It's almost that time that me and my friends are eagerly awaiting in terms of the public release of the Ryan Coogler directed Black Panther film on February 16.
Myself and many of my friends are already planning to check out Black Panther when it opens at our local multiplexes, and there are Black Panther themed parties planned for that weekend across Wakanda, er Black America.
Tickets are already selling out for the opening weekend, and I would not be surprised if this movie, opening smack dab in the middle of Black History Month, makes some serious money.
Because I damned sure want to see some Black Panther sequels
A sign that we're getting closer to the Black Panther debut was its world premiere in Los Angeles at the Dolby Theatre last night. The stars of the film walked the PURPLE carpet (purple is the royal color of African royalty FYI) in African themed attire that being called by the best red carpet event of 2018.
The fabulousness of the cast walking the purple carpet in African attire paled in comparison to the movie. The reviews have been embargoed until February 6, but word and praise for the movie is already filtering out that calls Black Panther the best of the Marvel superhero movies so far.
The Los Angeles Times Tre'vell Anderson said on his Twitter feed "BlackPanther is a love letter about blackness, to a world that often ghettoizes it without realizing that it is on black backs that this planet revolves."
Hey, I expected nothing less. See y'all at the multiplex.
The late educator Marva Collins used to say that 'Readers are Leaders'. It's quite obvious in this Trump misadministration that not a whole lot of reading, much less proofreading is going on.
As a matter of fact, 45 has admitted that he doesn't read a lot of books, and it shows. Did they cut the budget for a proofreader in this misadministration?
There has been a long list of glaring typos in press releases, agency tweets and on the White House daily schedule, and glaring typos and spelling errors in 45's tweets.
Now they are dealing with embarrassing typo spotted in the tickets that were printed for tomorrow nights State of the Union address.
The sergeant-at -arms office is correcting their mistake and is representing the tickets
But it's just another example of the idiocracy taking hold in this administration
45 is giving his first State of the Union address after not doing it last year, and Rep. Joe Kennedy III, who is giving the Democratic response to it, has invited trans soldier Staff Sgt Patricia King as his guest at the event.
Staff Sgt King is not only the first person to have her gender confirmation surgery paid for by the military, she is also there as a representative of the over 15,000 trans people currently serving in the armed forces.
She's also a reminder that Trump tried to ban people like her from openly serving in our military. simply because he was trying to appease the evangelical wing of his base.
King has served for nearly 20 years and transitioned after her last deployment in 2013, but whether she does more time in our armed forces depends on whether the permanent injunctions against the Trump military ban stay in place.
She also points out the fallacy in the conservafool talking point about trans military service that people will be breaking down the doors trying to get in to do so.
"There are much easier ways to get surgery covered rather than enlisting in the military. (facing the possibility of deployment, and dealing with the stigma of being a transgender service member.," she said. "Every one of us who raises our right hand is prepared to give everything in defense of our country."
Laughed my azz off at Nikki Haley's comment complaining about politics at the Grammys and saying that music and politics shouldn't mix.
I also find it more interesting the critique coming from Haley in light of the fact that one of the first things that GOP administrations do is cut funding to arts, music and education,
She was also born in 1972, when the music industry was blowing up. The 70's and the 80's were one of the most creative and unapologetically political periods for popular music.
News flash for you Nikki. Art, music and politics have been joined at the hip. Some of my fave songs have had political themes in them like Stevie Wonder's 'You Haven't Done Nothing' slamming the Nixon Administration. In fact Stevie has written a lot of politically themed songs over his distinguished career.. Billie Holiday's 'Strange Fruit'. Sly and the Family Stone. The Isley Brothers 'Fight The Power.' The Impressions 'Keep on Pushing' which was inspired by the civil rights marches of the era. Freda Payne's 'Bring The Boys Home' critiquing the Vietnam War. Edwin Starr's 'War'. Various Parliament-Funkadelic songs. Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes 'Wake Up Everybody. George Clinton's 'Bullet Proof/, Public Enemy's Can't Truss It. NWA's F*** tha Police. Beyonce's' Run The World'
And that's just from the R&B, rap and hip hop side. Black music has always been unapologetically political Music of other genres has also been political like Men At Work's 'It's A Mistake' and Nena's '99 Luftballons' being two examples on the same theme of an accidental nuclear war.
So it's laughable that you, being part of a misadministration that politicizes everything including NFL players simply taking a knee during the national anthem protesting police violence against our community and turning it into something sinister, are now whining about the Grammy Awards and the numerous political shots they took at your reprehensible boss up to and including Hillary Clinton reading from Fire and Fury..
