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robert-the-greyhound · 2 years

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The Aftermath; Rising of the People.

The airing of "Greyhounds, Running for their Lives" was a real turning point for Greyhound Welfare Activists in Ireland. It was a literal key to a locked door we had been trying to pick with a hairpin for years. It brought to light the dark underbelly of the Greyhound Racing and Coursing Industries on a national viewing platform. Finally, the world REALLY saw the Truth.

I remember my mother calling me the day after. She was very upset, and said she had to turn the last part off due to the incredibly distressing images and videos. My mother has always been a rather sensitive soul when it comes to Animals. She'll watch a horror or slasher film where guts and blood fly but changes channel when Bondi Vet comes on as she doesn't have the stomach for it. But after watching two parts of the documentary, she was truly shaken at what was happening in this country and abroad, all off the back of her taxpayer money. I remember her saying how she had listened to me and my rants but more-so in a "that's nice honey" kind of way. Seeing everything I'd claimed on the national broadcaster platform really brought to light all the information I had previously shared.

She wasn't the only family member to reach out. Having moved across the country from my extended family years prior, I was very much outside the loop of family chattering. But uncles, aunts, cousin's, they all sent messages or called to chat about the Documentary, ask after Robert and ask what THEY as individuals could do to help. And they weren't the only ones.

Messages FLOODED into the Greyhound Awareness Cork Pages, as well as Roberts personal social media. Outraged citizens wanted to know what they could do to help. At first, we didn't really know what exactly to tell these people, messaging in their hundreds. It was like a dam had broken and flooded our little River valley of awareness events and protests. Now instead of a handful of dedicated Greyhound Activists, we had half of Cork looking to lend their voice to the voiceless!

So we organised a Rally. A march through Cork City Centre. A demonstration that we, the people, are ANGRY and won't stand for the continued systemic abuse and neglect of Irish Greyhounds.

The day of the March was incredible. Arriving on Grand Parade to see hundreds of people standing where previously only a dozen had was breath-taking. Seeing dozens of rescued greyhounds where before we were lucky to have three or four was likewise inspiring, though it once again drew to light the reality of just how few greyhounds made it out of the industry into loving homes.

Robert and I were invited to lead the way, alongside fellow greyhound advocates and rescue hounds Farloe, Molly and Cooper. There was a short speech to begin before we marched, moving up Grand Parade, down Oliver Plunkett Street and back up Patrick's Street. People stopped their shopping and joined us, or leant their support vocally, joining the chants of "There's No Excuse for Greyhound Abuse" or "You Bet, They Die". The support was truly incredible.

The one thing I remember clearly that surprised me at the time was the raw emotion. Animal cruelty always seems to strike a chord with people, but having been speaking up for Greyhounds and aware of these issues for so long before they were made public, I had started to become a little numb. There was always another case of horrific abuse. Another death on the track. Another rescue begging for help for the "take them or ill get rid of them hounds". Another dog turning up in Spain, Pakistan or China. Always more abuse, death and neglect. But standing in Cork City Centre, my best fur-iend Robert by my side, surrounded by hundreds of people yelling their support for the cause, I actually felt emotional.

The March for Greyhounds through Cork City harnessed the new found limelight brought about by the RTE documentary and the the industry and the movement even further into the public eye. There were multiple photographers trailing along the march, photographing the event. Likewise, there were news reporters, recording and streaming the march, taking interviews and asking everyone and anyone for a comment. The answers were all the same; We are here for the Dogs. The thousands of Greyhounds culled annually in pursuit of profit. The 6000 innocent lives lost every year. We are here, and our demands are clear- We want an end to the abuse of Greyhounds on the back of our taxpayer money.

The march went smoothly, with little to no hassle outside of a few snide comments from pro-racing passers-by. The morning after, our story and mission was the headline for every local paper. Photos and videos of the march were all over social media. It was a resounding success. Our first BIG event had worked out perfectly, raising awareness and pushing for an end of the plight of greyhounds.

