism and deep ecology
French legitimism
Christian reconstructionism
Wahhabism
Juche thought
Ecofascism
Kahanism
All forms of third positonism (Peronism, National Bolshevism, Strasserism, Phalangism, integralism)
Ideologies just normally banned:
Social credit
Gaddafism
Situationism
Gandhian economics
Futarchy
Nasserism
Hoxhaism
Ba’athism
Ujamaa
Austromarxism
Neo-Marxism
Mobutism
Tudjmanism
Cults of personality around various right-wing authoritarian leaders which lack any solid ideological shape (Fujimori, Duterte, Lee Kuan Yew, Putin, etc.)
Ecofascism isn't new: white supremacy and exterminism have always lurked in the environmental movement
It’s easy to think of climate denial as a right-wing phenomenon, but a growing and ultra-violent strain of white-nationalism also embraces climate science, in the worst way possible.
Several of the recent white nationalist mass killers have described themselves as “ecofascists” and/or have deployed ecofascist rhetoric in their manifestos. The short version of ecofascism is that it’s the belief that our planet has a “carrying capacity” that has been exceeded by the humans alive today and that we must embrace “de-growth” in the form of mass extermination of billions of humans, in order to reduce our population to a “sustainable” level.
In some ways, ecofascism is just a manifestation of “peak indifference”: the idea that denial eventually self-corrects, as the debt built up by a refusal to pay attention to a real problem mounts and mounts, until it can no longer be denied. Eventually, the wildfires, floods, diseases (and ensuing refugee crises) overcome all but the most dedicated forms of bad-faith motivated reasoning and self-deception, and people start to switch sides from denying science to embracing it.
But there’s an ugly side to peak indifference: that denialism can give way to nihilism. As activists seek to engage people with the urgent crisis, they describe it (correctly) as an existential threat whose time is drawing nigh. Once people acknowledge the threat, it’s easy for them to conclude that it’s too late to do anything about it (“Well, you were right, those cigarettes did give me lung-cancer, but now that I’ve got it, I might as well enjoy my last few years on earth with a cigarette between my lips”).
Ecofascism is a form of nihilism, one that holds that it’s easier to murder half the people on Earth than it is to reform our industrial practices to make our population sustainable. Leaving aside the obvious moral objections to this posture, there’s also an important technical sense in which it is very wrong: we will need every mind and every body our species have to toil for generations to come, building seawalls, accommodating refugees, treating pandemic sufferers, working in more labor-intensive (and less resource-intensive) forms of agriculture, etc. etc. The exterminst doctrine assumes that we can know before the fact which humans are “surplus” and which ones might have the insight that lets us sequester carbon, cure a disease, or store renewable energy at higher densities.
But ecofascism isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. Pastoralist and environmental thinking has always harbored a strain of white supremacy (the Nazi doctrine of Lebensraum was inextricably bound up with an environmental ideology of preserving habits from “excess” people – as well as the wrong kind of people, whose inferior blood made them poor stewards of the land.
The connection between eugenics and environmentalism runs deep. One of the fathers of ecofascist thought is Madison Grant, who worked with Teddy Roosevelt to establish the US system of national parks, and also to establish a whiteness requirement for prospective US immigrants. This thread of thinking – that there are too many people, and the wrong people are breeding – carries forward with the environmental movement, with figures like John Tanton, who started his career as a local Sierra Club official, but went on to found the Federation for American Immigration Reform and co-found the Center for Immigration Studies, warning Americans to defend against a coming “Latin onslaught,” revealing himself to be a full-blown white nationalist who is revered today as the ideological father of the ecofascist movement.
Meanwhile, the eco-left kept having its own brushes with xenophobia. In the early 2000s, the Sierra Club underwent an internecine struggle to reform its official anti-immigration stance and purge the white nationalists and xenophobes from its ranks. In the early 2010, Earth First had to oust co-founder Dave Foreman as his pro-environmental activism was overtaken by his anti-immigrant activism, with splinter groups like “Apply the Brakes” taking hard lines on borders and immigration.
