The story of the deadly violence in Khartoum on 3 June, told through those who filmed through it.
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Thursday, July 11, 2019
White tenant claims racist landlord called her ‘n*gger lover’ and evicted him because she had Black guests
Victoria Sutton filed a federal lawsuit against her white landlords who she said evicted her because she allowed a Black family to come over to her place for a playdate.
Sutton, who is white, has enlisted the help of the ACLU of Georgia and filed a housing discrimination claim on Wednesday alleging that Allen and Patricia McCoy kicked her out of her rental home for having “n*ggers” on their property, a claim the McCoys deny.
Sutton said last fall, she invited a coworker and his family over. After the meet-up she said she hugged him as his family left her Adairsville home. Allen McCoy apparently saw the exchange and, in the complaint, Sutton alleges that he called her a “n*gger lover.”
McCoy then allegedly told Sutton she should be ashamed of herself for having “n*ggers on their property.”
McCoy also allegedly threatened to call Child Protective Services on her. Sutton said she called his wife Patricia to complain that her husband threatened eviction and told her she would have to suffer the consequences of bringing the “n*ggers” around, WSBTV reports.
When WSBTV sat down with the McCoys’ and asked if there was any truth to the claims, Allen McCoy responded, “Nope.”
“Some of the best friends I got is colored,” McCoy said in his defense, yet using another term considered racist by Black people.
“Your best friends are colored?” the reported asks.
“Yes, sir,” McCoy replies.
McCoy and his wife then claimed that Sutton was being evicted because she damaged the property.
“I wasn’t shocked at all because racism is alive and well today,” said Sean J. Young, legal director for the ACLU of Georgia told WSB.
“Racial discrimination is wrong, and whether it manifests in the form of this kind of blatant commentary or whether it happens more insidiously behind the scenes, it’s wrong in every instance,” Young said.
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White woman tells Puerto Rican woman Trump needs to deport her in racist video ‘Go back to your own country’
A belligerent Trump supporter was caught on camera going off on in a verbal racist attack against customers in a Pennsylvania grocery store.
Johanny Santana said she witnessed a white woman spewing hateful rhetoric because a customer started speaking Spanish to a cashier and she got angry about it.
The woman cursed out the boy and his grandfather because they spoke a different language and things seemed to escalate when another lady jumps in and starts cursing them out too.
That’s when Santana whipped out her cell phone and started recording the confrontation, NBC Philadelphia reports.
“The boy comes back and asks another question [to the cashier] and that’s when the woman, who was next to me, started cursing,” Santana recalled.
The woman, she said then blasted her and told her, “You shouldn’t be in this country. I hope Trump deports you.” However, Santana is a US citizen from Puerto Rico with the same rights and privileges as the lady who is confronting her.
In a clip Santana shared on Facebook June 30, the woman made the assumption that Santana was paying for her purchases with “drug money.”
“Adios b*tch,” the woman shaking money and saying, “I’m paying cash with legal money, not drug money.”
Santana says when she asked the woman if there was a problem with her speaking Spanish, she responded: “Can you stop talking to me?”
The woman also cursed at Santana in Spanish called her a b*tch by saying, “You’re a p*ta.”
The white woman she says kept referring to her as the derogatory term even when she asked her to stop.
“You’re a p*ta,” she said the lady repeated.
The white woman also continued her racist rant saying, “I was born here, you don’t belong here” and “go back to your own country.”
—American Airlines issues apology to Black woman for forcing her to cover up on flight—
“I don’t care” Santana says to the woman who retorts, “We’re not you’re f*cking piggy bank.”
That’s when the white woman spewed racist tropes much like Trump.
“You don’t belong here, you came here illegally. You should be deported,” and “I hope Trump deports you.”
Santana said the woman continued with her racist insults so she said she too shot back with insults of her own.