Even the day after the march, the messages kept coming in. The public were riled up and people wanted to know what else they could do. Writing letters to local reps didn’t seem to satisfy that itch. Sharing information on social media didn't feel personal enough. People wanted to physically go out and protest, so that's what we did. We organized another trackside protest. And the turnout was phenomenal.

Previous trackside protests had been a few dozen people at a push, with a handful of dogs if the weather allowed. Now it was a highly organised event, needing high vis jackets and a team of organisers, the whole of GAC was run ragged keeping everyone in check.

That protest was an emotional one, and one of the only times we changed from a silent protest to a vocal one. It was better to organize the outrage into a single cry than try and corral the outbursts. There’s always one or two that get too riled up and start yelling “scum” or trying to spit back at those driving into the track, those few individuals who get so emotionally charged they lose sight of the end goal of a peaceful protest and lash out instead for some immediate satisfaction. To prevent said outbursts, we organized into a single cry “there’s no excuse for greyhound abuse”. Pauline McLynn once again joined us, giving a short speech which I streamed Live on Roberts Instagram for another hundred or so viewers. The support really was incredible.

And it didn’t stop there. After the initial outrage and flood of support had broken the dam, a steady river of messages and requests came in, and so began what I can only describe as the Greyhounds summer tour of Cork.

TW: #Animal Abuse #Animal Death #Dog Abuse, #Dog Death, #Drugs, #Animal Rights, #Protest

Photo Credit: Karl Kachmarksy

#Greyhound #Greyhounds #GreyhoundsMakeGreatPets #PetsNotBets #RescuedNotRetired #IrishGreyhound #GreyhoundsOfTumblr #Animal Rights #greyhoundsoftumblr #Ban Greyhound Racing #End Greyhound Racing

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newstfionline · 2 years

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Monday, October 24, 2022

Fears Over Fate of Democracy Leave Many Voters Frustrated and Resigned (NYT) Seventy-one percent of all voters believe that democracy is at risk, according to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, but only 7 percent identified that as the most important problem facing the country. Americans face more immediate concerns: the worst inflation in 40 years, and a perception that crime is surging, if not in their communities then in cities nearby. But another factor is dampening people’s motivation to save America’s representative system of government: Some have already lost faith in its ability to represent them. That democratic erosion has sent many Democrats on a downward spiral of feeling powerless, apathetic and disconnected. Of course, just what is threatening democracy depends on who you talk to. Many Republicans are just as frustrated, convinced that the threat stems from liberal teachers, professors or media personalities who they fear are indoctrinating their children; undocumented immigrants given a path to citizenship; or Democrats widening access to voting so much that they are inviting fraud. Indeed, ask voters exactly what is threatening democracy and the answers are as varied as the individuals who formulate them.

House price slump (Economist) Over the past decade owning a house has meant easy money. Prices rose reliably for years and then went bizarrely ballistic in the pandemic. Yet today house prices are falling in nine rich economies. From Stockholm to Sydney the buying power of borrowers is collapsing. That makes it harder for new buyers to afford homes, depressing demand, and can squeeze the finances of existing owners who, if they are unlucky, may be forced to sell. The world’s worst housing-related financial crisis will be confined to China, whose problems—vast speculative excess, mortgage strikes, people who have pre-paid for flats which have not been built—are, mercifully, contained within its borders. But as an era of low interest rates comes to an end, a home-price crunch is coming—and there is no guarantee of a better housing market at the end of it all.

Iran protests trigger solidarity rallies in US, Europe (AP) Chanting crowds marched in the streets of Berlin, Washington DC and Los Angeles on Saturday in a show of international support for demonstrators facing a violent government crackdown in Iran, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of that country’s morality police. On the U.S. National Mall, thousands of women and men of all ages—wearing green, white and red, the colors of the Iran flag—shouted in rhythm. “Be scared. Be scared. We are one in this,” demonstrators yelled, before marching to the White House. “Say her name! Mahsa!” The demonstrations, put together by grassroots organizers from around the United States, drew Iranians from across the Washington D.C. area, with some travelling down from Toronto to join the crowd. In Los Angeles, home to the biggest population of Iranians outside of Iran, a throng of protesters formed a slow-moving procession along blocks of a closed downtown street. They chanted for the fall of Iran’s government and waved hundreds of Iranian flags that turned the horizon into a undulating wave of red, white and green.