So just deal with the fact that all music is political, and thanks to the First Amendment to our Constitution, here will be more musical critiques of your boss coming over the next two years
Chris and Jessica Cicchinelli thought their child LC was just going through a phase when she announced that she was a girl and not a boy.
But it came to a head during a Florida vacation trip two years ago when LC was 8, and refused to go to dinner unless she could wear a dress. When Chir saw how happy LC was when she came out of the dressing room, he knew it was time to deal with the fact he and his wife had a trans child.
Cicchinelli is the CEO and president of Pure Romance, a Cincinnati based romance aid company founded by his mother that does $250 million a year in business
When they returned home to Cincinnati, they wanted to take LC to the Adolescent and Transition Medicine Clinic at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center for an immediate appointment, but discovered it would be seven weeks before they could get an appointment. They were also looking for information concerning how to navigate parenting for a trans child
This is also the region of the country where Leelah Alcorn was from, and since her suicide death in 2015, the number of people seeking help from the clinic has tripled to nearly 1000 a day. Many of the folks seeking help for their kids are coming from as far away as northern Ohio and other parts of the region
The Adolescent and Transition Medicine Clinic opened in July 2013 and is run by Dr. Lee Ann Conard. It is one of 24 in the United States dedicated to transgender youth and their care.
Knowing there were other families out there that needed help, support or information, the Cicchinellis launched the Living With Change: The LC Foundation that will train teachers and educators and provide financial support for the Adolescent and Transition Medicine Clinic.
The LC Foundation was seeded with $500,000 of their own money the Cicchinellis expect to get matching donations for by June. They have pledged another $2 million to the clinic.
"We had to do something," Jessica Cicchinelli said. "We want this for other families. We want them to know it's there and not be scared and to know there is help."
One of the places that has already signed on for the foundation's training is the Cincinnati Public Schools.
They hired Cincinnati councilman Chris Seelbach to run the foundation, Seelbach was Cincinnati's first openly gay councilmember, has been a vocal advocate for the TBLGQ community, and has spearheaded many of the civic reforms that have catapulted it to the top of the HRC Municipal Equality Index.
The LC Foundation is not only starting at a fortuitous time for the clinic, it is needed and very much necessary.,
One of the most interesting pageants that happens in Brazil is the Miss BumBum one.
It started in 2011, and has women from each of Brazil's 27 states vying for the title of having Brazil's best derriere. People from all over the world can vote for their favorite. The finalists then participate in a photoshoot and strutting down a catwalk before the winner is declared.
The contest is so popular that the winner and the runner up becomes an instant celebrity in that nation, and it can also lead to lucrative endorsement deals.
The stakes are high, and the pageant has fueled controversy. Fights have broken out between contestants during past events. In 2014 models Mari Sousa and Eliana Amaral were accused of bribing judges in their failed attempt to come in first and second place in the contest that Indianara Carvalho and Claudia Alende eventually captured as the champion andvice champion.
Also in 2014, 2012 Miss Bum Bum runner up and cosmetic surgery advocate Andressa Urach ended up in the hospital suffering from near fatal septic shock after the 500ml of Pmma and hydrogel pumped in her upper thighs to make them look thicker instead started rotting the upper leg muscles to the point she had to undergo emergency surgery to get the fluid drained.
But in the last year of this competition, it makes history. This year, one of the Miss Bum Bum contestants for the first time is a trans woman in the person of 27 year old Paula Oliveira.
The model had to wait two years for her documentation changes to be approved and processed before she could compete. She's a former Big Brother Brazil contestant who in an attempt to get a jump on the competition, posted a racy photo shoot on her Instagram page focused on her derriere
A serriere she hopes that will be crowned the best in Brazil.
Because this is the last ever Miss Bum Bum pageant, Paula will also be the last trans woman who has a shot at winning the title.
The 30th Annual edition of the LGBTQ Task Force's Creating Change Conference is happening right now in Washington DC and guess where I am? Not in the Marriott Wardman Park host hotel that's for sure.
This i the first Creating Change I've missed since I started this current run with #CC14 in Houston. And yeah, I'm bummed out about it.
So let me take out my frustration for not being at #CC18 on the cavalcade of fools we have desecrating our country .
Honorable mention number one is Sarah Suckabee Huckabee Sanders for just pick a lie
Honorable mention number two is Teddie Butcher. The Alabama teacher is probably still mad that Roy Moore lost because she told a group of students who were listening to Tupac's Dear Mama' song to 'turn that n****r music off.