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‘Orange is the New Black’ leaves legacy for women of color
From corrupt, brutal overseers to the fraught world of inmate hierarchy to unlikely friendships and romances, “Orange is the New Black” told deeply rich and complex stories about life for women behind bars that resonated far beyond prison walls.
While it was originally centered around the privileged white character of Piper Chapman (played by Taylor Schilling), the supporting characters — some quirky, some volatile, some comic, some tragic — became the show’s breakout stars.
The award-winning Netflix series also became a showcase for actresses of color, thanks to nuanced story lines with depth that have often proved elusive.
It’s no surprise that some of them went on to become the show’s biggest draws.
Uzo Aduba won the dramedy’s only acting Emmys, while Emmy-nominee Laverne Cox, Danielle Brooks, Samira Wiley and Dascha Polanco all gave masterful performances that lifted their careers far beyond life in Litchfield federal penitentiary.
As the hit dramedy winds down with the seventh and final season on July 26, those actresses take a look back at the profound impact the series had on their lives.
ADUBA (Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren)
A not-so-funny thing happened to Uzoamaka Nwanneka Aduba on her way to audition for a different part on the show: She was late.
She thought maybe the faux pas was the universe trying to tell her that acting wasn’t her destiny. Aduba, 38, had been trying professionally for about 10 years, with small victories, but she quit after her tardiness, thinking maybe a law career was the way to go as her parents, of Nigerian descent, preferred.
That’s when the life-changing phone call came. There was bad news: She didn’t get the part of track star-inmate Janae Watson. But there was also good: She was offered Crazy Eyes instead, though only for a couple of guest appearances. She wore the bantu knots that became the signature style of the character to the audition.
Thank goodness she didn’t listen to the universe. Aduba’s role was extended and she won two Emmys, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and a Golden Globe.
Like Crazy Eyes sometimes does, she let the muses rule.
“My phone wasn’t ringing, with regards to film and television anyway, before our show came out,” she told The Associated Press. “It just felt surreal, I think, for a lot of us to even be having this sort of experience.”
Now, with her higher profile, she has a goal: “I am trying to tell the stories of the missing, the people and the voices that are missing in the tapestry.”
For so many in the cast, the Medfield, Massachusetts-raised Aduba said, “We had been living on the Island of Misfit Toys and being made to feel as though there was no place for us when the truth of the matter is space just needed to be made.”
LGBTQ activist Laverne Cox didn’t quit her day job at the drag spot Lucky Cheng’s in Manhattan until after the first season of Orange wrapped. But it wasn’t long until she made history as the first trans person on the cover of Time magazine.
“I just cried,” she said.
The magazine’s story accompanying the cover on the transgender tipping point had her describing her childhood in Mobile, Alabama, growing up bullied and harassed for presenting as feminine. She came out as trans years later while working in New York City, where she took up acting.
Thanks to OINTB, where her character rode out cycles of acceptance, hatred and violence, Cox has used her star platform to educate the world and push for just treatment of LGBTQ people everywhere.
So much has changed for Cox in the show’s seven-year run.
“Seven years ago I turned 40 and I had not had the big breakthrough in my acting career that I had wanted. I was in tons of debt. I thought it was time for me to do something else,” she told the AP. “I was like, ‘I should go back to graduate school’ and I bought some GRE study materials from a friend of mine.”
Then she auditioned for Orange, “and here we are.”
Cox was the first openly trans person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category and the first to be nominated for any Emmy since composer Angela Morley in 1990.
For years at Lucky Cheng’s she’d tell co-workers she wanted to be an actor and win awards, “and they’d be like, yeah, right whatever,” Cox recalled. “A black trans woman in 2010 saying she wants to be a big star was like, ‘Yeah right, yeah cool.’ Who knew?”
WHAT’S NEXT: She has several projects pending, including the film “Promise Young Woman.”
BROOKS (Tasha “Taystee” Jefferson)
As the brash Taystee, Brooks showed the way not just for other actors of color, but for women of size.
“Cornbread fed, baby, cornbread fed,” she laughed.