Hurricane Roslyn makes landfall in Mexico, avoids resorts (AP) Hurricane Roslyn slammed into a sparsely populated stretch of Mexico’s Pacific coast between the resorts of Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan Sunday morning and quickly moved inland. By Sunday morning, Roslyn had winds of 90 mph (150 kph), down from its peak of 130 mph. While it missed a direct hit, Roslyn brought heavy rain and high waves to Puerto Vallarta, where ocean surges lashed the beachside promenade. In Tepic, the Nayarit state capital, Roslyn blew down trees and flooded some streets; authorities asked residents to avoid going out Sunday, as crews worked to clear a landslide that had blocked a local highway.

Cocaine is flooding into Europe (Yahoo News) Three weeks ago, in the farmlands of central Spain, police spotted something peculiar: a surveillance drone hovering over a forest. Pushing in, they discovered something never before seen in Spain: an outdoor drug laboratory set up under a tarp where Colombian chemists were extracting cocaine that had been infused into concrete powder, a process that police estimate was funneling 264 pounds of cocaine into the country each week. Last month, Spanish police also seized 1,843 pounds of cocaine and shut down several laboratories and processing centers just outside of Barcelona, and in July they seized six remote-controlled, unmanned submarines fitted with hidden compartments built to transport cocaine to Spain from Africa. On Wednesday, Spain’s national police announced they’d seized another 145 pounds of pure cocaine hidden in industrial rolling machines shipped from Peru. Last year, around 300 tons of cocaine were seized across Europe, but according to Europol deputy spokesperson Claire Georges, the amount being seized is only “a very small part of what is coming in.” These recent busts, largely made possible by advances in tapping criminals’ encrypted phones, underscore a reality that European drug authorities have been warning about: More cocaine than ever is pouring into the continent, where South American chemists, traffickers and local mafias are helping to bring it to market.

Massive strikes hit Ukraine electrical grid (Washington Post) Russia unleashed a “barrage” of missiles across Ukraine early Saturday morning, Ukrainian officials said—targeting the country’s electrical grid and blacking out large areas—while the Kyiv government increased its calls for Western governments to urgently provide antiaircraft systems as a defense against the airstrikes. As Ukrainians braced themselves for the high probability of even more attacks—and prepare for what could be a winter without heating, water and electricity in parts of the country—officials said that they had managed to impede the assault in some places, while in others the rockets “completely” destroyed electrical facilities.

Weapons shortages could mean hard calls for Ukraine’s allies (AP) Weapons shortages across Europe could force hard choices for Ukraine’s allies as they balance their support for Ukraine against the risk that Russia could target them next. For months, the United States and other NATO members have sent billions of dollars worth of weapons and equipment into Ukraine to help it fight back against Russia. But for many of the smaller NATO countries, and even some of the larger ones, the war has strained already-depleted weapons stockpiles. Some allies sent all their reserve Soviet-era weaponry and are now waiting for U.S. replacements. It can be difficult for some European countries to rapidly resupply because they no longer have a strong defense sector to quickly build replacements, with many relying on a dominant American defense industry that has elbowed out some foreign competitors. Now they face a dilemma: Do they keep sending their stocks of weapons to Ukraine and potentially increase their own vulnerability to Russian attack or do they hold back what’s left to protect their homeland, risking the possibility that makes a Russian victory in Ukraine more likely?