Today, the ecofascist movement is closely aligned with the Trump administration, through links to Steven Miller and Jeff Sessions. The former executive director of FAIR is now serving as Trump’s citizenship and immigration services ombudsman. Ann Coulter demands that Americans choose between either “greening or browning” their future. Richard Spencer wraps white nationalism in green rhetoric, and Gavin McInnes has directly linked environmentalism to anti-immigration ideology.
Pushing back against this are two complementary strains of environmental thought: the bright greens who see democratically managed, urbanized, high technology as the way through the climate crisis (dense cities enable a circular economy, heal the metabolic rift, and leave more land free for habitat and carbon-sequestering trees); and the climate justice movement, which recognizes that poor, racialized people are the least responsible parties for carbonization, and the most vulnerable to the climate emergency, and emphasizes climate remediation steps that are led by, and responsive to, the priorities of indigenous people and the Global South.
https://boingboing.net/2019/08/19/grand-lorax.html
People are really looking at decreased emissions and clear water and wildlife and saying “This is what the planet would be like if all those humans weren’t ruining it” no, you fuckhead, all the humans are still here, the thing that’s changed is the reduction of overconsumption and overwork that our current system of cronyism and unchecked capitalism demands. If you really think the solution is to remove humans so you can just keep consuming but with less consequences, you’re not just a eugenicist, an ecofascist, and a shitty person overall, you’re fucking stupid.
Killing off a portion of the population to prop up a poorly designed economy is not, and will never be, a solution. The economy is for the people, not the other way around. If you need to sacrifice people to keep it running, it’s fundamentally failed.
Can I get a 30 second rundown of what an ecofachist is? I don't know and you seem two. And I'm a bit nerveuse now
Ecofascism is a form of fascism centered around the earth and nature. It's very heavily based around the idea that humanity is bad for the planet (or, more commonly, that certain groups of humans— namely Jewish people— are bad) and that modern society is "degraded" because we've moved away from nature and tradition.
That "tradition" is almost always centered around the idea of a white cishet couple running a farm with their pristine white children, where the man does all the work and the woman stays at home, cleaning and cooking and making jam and popping out babies.
Ecofascism is actually really prevalent in society in other forms though, especially in the idea that mass death is needed to preserve the environment. You know those groups of people who claim that the Earth can't sustain all humans and so some people have to die? Who say that war is good because it "culls the human population"? Who claim that the planet is overpopulated and that's why there's people starving and dying, as opposed to them dying because of artificial shortages of food and water created by capitalists? Those are a type of ecofascist.
A few other dog whistles to look out for:
"Blood and soil": A literal Nazi phrase that Nationalist ecofascism was built on.
"Reject modernity": Got into this already, but it's about how society is supposedly degraded, usually referring to urban areas and the rise of multiculturalism; can almost always be tied to antisemitism.
Traditionalism/tribalism: Two idealogies built on isolation, individualism, and rejection of perceived outsiders. Very against immigration and multiculturalism.
Long post but I’ve been seeing way too many people come out as ecofascists saying this virus is some sort of ‘awakening’ thinking they’re some kind of spiritual gurus recently so this is a highly important read!
But I would actually be fine being stuck in a luxurious 20 million dollar mansion with a large pool, a tennis court and an elaborate garden maze for months on end.
It’s like when that prosecutor argued against house arrest for Felicity Huffman and showed a picture of her massive house: “Not being allowed to leave here is a punishment!?”
Covid19 Entertainment Masterpost
The Met Opera is releasing a full recording per day.