The Augusta, Georgia-born Brooks was well on her way doing theater when “Orange” happened after she graduated with a bachelor’s from the Juilliard School.
Brooks is also a singer, earning a Tony nomination for Sofia (Oprah’s film part) in the 2015 Broadway production of “The Color Purple.” She dropped a music video in February for Black History Month featuring herself all glammed up and wet in a bathtub singing “Black Woman,” which includes the lyrics: “The world tells me there is space for me, if I cinch it up and I sew it in, the world tells me it’ll all be mine, with some lashes on and some lighter eyes.”
The song, Brooks told the AP, was “my way of healing myself” while encouraging others to accept who they are.
Brooks’ mom is a minister and her dad a church deacon. Church taught her a lot about how to present herself to the world and the importance of prioritizing self-love. Now, she wants to “show the industry, look what happens when you give people opportunity.”
The 29-year-old Brooks was working as a waitress in New York City (“I was a horrible waitress”) when her agent got her an audition for “Orange,” though initially only two episodes were promised.
“I almost said no to it because I didn’t get to read the script and when I saw the scene that
I was going to be in I had to be topless. I was like, oh no. I’m from South Carolina. I grew up in a very religious household. I was nervous also about playing a stereotype, of the black woman who the world might consider sassy and loud and angry. To put that on TV, I was not sure about it.”
She’s obviously glad she did.
“It has completely changed my life,” Brooks said. She believes it also opened doors for nontraditional shows featuring full casts of color on TV.
“How much has the world changed, how much has Hollywood changed where you can have shows like ‘Pose,’ you can have ‘Insecure’ and ‘Atlanta’ and a plethora of other shows out there where the lead can look different from what we’ve seen before?”
WHAT’S NEXT: She appears in the film “Clemency” and is working on an EP. She is also expecting her first child.
WILEY (Poussey Washington)
Wiley was a bartender for two and a half years after she, too, graduated Julliard when she auditioned for Orange. There were no promises that lesbian character Poussey would be a recurring role. After she got the job, she stayed at Fred’s Restaurant in Manhattan for the first couple of seasons.
“I didn’t want to be stupid about it and quit my job and then end up nowhere,” she told the AP.
Like her character, Wiley is gay. Raised in Washington, D.C., Wiley’s sexuality was embraced by her liberal pastor parents, which she considers key to her success. She’s now an advocate for LGBTQ, immigration and prison reform causes.
Wiley, 32, was not publicly out in those early seasons of Orange. She credits Poussey with giving her the strength and confidence to come into her own, both as an actor and a gay black woman. Wiley appeared on the cover of Out magazine for its 20th anniversary to seal the deal.
“I think deep down, the both of us, Poussey and I, are just like really open and honest people with our hearts,” Wiley said. “There are real Pousseys out there, in prison, not in prison, being thrown away because people think they don’t matter.”
Wiley won three Screen Actors Guild Awards for Poussey. She went on to receive an Emmy nomination in 2017 for her portrayal of Moira in the Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale” and won an Emmy for that part the following year.
WHAT’S NEXT: Wiley appears in the film “BIOS” and is working in a comedy, “Breaking News in Yuba County.”
POLANCO (Dayanara “Daya” Diaz)
She had dreamed of becoming an actor as a child but thought her weight might hold her back, so she put herself through Hunter College instead, going to school as a teen mother raising a young daughter.
The Dominican Republic-born Polanco went on to earn a bachelor’s in psychology and worked in a hospital as she studied to be a nurse (and eventually had a second child, a son). But over time, she decided to pursue acting.
After minor roles in two TV series, she was cast in OITNB in 2012.
“I had three jobs at the time and I was also finishing my nursing clinicals,” she told the AP of life before “Orange.”
“We are the reality.” she added. “Hollywood has been very exclusive in who they consider an actor, who they want to depict on screens.”
Polanco, who is also a songwriter, now values her versatility as an actor who doesn’t fit the Hollywood mold, though the early years were nerve-wracking.