Cyprus, a haven for Russian expats, welcomes techies fleeing Ukraine war (Washington Post) On the wide and shallow Larnaca beach, a group of young, pale men huddled over their phones disrupted the otherwise idyllic scene of blissful, tanned British and German tourists lying on the neatly arranged beige loungers. “Yes! He crossed into Kazakhstan,” Ruslan shouted in Russian. His friend had just texted that he escaped Russia after an agonizing three-day wait at the border, where he feared a notice from an enlistment office might derail his plan to avoid the trenches in Ukraine. Since late September, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order to enlist at least 300,000 men to help his flagging invasion of Ukraine has been at the heart of discussions among Russians in the increasing number of emigre communities around the world, many of which have experienced a steep increase in new arrivals, including in Larnaca. As the E.U.’s most easterly member, Cyprus has long been a go-to destination for Russian companies and wealthy individuals due to its relatively easy immigration process, low taxes, and openness to attracting as much foreign business as possible. Its beaches are also a plus. So after the tanks rolled into Ukraine, a significant part of Russia’s highly educated, middle- to upper-class workforce—mostly IT workers—flocked to Cyprus, triggering a new migration wave.

Cash is king for sanctioned Russian, Venezuelan oligarchs (AP) It was a deal that brought together oligarchs from some of America’s top adversaries. “The key is the cash,” the oil broker wrote in a text message, offering a deep discount on Venezuelan crude shipments to an associate who claimed to be fronting for the owner of Russia’s biggest aluminum company. “As soon as you are ready with cash we can work.” The communication was included in a 49-page indictment unsealed Wednesday in New York federal court charging seven individuals with conspiring to purchase sensitive U.S. military technology, smuggle oil and launder tens of millions of dollars on behalf of wealthy Russian businessmen. The frank talk among co-defendants reads like a how-to guide on circumventing U.S. sanctions—complete with Hong Kong shell companies, bulk cash pick ups, phantom oil tankers and the use of cryptocurrency to cloak transactions that are illicit under U.S. law. It also shines a light on how wealthy insiders from Russia and its ally Venezuela, both barred from the western financial system, are making common cause to protect their massive fortunes. As is often the case in clandestine transactions, cash appears to have been king.

China Hangs on Xi’s Every Word. His Silence Also Speaks Volumes. (NYT) As China’s leader, Xi Jinping, laid out his priorities this week for a breakthrough third term in power, officials parsed his words for signs of where the country was headed. What he did not say was as revealing. The omission of two phrases from his key report to a Communist Party congress exposed his anxieties about an increasingly volatile world where Washington is contesting China’s ascent as an authoritarian superpower. For two decades, successive Chinese leaders have declared at the congress that the country was in a “period of important strategic opportunity,” implying that China faced no imminent risk of major conflict and could focus more on economic growth. For even longer, leaders have said that “peace and development remain the themes of the era,” suggesting that whatever may be going wrong in the world, the grand trends were on China’s side. But the two slogans, so unvarying that they rarely drew attention, were not mentioned in Mr. Xi’s report to the congress. Their exclusion, and Mr. Xi’s somber warning of “dangerous storms” on the horizon, indicated that he believed international hazards have worsened, especially since the start of the war in Ukraine in February, several experts said. Mr. Xi, who is nearly assured re-election on Sunday as its general secretary, sees a world made more treacherous by American support for the disputed island of Taiwan, Chinese vulnerability to technology “choke points,” and the plans of Western-led alliances to increase their military presence around Asia.

Resisting Israeli Efforts to Displace Them, Palestinians Move Into Caves (NYT) Faced with expulsion from their villages and the demolition of their homes by Israeli authorities, hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank are trying to stay by reverting to an older form of shelter: living in underground caves. “We have no home to live in and no tent—we have no option but to live in the cave,” said Wadha Ayoub Abu Sabha, 65, a resident of the village of Khirbet al-Fakheit, in a rural area of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that the military is planning to seize. The residents of Ms. Abu Sabha’s village and surrounding herding communities have been fighting efforts to displace them from homes where their families have lived for decades. Some have deeds to their land from before the modern establishment of Israel in 1948. But in May, the Israeli Supreme Court approved the expulsion of some 1,200 Palestinians in the villages so the Israeli Army could use the land for a live-fire military training ground. That could set the stage for one of the biggest mass expulsions of Palestinians since 1967, which the United Nations says could amount to a war crime.