Feature film archive
Open library
MS-DOS Games
The Live Music Archive
Ephemeral VHS collection
Berlin philarmonic
Museums
Peaches the Mouse by @my-darling-boy
450 Ivy League courses
Natasha and Pierre, King Lear with Anthony Hopkins and Much Ado About Nothing with Tennant
Learn Ancient Languages
Please circulate this: The French government (my country) has issued a warning against taking anti-inflammatory drugs (ibuprofen, Advil, cortisone) with covid-19 symptoms, as it may cause severe cases of the disease, even in young and middle aged adults with no underlying conditions.
Shedd Aquarium in Chicago let penguins explore and visit other animals after it's closed to humans
Tumblr,
As you’re probably aware, the coronavirus disease, or COVID-19, has now been found in countries all over the globe. This is an understandably disconcerting moment for many, but there are steps we can all take to help mitigate the effect on our communities.
COVID-19 is spreading, but misinformation and disinformation are spreading even faster. The most responsible thing you can do is protect yourself from both the disease and false information. Being prepared with facts and data instead of assumptions and fabrications will help inform how you can best prepare for COVID-19.
Here are some resources you can trust:
WHO provides daily updates surrounding COVID-19’s spread, infection rate, and general influence on our society. Their latest update given on March 3, 2020, details that there is a shortage of personal protective equipment for healthcare professionals. They also provide a very handy FAQ section, where you can learn more about how to protect yourself and your community.
Every day Worldometer updates its website with the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in each country that has been affected. Worldometer has been rated one of the best free reference websites by the American Library Association, and for good reason: it lists every single one of its regular sources here, and lists the source of every COVID-19 update at the bottom of the COVID-19 page.
Your local health department will often have the most up-to-date information specific to your immediate area, including how to proceed if you believe you may be showing symptoms of the virus. If you live in the United States, you can find the contact information for your health department by visiting the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO).
There’s another thing about this news that a lot of places are not talking about: the toll on one’s mental health, especially if you are someone who struggles with anxiety. If you find your concerns about being prepared are crossing a line that affects your mental health, please consider reaching out to a loved one who can guide you to help, a mental health professional, or an organization set up to help those in need.
Here are a couple of organizations you can trust:
Crisis Text Line is free, 24/7 support. Just text 741741 from anywhere in the United States. The Crisis Text Line will connect you with a trained Crisis Counselor.
National Alliance on Mental Illness (@namiorg) offers free support and resources for those who are struggling. NAMI can be reached Monday through Friday, 10 am - 6 pm EST at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or by email at info@nami.org.
Take care of yourselves, Tumblr. Wash your hands well, practice keeping a safe distance from others, only wear a mask if you believe you are sick with COVID-19 symptoms and could infect others (or are immunocompromised yourself), and remember to fact check everything that you see. Head on over to @world-wide-what for a refresher on what fake news looks like and how it spreads. Pass those tips onto others when you see them accidentally spreading false information.
<3
More photos of 8M feminist March on mexico ♀️💕✊
Feminists painted the names of missing women on the Zocalo's floor 👆
This 👆 is probably my favorite photo from Mexico so far 💖
This 👇 photo is not from Mexico but Santiago Chile, I think, but I love it so much 🥰
Mexico was painted purple by feminists today 🥰
Today, the feminist movement took the streets of mexico, with women marching for their rights and against the epidemic of feminicides that is taking place in the country 💕💓😭
When the march began to be organized in social networks, people were "worried" and critizised the lack of empathy (from feminists) with the women (specifically) who'd have to clean the streets after the marching - the cleaning ladies showed up to show their support tho 💖♀️
This was today and I'm filled with pride, I wasn't able to participate and it breaks my heart. However tomorrow is the mexican feminist strike - just like Icelandic women did in 1975 - tomorrow, Mexican feminist groups have called for a full on strike: no women in schools, work places or even on the streets. Women won't buy or sell anything tomorrow, or actively participate in the mexican society in any way, including social media. No internet tomorrow for us. So I wont see ya until the tenth. ✊✊✊
International Women’s Day: Actresses Who Became Activists By Raquel Stecher
International Women’s Day, celebrated annually on March 8th and recognized by the United Nations, raises awareness for women’s rights and celebrates the achievements of women across the globe. Utilizing their fame as a platform to do good, actresses from the golden age of Hollywood and beyond have supported a variety of philanthropic causes. Myrna Loy worked on behalf of UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Ida Lupino made NEVER FEAR (’50) to raise awareness about polio. Ruby Dee fought for civil rights. Rita Moreno continues to champion the Latinx community. Martha Raye entertained the troops during three separate wars. Debbie Reynolds was a mental health and AIDS advocate. Tippi Hedren empowered Vietnamese women to become business owners. And, Shirley Temple raised awareness about breast cancer. There are many, many examples of actresses devoting their time, energy and, in many cases, finances for humanitarian, environmental and political causes. Let’s take a look at some of the notable actresses who became activists.