“We can all relate to that, not feeling enough. I was very fearful of going out to auditions and being told, well you have to lose weight, well your hair is curly,” she said. “You come across this discrimination and this prejudice and you don’t realize how much they affect you. … It’s learning how to embrace those scars and how we use it as foundation and not as identity.”
It’s not always easy. While acting and music are passions, “I’m still out here not getting roles,” Polanco said.
WHAT’S NEXT: She plays Cuca in the film version of the stage musical “In the Heights” and worked in the film “iGilbert.”
The post ‘Orange is the New Black’ leaves legacy for women of color appeared first on theGrio.
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Louisiana braces for weekend hurricane and flooding
A potential tropical storm brewing in the Gulf of Mexico presents twin troubles for coastal Louisiana and Mississippi — the possibility that the flooded Mississippi River will be lapping at the tops of levees this weekend, and a danger of flash floods like the one that unexpectedly walloped New Orleans on Wednesday.
The Gulf of Mexico disturbance that dumped as much as 8 inches (20 centimeters) of rain just three hours in parts of metro New Orleans was forecast to strengthen into a tropical depression Thursday, then a tropical storm called Barry Thursday night, and, possibly, a weak hurricane by Friday.
The biggest danger in the days to come is not destructive winds, but ceaseless rain, the National Hurricane Center warned: “The slow movement of this system will result in a long duration heavy rainfall threat along the central Gulf Coast and inland through the lower Mississippi Valley through the weekend and potentially into next week.”
Forecasters said Louisiana could see up to 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain by Monday, with isolated areas receiving as much as 18 inches (46 centimeters). And the storm’s surge at the mouth of the Mississippi could also mean a river that’s been running high for months will rise even higher.
Southeastern Texas also was at risk of torrential rains.
New Orleans got an early taste Wednesday of what may be in store. News outlets said a tornado may have been responsible for wind damage to one home, while floodwaters invaded some downtown hotels and businesses as streets became small rivers that accommodated kayakers. The floods paralyzed rush-hour traffic and stalled cars around the city.
It all happened fast.
“I must have got to work about a quarter to 7,” said Donald Smith, who saw his restaurant on Basin Street flood for the third time this year. “By 7:15, water was everywhere.”
It brought memories of a 2017 flash flood that exposed major problems — and led to major personnel changes — at the Sewerage and Water Board, which oversees street drainage. City officials said the pumping system that drains streets was at full capacity. But the immense amount of rain in three hours would overwhelm any system, said Sewerage and Water Board director Ghassan Korban.
The Mississippi is already running so high that officials in Plaquemines Parish at Louisiana’s southeastern tip ordered evacuations of some areas to begin Thursday. A voluntary evacuation was called on Grand Isle, the vulnerable barrier island community south of New Orleans. Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a statewide emergency in light of the gathering storm.
A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans said the agency was not expecting widespread overtopping of the levees, but there are concerns for areas south of the city. The weather service expects the river to rise to 20 feet (6 meters) by Saturday morning at a key gauge in the New Orleans area, which is protected by levees 20 to 25 feet (6 to 7.6 meters) high.
The Corps was working with local officials down river to identify any low-lying areas and reinforce them, spokesman Ricky Boyett said. He cautioned that the situation may change as more information arrives.
“We’re confident the levees themselves are in good shape. The big focus is height,” Boyett said.
Edwards said National Guard troops and high-water vehicles would be positioned all over the state.
“The entire coast of Louisiana is at play in this storm,” the governor said.
New Orleans officials have asked residents to keep at least three days of supplies on hand and to keep their neighborhood storm drains clear so water can move quickly.
As the water from Wednesday morning’s storms receded, people worried about what might come next.
Tanya Gulliver-Garcia was trying to make her way home during the deluge. Flooded streets turned a 15-minute drive into an ordeal lasting more than two hours.
“This is going to be a slow storm … That’s what I’m concerned about,” she said.