#headlines #news

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cyarskaren52 · 2 months

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Dozens of students walked out of their Kansas high school in protest of the way administrators handled a fight where a white boy shouted racial slurs and punched a Black girl.

According to the Kansas City Star, students marched outside of Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village on Nov. 29 at 11 a.m., chanting, “We want change,” “Have our backs,�� and “How many more times?”

They also held signs reading, “We demand action! Protect students of color,” “We don’t feel safe,” and “Take action now.”

Students described the recent confrontation as a hate crime that left the Black girl hospitalized with a fractured nose. However, some of the high school students said it was only the latest in a long line of racist acts that went unpunished by school officials, including pupils using slurs toward other students.

“This has been an ongoing issue with racism at East. There are multiple situations that have happened over and over again,” said senior Charlize Littlejohn.

Littlejohn said the brawl between the two sophomore students erupted in the hallway last week. A video obtained by The Star shows a Black female student walking away from what seems to be a verbal altercation with another student.

Then, a white male student — who a handful of classmates said was not engaged in the prior altercation — interjects, urging her to “shut the **** up.”

He lunges at the female student as she walks toward him, yelling the N-word. Then he shoves her, and they begin punching each other.

School leaders eventually broke up the fight after a group of students in the corridor called for assistance. Student onlookers yelled at the male student for shoving the female first and using the N-word against her.

The female student was not present at Monday’s demonstration, but students said she drove by and waved to show appreciation for her classmates’ support. Littlejohn noted the female student has not yet returned to school.

It is unclear how the school penalized the white boy, but students at the rally said he received a suspension they believed was insufficient.

Click our 🔗 in the bio to read more.

📷: @kansascitydefender

The nigcels and pick mes could never

#Instagram

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anemone161 · 1 year

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The End of Symbolic Resistance, part 5

5. A Protest Is An Act Of Surrender

There is no tactic more heavily associated with liberation struggle than the protest. The mass gathering, the rally, the riot, the demonstration. There is no tactic more misguided. We have always played these roles as long as we have been engaged with the fight for liberation and the return is always negligible, even negative. Something terrible happens in Amerika, something terrible within the scope of its imperial territories, and our response is something scripted. A flier goes out with time and place, we get into costume and march. Some nights draw police attention, others we yell at civilians or into the empty air. Occasionally it evolves into something else entirely, the spectacle of riot that is so alluring.

The protest is a regressive tactic, a willful destruction of resources and energy that conflates progress with catharsis. At its most practical, the protest is a dramatic propaganda without direction. Constantly attempting to swell its own ranks so that it might return tomorrow to more efficiently swell its ranks. We know that political fervor without a tangible outlet will always be captured by electoralism, or else dissipate. The effective tools of protest are in advertisement and the crowd's implicit capacity for violence. We proselytize bystanders and threaten our enemies into silence. We know that the State will never agree to disarm itself, therefore any play with electoralism becomes net loss. In its best light, the protest is when we meet together to ask the Amerikan empire to commit suicide. There are other ingredients and effects to the experience of protest we can consider, but the core of the act is a fallacy. The ongoing decision to protest is a confession that we just don't know what else to do.

next part

first part

#anarcho nihilism #anarchism #nihilism #leftism #insurrectionary anarchism #anarchist theory #acab #antifascist #guerrilla warfare #election #protest #abolition #anti capitalism

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dnaamericaapp · 1 year

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Rev. Al Sharpton, Black Leaders Rally Against Florida Gov. DeSantis: 'You're Wrong To Mess With Black History'

Hundreds of Black legislators, preachers, and activists rallied against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives Wednesday afternoon, threatening to pull students from Florida schools and universities.

Demonstrators including Rev. Al Sharpton, protested in response to not only the state's rejection of the College Board's Advanced Placement African American Studies class but also the governor's plans to gut college diversity programs, continue his migrant relocation program and pursue policies that are viewed as harmful to the LGBTQ community.

"If you don't want our story, you shouldn't get our students," said Bishop Rudolph McKissick of Jacksonville, Florida. "I wonder what would happen if every D1 athlete went into the transfer portal and found a school that wants their story."