Doris Day
In 1937, Doris Day’s coonhound Tiny was hit by a car and killed. The guilt Day felt for Tiny’s untimely demise would fuel her activism on behalf of animals. Day transitioned from acting in the 1970s to become an animal welfare advocate. She co-founded the non-profit organization Actors and Others for Animals in 1971. In 1978, she started the Doris Day Pet Foundation (later renamed the Doris Day Animal Foundation). This organization advocates for the humane treatment of animals. By the late 1980s, she would allow only a handful of interviews with the sole intention of publicizing her charitable efforts. She even called up President Ronald Reagan, her costar in THE WINNING TEAM (’52), to discuss animal rights legislation. In 1987, she started The Doris Day Animal League, which eventually merged with The Humane Society of the United Sates, and established World Spay Day. In 2011, she started the Doris Day Horse Rescue and Adoption Center, and Day recorded the album “My Heart,” the proceeds of which went to her non-profit. Day was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush in 2004 for her work.
Jane Fonda
Outspoken political activist Jane Fonda has championed many causes over the years. She was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War, which landed her in some hot water. In 1970, while Fonda was organizing and fundraising a protest with Vietnam War veterans, she was arrested for possession of drugs. The drugs were in fact vitamins and she was eventually cleared of all charges. In a moment of defiance, she held up a fist for her now iconic mugshot. Two years later, Fonda would travel to Vietnam and a photo of her sitting on an anti-aircraft gun in Hanoi would stir up controversy. She was labeled “Hanoi Jane,” a moniker that is still negatively used against her to this day. While she regretted her actions, she did not let this prevent her from continuing her political activism. She’s been a champion for civil rights, feminist causes and has lent her support to Native Americans. In recent years, she’s taken on several environmental causes including protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline and Arctic drilling. As of the publication of this article, Fonda has been arrested five times for her climate change demonstrations (Fire Drill Fridays) in Washington D.C.
Audrey Hepburn
During her childhood, Audrey Hepburn suffered the effects of living through WWII and the Dutch famine of 1944-1945, which would have long lasting effects on her health. In 1946, early ambassadors from the newly created organization UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) offered her assistance. She never forgot their kindness and her own personal experience led to her to become a champion for children in need. Hepburn began working with UNICEF in 1954 and started traveling on field missions in 1988. The following year she was appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador for the organization. She traveled to Turkey, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and elsewhere, assisting with medical treatments, nutrition projects and working directly with children and their mothers. Her last trip was to Somalia in 1992, four months before she died. In 1993, she was posthumously awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Academy Award.