Hope this bigot Becky gets her teaching career turned off.
Honorable mention number three is Chelsea Manning for trying to claim that 'she was on a spy mission when she fell into that white supremacist party.
Yeah, tell that to the gullible Green Tea Party folks who think you're a hero. Moni ain't buying those woof tickets you're selling
Honorable mention number four is Sean Hannity, who tried to slime Trump-Mueller report as 'fake news and failed spectacularly while doing so.
This week's Male Chauvinist Pig er. Shut Up Fool winner is Courtland Sykes, who is running for the Republican US Senate nomination and made some disparaging remarks about women's rights and , feminists.
To address the problem of lack of feminine representation in the British Parliament, the Labour Party for over a decade has instituted a policy of having all women shortlists when looking for MP candidates to run in some of the various parliamentary constituencies.
It is hoped that by instituting the policy, it would increase the number of women MP's in Parliament The shortlist policy has also helped trans women who are active in the Labour Party as well.
Because of that policy, several trans women ran as Labour MP candidates in the 2017 cycle, and one nearly broke through to become the first out trans person ever elected to the British Parliament.
Sophie Cook came within a few thousand votes of becoming the first Labour candidate elected to the Conservative stronghold Shoreham and Worthing seat in 20 years. Cook received almost 21,000 votes and made it one of the biggest swing seats in that 2017 British election cycle
But the British TERF's have been acting a fool lately across The Pond and ramping up their hate speech they aim at our British trans cousins. They have fixed their attention on the inclusion of trans women on Labour Party shortlists, and have been raising a serious stink about it to the pont they started raising funds for a lawsuit to kill the policy.
When Dawn Butler, the Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities expressed her support for trans women being on the Labour waitlists, she was viciously attacked by the TERF's.
Stella Creasy, another Labour MP who expressed support for trans equality and Paris Lees' appearing on the cover of British Vogue was also savagely attacked by the out of control TERFBeckys
The TERF's are also tripping because Lily Madigan, a 19 year old trans teen who was elected to a leadership role in the Labour Party, applied for the Jo Cox Women in Leadership Programme, but was turned down for it after enduring a storm of criticism and abuse for putting in the application for it
Madigan is more determined than ever to make her dream true of becoming an MP Dr. Heather Peto, another trans women who is active in the Labour Party, has also made it on to a shortlist in the next general election for the Rushcliffe seat.
The good news is that despite all the negativity being stirred up by the TERF's and other anti-trans hatemongers, the Labour Party will continue their policy of placing trans women on the shortlists
At the Labour Party's recent National Executive Committee meeting, a party spokesperson said "At the NEC yesterday is was confirmed that all women shortlists are and have always been open to all women, which of course includes trans women."
"The party will continue to consult with key stakeholders about the wording of this policy and will issue guidance to CLP's"
And a win not only for our British trans cousins, but for transkind as well .
This blog has been tracking the trailblazing awesomeness of Fran Watson for a few years. The first Black female president of the Houston GLBT Caucus. The second Black woman elected as a Houston Pride Grand Marshal
Now Fran is running for the Texas Senate and making a bid to become only the third Black woman elected to the body since Eddie Bernice Johnson was serving in the senate from the Dallas area District 23 from 1987-93.
It's been an even longer drought for Black female representation in the Texas Senate from the Houston area. The last Houston area Black woman to be elected to the Texas Senate was the first Black woman ever elected to that body, the legendary political trailblazer Barbara Jordan back in 1967.
Rep. Senfronia Thompson, the dean of the Texas House who has served in that body since 1968, was the most recent Houston area woman to try and unfortunately fail to break that streak.
Thompson ran for the Texas Senate District 13 seat vacated by Rodney Ellis, who is now a Harris County commissioner after serving 26 years in the chamber, but was defeated by Borris Miles for it..
Fran Watson is running for the Senate District 17 seat that covers much of southwest and west Houston, Bellaire, and parts of Fort Bend and Brazoria Counties currently held by Joan Huffman (R).
Watson's campaign is picking up momentum and this Victory Fund endorsement is only the latest evidence of it. Will we see history made this November?
We have a few months until we get to that point, but that endorsement is a major boost to her campaign. .
The 30th annual edition of the LGBTQ Task Force's Creating Change Conference is happening right now until January 28 at one of my fave Washington DC hotels, the historic Marriott Wardman Park.
This northwest DC hotel is also celebrating its centennial anniversary in 2018. The reason I wrote the historic Marriott Wardman Park is because since 1984 the hotel has been on the National Register of Historic Places, and has had many historic figures either stay there, work there or hosted historic events inside its walls.