Tourists Floyd and Missy Martin of Raleigh, North Carolina, were trying to make the best of it at a store with puddles on the floor where they were buying an umbrella, chips and peanuts, and two bottles of merlot.
“We could drown out our sorrows or make an adventure of it,” Floyd Martin joked.
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After fatal police shooting controversy Mayor Pete Buttigieg rolls out proposal to address systemic racism
Pete Buttigieg has a message for white liberals who decry racism: “Good intentions are not going to be enough.”
The Democratic presidential candidate and South Bend, Indiana, mayor is combating perceptions that he’s out of touch with black people and will struggle to win their votes. On Thursday, he’s unveiling his most detailed proposals yet, which he says are aimed at addressing the systemic racism that affects the black community. And he’s pairing that with candid talk aimed at white Democrats.
“White Democratic voters want to do the right thing but maybe haven’t fully thought about what that means or what that requires of us,” Buttigieg said in an Associated Press interview. “The reality is America as a whole is worse off when these inequities exist.”
Buttigieg, 37, was virtually unknown in national politics when he launched his campaign , but has gained ground with a compelling narrative as a young, gay military veteran offering generational change in the White House. He raised $24.8 million during the second quarter, a stunning sum that topped other leading Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
But his rise has coincided with questions about his handling of race in South Bend. He was criticized for firing the city’s first black police chief early in his career and has admitted he hasn’t done enough to improve the lives of black residents.
Buttigieg left the campaign trail last month after a white police officer fatally shot a black man the officer said was armed with a knife. Some South Bend residents criticized him for being more focused on his presidential prospects than developments back home.
Under scrutiny, Buttigieg has been aggressive in directly tackling racism on the campaign trail. In Iowa last week, he shot down a question from a white man who suggested the best way to address crime in his hometown is to “tell the black people of South Bend to stop committing crime and doing drugs.”
Buttigieg responded that “racism is not going to get us out of this problem.”
“The fact that a black person is four times as likely as a white person to be incarcerated for the exact same crime is evidence of systemic racism,” he said. “With all due respect, sir, racism makes it harder for good police officers to do their job, too. It’s a smear on law enforcement.”
In the interview, Buttigieg said he’s in a unique position to talk about race.
“As the urban mayor who, for better or worse, may be the white candidate called on most often to discuss matters of race in this campaign, I want to make sure that every kind of audience is very clear on where I stand and, most importantly, what it is we can actually do,” he said.
The mayor has dubbed the proposals the Douglass Plan. It’s named for black abolitionist Frederick Douglass and modeled after the Marshall Plan, which helped Europe recover after World War II.
The plan addresses disparities in health, education, wealth, criminal justice and voting rights. Buttigieg says it’s a “complement” to the push by Democrats in Congress to study reparations to determine how to compensate the descendants of slaves.
“This is my entry, as specifically as possible, about what we can do across all these different areas of American life where the black experience is very much like living in a different country,” he said.
He said he will promote the plan before both black and white audiences in early primary states, but it’s unclear whether that will be enough to resonate with black voters. One measure of his commitment will be how he spends the nearly $25 million he raised in recent months, including whether he’ll staff up in South Carolina, which holds the first primary where black voters are crucial.
Buttigieg has sought to build connections with black voters and recently appeared with the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson and at the Essence Fest in New Orleans.
Sharpton, who has criticized homophobia, has said Buttigieg could face skepticism from older black Americans uncomfortable with the idea of a gay president. Buttigieg said the most important thing is for voters to get to know him as a person, but he acknowledged the challenges posed by his historic candidacy.
“Many of the older generation activists that I’ve worked with in many ways are more patient on some of those institutional questions but have less comfort with the form of diversity that I represent,” he said. “It’s just a reminder that people are different, and you’ve got to meet them where they are. But at the end of the day, what I learned at home politically is the most important thing on a voter’s mind is how is your election going to impact their lives.”
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