Helen Hayes
Actress Helen Hayes was best known for her theatrical productions, but when her severe asthma put an end to her stage career (the dust on stage proved to be too much), she transitioned to television and film. Hayes used her fame to help raise funds for asthma research. She also donated to the arts, including the Riverside Shakespeare company. She was on the board of her directors for the New York Chapter of the Girl Scouts in the 1970s. Besides being an EGOT (an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony-winning performer), her greatest claim to fame should be her work with the New York State Rehabilitation and Research Hospital which helps rehabilitate patients with disabilities. Hayes first became involved with the hospital in the 1940s. Throughout the years, she donated, fundraised and hosted events at her mansion, the “Pretty Penny,” and offered support in any way she could. She lobbied for funding to renovate the hospital, a project that cost over $37 million dollars. She served as a member of the board from 1944 until her death in 1993. The hospital was renamed The Helen Hayes Hospital in 1974 and is still going strong today.
Lena Horne
Lena Horne’s activism began at a very young age. In 1919, at the age of two, she appeared on the cover of the NAACP journal The Crisis. Influenced by her grandmother Cora Calhoun Horne, a suffragist and activist who was a political ally of W.E.B. Du Bois, as well as her activist father, Horne championed civil rights before the movement ever began. She joined the NAACP while she was still a high school student. She also leant her support to the Urban League, the Progressive Citizens of America and the SNCC. During WWII, Horne supported the war effort by entertaining black troops. She filed a complaint through the NAACP when she saw that black service members had to sit behind German POWs during her performances at Fort Reilly. When MGM removed her from the tour, she self-financed her trips and continued her efforts. During WWII, she also spoke up on behalf of the mistreatment of Japanese Americans. Horne campaigned for anti-lynching legislation with Eleanor Roosevelt, although that ultimately failed. During the Civil Rights Movement, Horne performed at rallies and was in the March on Washington in 1963. In 1983, the NAACP awarded her the Spingarn Medal for being an “artist humanitarian and living symbol of excellence. Her humanitarian efforts live on and the annual Lena Horne Prize, awarded by Town Hall, honors artists for their social impact.
Marsha Hunt
The name Marsha Hunt should become synonymous with activism. Hunt has been indefatigable in her humanitarian efforts. Influenced by her progressive mother, she became a liberated woman with strong political beliefs. Those beliefs would come under scrutiny during the McCarthy Era witch hunt. She joined the Committee for the First Amendment, a group of Hollywood actors and writers who supported the Hollywood Ten. She was ultimately blacklisted. Over the years, she became an advocate for UNICEF, The March of Dimes, The Red Cross and the United Nations. She was named an Ambassador for Peace in 2007. Hunt has championed many humanitarian causes including homelessness, mental health, world peace, the environment and the plight of refugees. She is a founder of the San Fernando Valley Mayor’s Fund for the Homeless. Hunt helped raise money to buy a motel that was renovated into a homeless shelter for women and children. She supported the shelter throughout the years by donating supplies and helping with the upkeep. Hunt has also been a vocal advocate for the LGBTQ community. Back in the 1970s, she wrote a song about same-sex relationships called “Here’s to All Love,” and it was performed by Glee star Bill A. Jones in 2013. A documentary about her life, career and humanitarian efforts MARSHA HUNT’S SWEET ADVERSITY was released in 2015.
Mary Pickford
Actress, producer, writer and business woman, Mary Pickford was an enterprising woman and instrumental in the formative years of the film industry. In 1921, she conceived of the idea for the Motion Picture Relief Fund, an organization intended to help other members of the film industry who had fallen on hard times. She used the remaining funds from her work selling Liberty Bonds during WWI to help finance the project. Pickford became one of the founding members of what is now called the Motion Picture Television Fund. She also served as the organization’s first vice president. She oversaw various initiatives including the Playroll Pledge Program, which encouraged industry members to donate 0.5% of their paycheck to the fund. She helped raise money to buy walnut and orange groves in Woodland Hills, which would become the home for the fund and its hospital. Pickford was on the board for many years and attended every fundraising event she could. In addition to the MPTF, she established the Mary Pickford Foundation in the 1950s. The foundation focuses on preserving films in partnerships with film archives.