In addition to Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Herbert Hoover staying there along with a lengthy list of political figures, poet Langston Hughes worked at the hotel as a busboy.
In 1925 he handed three of his poems to noted critic to Vachel Lindsay who was dining there that evening. Lindsay read them, was impressed by his work and then launched Hughes' literary career by announcing he'd discovered the 'busboy poet'
There's a gold plaque in the hotel marking the spot where Hughes handed his poems to Lindsay that i discovered during my 2012 visit because my room was in that part of the hotel.
In 1954 Thurgood Marshall and his legal team spent several days staying at the Wardman Park to prep for and watch Marshall successfully argue before the Supreme Court the landmark Brown v Board of Education case
I stayed there for the 2012 NBJC OUT on the Hill conference I was a participant in, and was back four years later for the joint NABJ-NAHJ media conference.
Now the Marriott Wardman Park is hosting the 30th annual Creating Change conference, and for the first time since 2014 I won't be in attendance at Creating Change after being at the last four in Houston, Denver, Chicago and in Philadelphia last year. . Just couldn't make it happen this year .
I'm even more bummed about it because Miss Major is being honored with an award during this event, and I'm missing getting reconnected with all my movement homies and homettes.
For those of you who are in DC for #CC18, the daylong institutes are happening today as you read this. they started at 9 AM EST and run until 6 PM. The first plenary session will take place at 8 PM EST tonight.
Starting tomorrow are the seminars in which #CC18 attendees can get their learn on about different topics that will continue through Sunday.
That's before I even start talking about the various organizations there at #CC18 who will have conversations and strategy meetings that won't be talked about,
But my favorite part of Creating Change it is not only reconnecting and talking to everyone from around the country, it's also having those conversations while hanging out in the various hospitality suites. The suites allow you to get a complimentary bite to eat, have those moments to talk to people away from the hustle and bustle of the convention, the restaurants or the bar area.
I also like to take time to step away from the conference hotel and see some of the host city, and DC has plenty for people to see and experience
Just upset that this year, I won't be there to experience it with you.
Oh well, I'll just have to catch y'all in Detroit for #CC19
Ever since I wrote the post which stated why I wasn't endorsing Chelsea Manning in her doomed to failure run against Sen. Ben Cardin in Maryland, I've had people trying to defend her behind.
They tried to claim she'd been pardoned (nope she hadn't) and throw up every other spin line to try to convince me to change my mind about my decision to not endorse her candidacy.
And right on cue, Chelsea Manning gave me even more reason to not endorse her by palling around with white supremacists.
When the backlash started hitting her, she then tried to weakly claim she 'crashed the party and was 'gathering intel' on the group. Yeah, right.
FYI Chelsea, Maryland has 29% Black population. Despite what you might have heard from the far left, Black voters are the base of the Democratic Party and its most consistent voting bloc. You're not going to get many votes in a Democratic primary from the Black community hanging out with white supremacists.
So spare me whatever excuse du jour you try to use to justify it. All you've done is proven once again your lack of judgment in this situation.
And in a political race, optics matter. Being at a white supremacist party and palling around with them is not a good look period
One of the joys of my visit to Denver for the 2015 Creating Change Conference and a few months later at Fantasia Fair was spending some quality time with Dainna Cicotello and her daughter Laurie.
She celebrated her milestone 70th birthday back in September, but I was shocked and saddened to hear from Laurie that Dainna was seriously ill to the point that she was being put in hospic care.
I was just informed that Dainna passed away this afternoon at the Denver Hospice.
Dainna served our country in the US Navy for over a decade, transitioned in 1985 and served our community and the people in the Denver area in terms of doing panels, trainings and consulting work. She also taught those classes at several trans themed conferences such as ICTLEP (International Conference of Transgender Law and Employment Policy) IFGE (International Foundations for Gender Education) , Colorado Gold Rush, Southern Comfort, the Texas T Party and Fantasia Fair
She's also done radio and television interviews as part of that education effort
Dainna was also part of the working group in the early 90's that sought to create a modern definition for transgender that would satisfy the trans stakeholder constituent groups at the time
I het her during the 1999 Southern Comfort conference, and met Laurie a year later at the IFGE one being held in Washington DC. She was one of my activist mentors I have much love and respect for, and one of the people her work made a better world for was me.
She is going to be missed by me, Laurie, our community and all the people who loved her, and as soon as I get the word of a memorial service or other arrangements, I'll pass it on.