The protest, which started as a march from Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Tallahassee to the Capitol building, was led by Tallahassee church leader Rev. R.B. Holmes and Sharpton, with a banner that read "Save Our History" with the words "Equity! Diversity! Inclusion!" underneath.

He urged underrepresented communities in Florida to register to vote and compared their efforts to the biblical story of David and Goliath.

"We'll march together, we'll fight together, we got our sling shots! We got our sling shots! We got our sling shots!" he yelled as the crowd cheered.

Anitra Krishnan, a 14-year-old student from Chiles High School in Tallahassee, hitched a ride with a friend's mom to go to the rally at the Capitol. Krishnan and her three friends were there to "stand up for what's right," she said.

"They're worrying about AP instead of worrying about children and gun violence," she added. -(source: usa today)

Stay tuned…

DNA America

“It’s what we know, not what you want us to believe.”

#dna #dnaamerica #news #politics

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stage-props · 3 years

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This is pretty different from what I usually post but because I know a lot of people don’t have access to The Washington Post:

Basically, without exaggeration, we’re legitimately on the brink of civil war. Trump supporters have invaded the capital building and Trump is cheering them on, still claiming he won the election.

In the notes I’ll reblog this with the link to a full pdf of the article

Thousands of President Trump’s supporters are in Washington for rallies Wednesday to falsely assert that the presidential election was stolen from him. Many in attendance see the demonstrations as a last stand for Trump on the same day that Congress votes to certify that President-elect Joe Biden won the election. Trump — who lost the popular and electoral college vote — continues to dispute the results, without evidence, and has encouraged his supporters to attend the rallies in the nation’s capital. He took the stage about noon to roaring crowds, claiming he had won the election. At the U.S. Capitol, throngs of protesters pushed past police who were trying to block them from entering the building as senators inside debated the certification of the presidential election. Some were able to breach security to successfully enter the building.

TEAR GAS RELEASED, IN THE BUILDING ON THE TERRORISTS, DEMS CONDEM TRUMP ONLINE

Throngs of pro-Trump supporters bust through security barricades and stormed the U.S. Capitol Building where they entered the U.S. Senate chamber and forced police to deploy tear gas inside. Lawmakers, tweeting from inside, captured a terrifying scene with many Democrats assailing Trump for provoking his supporters to attempt what some called a coup of the federal government. Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) wrote that he’s in the House Chambers and has been “instructed to lie down on the floor and put on our gas masks. Chamber security and Capitol Police have their guns drawn as protesters bang on the front door of the chamber." “We were just told that there has been tear gas in the rotunda and we’re being instructed to each of us to get gas masks that are under our seats,” Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said in a video he posted on Twitter, referring to the area under the dome that connects the House and Senate sides of the building. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) called it a “coup attempt.” He later reposted a Twitter message from Trump and said: “You are not protecting the country. Where is the DC guard? You are done and your legacy will be a disaster.” Many Democrats also blamed Trump for inciting his supporters. “This is thuggery at its best...And the flames are being stoked by the person currently in our #WhiteHouse. Donald Trump is responsible for this. #TrumpThugs,” tweeted Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.). Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), who wrote that she and her staff are “safe” and “following protocols,” said, “This is a situation provoked by President Trump & Republicans that is rapidly deteriorating. It needs to end quickly & peacefully,” she added. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), wrote that “violence is always unacceptable. Even when passions run high.” He added: “Anyone engaged in violence—especially against law enforcement—should be fully prosecuted.”

TRUMP SUPPORTERS CLAIM THEY ARE NOT DEMOCRATS OR REPUBLICANS, THEY ARE ‘TRUMPERS’

Mary Ann Wilbur gasped as three men slowly made their way up the balcony wall while those who made it up unfurled Trump flags. She approved. “We’re tired,” said Wilbur, who came to D.C. from Massachusetts. “We’ve been pushed and pushed and pushed, and we’ve had enough.” “The people are angry,” she said. “Nobody’s listening to us, Republicans or Democrats. We’re Trumpers.”