Rosalind Russell
Ever since Rosalind Russell portrayed Sister Elizabeth Kenny, an Australian nurse who took great strides to help children suffering from polio in the film SISTER KENNY (’46), Russell became a tireless advocate for various health causes. Russell, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, served on the National Commission on Arthritis and Related Musculoskeletal Diseases starting in the 1970s. The Rosalind Russell Medical Research Center for Arthritis University of California San Francisco was named in her honor. She was a founding member of the United Service Organizations (USO) and the League for Crippled Children. She was a chairman and advocate for The Lighthouse for the Blind, Catholic Charities of New York, The National Arthritis Foundation, Children Services of Connecticut and the MPTF. Russell lent her efforts to senior care centers and in assisting tornado victims. For her numerous philanthropic pursuits, she received a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Academy Award in 1973.
Elizabeth Taylor
When her good friend and co-star in GIANT (’56), Rock Hudson, died from complications of AIDS, Elizabeth Taylor was devastated. Fueled by the tragedy, she became a tireless advocate for those suffering from HIV/AIDS. She helped raise awareness, fund research and combat ignorance in a time when AIDS was still highly misunderstood. She testified before the House and the Senate for the Ryan White Care Act and helped convince President Ronal Reagan to publicly acknowledge the disease. She also founded the Elizabeth Taylor Medical Center at the Whitman-Walker Clinic in D.C. which offered free HIV/AIDS testing. In 1985, she chaired the AIDS Project Los Angeles’ Commitment to Life fundraising project and co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research. The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, established in 1991, provides financial and moral support to patients suffering from AIDS. She shifted her focus from acting to her humanitarian efforts and raised millions of dollars for different foundations. After her death in 2011, her estate keeps funding her foundation. Taylor was awarded a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Academy Award in 1993.
In honor of International Womens Day, here is a thread of women of color, queer women of color and trans women of color who deserve to be celebrated today for their accomplishments:
Up first: Sylvia Rivera who is a Latina trans activist, was one of the first women to throw a bottle at the Stonewall Inn raid in 1969. She was a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance. She is a pioneer of trans rights!! ❤️
Bisexual Mexican artist Frida Kahlo spoke out about being disabled after a bus accident. Her self-portraits comment on the female form and utilize traditional Mexican themes and colors!
Kara Walker is a Black artist who creates these very powerful silhouettes highlighting race and scenerios of our past in slavery. She creates many other works as well, but those are my personal favorite. I’ve seen them in person!
Katherine Johnson who is represented in the movie “Hidden Figures”, calculated the precise trajectories that would let Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969. She was a very talented mathematician. In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Malala Yousafzai is a prominent figure in our world. Every day she fights to ensure all girls receive 12 years of free, safe, quality education. She is also the youngest Nobel Prize recipient. Even after the gunman incident, her voice never stayed quiet.
Rosa Parks of course. She was a leader in the local NAACP and the civil rights movement, iconically refused to give up her seat. Her willingness to disobey the rule helped to spark the Montgomery boycott and other efforts to end segregation in America.
Marsha P. (“Pay it No Mind”) Johnson was another pioneer in the trans movement. She helped created STAR with Sylvia Rivera. She was a drag queen, sex worker, and while her gender identity remains questioned in discourse, a lot of trans people claim her as one of their own.
Cecilia Chung, an Asian trans woman living with HIV, has spent her life fighting to end discrimination, stigma and violence across marginalized communities first as the former chair of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.
Of course Michelle Obama!! She has focused on social issues like education and healthy living. She was deeply committed to the well-being of our nation and to the future of its people, especially its children.
One more: Patsy Takemoto Mink devoted her life to advocating for gender equality and educational reform. She is the first woman of color and the first Asian-American woman elected to the House of Representatives. Title IX owes its existence largely to her efforts. So thank you to all of these amazing, intelligent, passionate, beautiful, inspiring women throughout history who are fucking badass. I just had to shed some appreciation to them for changing the world and resonating with me to continue follow in my great aunt’s activism for people of color.