One of the patterns that keeps emerging as I do these TransGriot Perv Watch posts is that they are predominately white, male, Republican and fundamentalist Christian.
In the first Perv Watch post of 2018, I stay close to home, and we discover something that shouldn't have been a surprise to me as we successfully fought to pass the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance in May 2014 and went through the repeal fight in 2015.
One of our HERO haters possibly engaging in the behavior he was falsely accusing the Houston trans community of.
Meet Jared Woodfill, the president of the SPLC certified hate group the Conservative Republicans of Texas. Woodfill is the former chair of the Harris County Republican Party who made an unsuccessful bid to get the chairmanship of the Texas Republican Party
Seems that Jared was named as a defendant in a lawsuit against his law partner, former Republican state rep Paul Pressler Pressler is accused of sexually assaulting Gareld Rollins over a period of 35 years, beginning when that person was just 14 years old.
#StillNotTrans
In addition to Woodfill being named in the lawsuit, it also lists as defendants Pressler's wife Nancy Pressler, First Baptist Church, the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and SBTS president Rev. Paige Patterson.
Pressler claimed this is just an attempt to 'extort money from the Southern Baptist Convention ' and he will fight it tooth and nail.
Umm hmm. Will be interesting to see how this turns out
During a Congressional Black Caucus female members retreat held after the 2016 election, DC pastor Leah Daughtry, who had chaired the 2016 DNC convention, was speaking at that retreat.
She was asked by Rep, Maxine Waters (D-CA) what should Black women do next after they had undeniably proven to the country and the world they were the base of the Democratic Party, having voted 94% for Hillary Clinton nd almost getting her into the White House.
Daughtry recalled saying at the time in a Washington Post interview, "If I could wave my magic wand, I'd have a conference of Black women to come together across the spectrum and say 'How do we leverage the political power we just demonstrated that often gets ignored?"
The CBC women's retreat concluded without any action on Daughtry's idea.
But as 2017 unfolded Daughtry began to get angry as she witnessed the Trump misadministration and its conservative media allies repeatedly attack Black women such as ESPN anchor Jemele Hill, White House correspondent April Ryan, Rep Waters, Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) and the widow of slain soldier La David Johnson.
Watching those attacks, combined with Black women's own simmering anger at the Democratic Party's white leaders and white activists claiming that the party spent too much time in the 2016 cycle with voters of color and not enough with the white rural Trump voters who made it clear they don't love Democrats also didn't sit well with her.
Meanwhile as that problematic conversation was happening in the party, Black women once again demonstrated that they were undeniably the base of the Democratic Party by flexing their political muscle by powering Democratic wins in Virginia and the senate upset win for Doug Jones in Alabama.
But the media coverage that night dismissed the major role Alabama's Black women played in making Doug Jones the first Democratic senator elected from the state in 25 years, calling it a 'victory for women'. The media trying to ignore the fact that Alabama's Black women voted at a 98% clip for Jones while Alabama's white women voted 63% for Republican Roy Moore also exasperated Daughtry.
The dormant idea she'd had resurfaced, and Daughtry began calling Black women to ask if they would be willing to help organize the conference that she'd talked about during that retreat.
She got resounding YES answers to that question, and meetings began to be held in Washington DC at the National Council of Negro Women HQ on Pennsylvania Avenue. The conference that was just an idea a few months earlier began to take shape.
The Power Rising Summit is organized around 'five pillars' or policy areas. Business and Economic Empowerment, Culture, Community and Society, Education Technology and Innovation, Health and Wellness and of course Political Empowerment.
The Power Rising Summit is nonpartisan, and hopes to attract at least 1000 attendees to the event ranging from big name celebrities, grassroots activists, seasoned leaders and students from all 50 states to the ATL from February 23-25.
One of the questions I have as I peruse this Power Rising Summit website is will Black trans women be welcome to attend?
Registration fees range from $25-$100 with scholarships available for participants. They are also working on getting corporate sponsorship to help defray some of the costs of the gathering.
The last time Black women gathered to create an agenda that reflected our unique intersectional concerns was back in the 1970's courtesy of the Boston chapter of the National Black Feminist Organization.
The Combahee River Collective of Black lesbians and feminists disillusioned with second wave feminism and and the civil rights, Black Power and Black panther movements gathered from 1974-1980. That gathering of Black feminists resulted in the 1977 Combahee River Collective Statement that is considered the bedrock principles document for Black feminism.
The Power Rising Smmit is building on that legacy. It'll be interesting to see at this 21st Century gathering of Black women what action plan and statement comes out of this eagerly anticipated conference.
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