TRUMP CONTINUES TO SUPPORT PROTESTERS AND ENCOURAGE THEIR COUP

President Trump, who repeatedly urged his supporters gathered on the Ellipse earlier today to march to the U.S. Capitol to demand that Congress overturn the election, tweeted a call to “stay peaceful” as some of those supporters broke into the Capitol building. U.S. Capitol Police were unable to hold back throngs outside the building, some of whom pushed their way inside. With the House and Senate on lockdown inside the building, Trump asked for “support” for the police force trying to maintain order.

PROTESTERS BREAK BARRICADES AND PROJECT NATIONALISTIC CALLS, CLAIM THAT THE GOVERNMENT IS BETRAYING THEM

Just before 1 p.m., a group of primarily White men pushed, then toppled the barricades, storming through them to the grassy fields leading to the Capitol. Several Capitol police stood guard but could not hold back the tide. Hundreds scaled and kicked aside the barricades, yelling “forward!!” as they ran upward. Some tried to reach the steps of the Capitol, but were stopped by law enforcement. A few who made it through and scaled metal construction structures were tackled by police. After a few minutes of the crowds yelling “USA! USA!”, dozens of law enforcement descended down the steps to boos

“Fight for Trump!” “Make it louder!” said a woman south of Constitution Avenue. By 12:15 p.m., people were beginning to peel off and head east. “Off to the Capitol,” one woman said. “Let’s go!” Toward the middle of the president‘s speech, more people began streaming toward Capitol Hill, where Congress was preparing to certify the electoral college vote

TRUMP TELLS PROTESTERS THAT THEY WON

“We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” Trump said, falsely claiming that Biden’s victory was based on fraudulent vote counts. “We won this election, and we will never give up.”

This is from some of my own research when communicating with historian Professor Justin Brunette from PPCC

When asked what his feelings were on the situation, he states as follows:

“Honestly, this is right on the knife-edge of an insurrection, and thus potential civil war. Nothing like this has happened in American history since the Civil War. So I am anxious too, if I'm honest.”

This is ongoing as of 1/6/2021 1:40pm Mountain Time Check the notes for the link to the full article

#politics #Donald Trump #us election #joe biden #fascism #democrats #republicans #america #please spread this around im serious

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misstressshelby · 3 years

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Beautiful Stanger

Summary: Zora goes to a suffragette meeting and tries to forget the night before.

Warnings: Cursing and smoking?

Word count:1,199

Pt.1

(A/N: I had to switch some things to make the story work...technically the WSPU disbanded in 1918 and the Cat and Mouse act was made in 1913. I apologize to any historians out there.)

A day in the life

Zora fell asleep as the sun started peaking through the white lace curtains. When she woke a couple of hours later every cell in her body protested. She wished she could stay in bed all day and stare at the blue flowers that adorned the wallpaper. But she had to open the shop today as Mr. and Mrs.Wilson were on holiday. Later today was the meeting of the Women’s Social and Political Union. The last suffragette rally had been broken up by the coppers and several members got arrested. They were meeting to figure out the next move and she had to be there. So with a grunt, Zora rolled out of her queen-sized bed.

Her room was pretty big with her bed taking up most of it. A white vanity had her make-up and hair products littering it. Her clothes from the day before were in a pile on a chair pulled beside her small desk. She pulled open her wardrobe and pulled out a simple cream button-up and a dark blue skirt that fell at her calves. As Zora sat on her bed to buckle her black oxford heels she thought about how far she’d come.

When she was younger her dad was a traveling salesman. She and her brother Theo were forced to share the back seat to sleep. When they would settle into a town for a month or so they’d have to share a bed then too. Her mum would love the townhouse she found herself in now. Mary Price loved the finer things in life much to her husband’s dismay. Zora remembered her mum cutting out pictures in magazines of how her dream house would look.

A loud yell forced Zora out of her daydreams and back to the house that never felt like home. When she poked her head out of her door she heard Ada’s voice yelling, “I don’t want your help. I don’t want anything from you! I’ve told you I’m not a fucking Shelby.” Zora didn’t want to go downstairs and risk getting in the middle of a family argument but she had to leave. She tiptoed down the staircase and made a beeline for the door. Looking back once to see Thomas turned away from her running his hand through his hair. Ada red in the face from yelling, shot a look towards Zora that sent a shiver down her spine. Zora sent a sympathetic smile her way before going to face her day.

Her day at the apothecary was uneventful; a handful of people came in for tonics but that was it. As Zora made her way to the WSPU building anxiety started settling in her stomach. The police were getting worse towards the suffragettes if that was even possible. They couldn’t meet without having coppers coming in swarms. Men using bully sticks to crack against skulls and dragging women into paddy wagons. Zora had been arrested a couple of times herself. Sentenced to jail twice now but the WSPU always bailed her out. They had to do something to fight against them and Zora had the feeling it wouldn’t end well for anyone.

When she walked into the brick building she was met with forty or so women. All piled into the room where they printed The Suffragette paper. The crowd ranged from housewives in their thirties or forties in modest dresses. Some with babies perched on their hips. The other half looked more like Zora. Being early to late twenties hair cut to their shoulders or shorter, most had on loose dresses and long beads.

The head of the organization Amelia Evens started the meeting by banging on one of the desks.”Okay, ladies, we all know why we’re here. Our voices are being silenced by the police and if we don’t do something soon all our progress will be for nothing. You’ve all heard Pankhurst’s orders for civil disobedience. We must force them to listen to us! We have tried to ask politely with smiles on our faces and they’ve ignored us, beat us, arrested us so now we must fight back!” The room filled with yells of agreement; some women hit the desks or stomped their feet in solidarity.

Amelia's voice rose “We will have another rally. We will march down the streets of London straight to the precinct and demand they let our sisters go. We will demand they end the unjust jailing of our sisters and the inhumane conditions they are forced in. Before we will cut the phone lines and bomb the post boxes so they can't communicate with other coppers.” Zora found herself joining with the other women,” Deeds not words!” Amelia ended the meeting with her final instructions ``We will meet here in a week's time and march. Any woman who does not want to be involved does not have to come. But those who do, we will meet at noon. Remember comrades, the fight must go on!”

After the meeting, Zora saw a friend of hers, Marjorie, a young curvy redhead who worked as a switchboard operator. They had met when Zora first came to London and Marjorie came into the apothecary with the flu. Marjorie had been the one to tell her of the WSPU after a couple of dinners and who had gone with her to all the protests. They had even been arrested together on one occasion. “Did you hear about Alice?” was the first thing the redhead asked her. Alice was one of the women arrested during the last rally that hadn't been released yet.

‘No what’s happened?” Zora was worried. Alice was getting weaker from a week on a hunger strike the last anyone had heard. “The coppers won't let us post her bail. They’ve tied her down and force-fed her so she can’t leave do too poor health. She got a letter to Amelia but I don't know if she’ll last much longer in there.” Majorie reported in a soft sad voice. Zora grabbed the other woman’s hand and started toward the door before continuing.

The two women sat on the stairs and Zora pulled out her silver cigarette holder and offered Marjorie one before lighting her own. “Are you going next week?” She asked. “Yeah of course. I don't even need to ask you, do I?” laughed her friend. ‘I have too. We have to go for Alice, she’d do the same for us.” Zora reasoned. Marjorie hummed in agreement before laying her head on Zoras’ shoulder.

After finishing two cigs and saying goodbye to the women leaving for the night she got up with a sigh. “You wanna go out tonight? You look like you need it.” teased Marj. “Nah not tonight but you have a shot for me eh? Maybe find a cute man to take home. You look like you need it.” Zora joked back before starting home. When she got about two blocks down the street a thought popped into her head. The Dionysus club, it had been a while. Marj was right, she could use the stress relief.

#my writing #thomas shelby x reader #thomas shelby x oc #thomas shelby writing #tommy shelby #tommy shelby writing rec #tommy shelby x oc #tommy shelby fanfic #peaky blinder fanfic

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rapeculturerealities · 3 years

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Ma Kyal Sin loved taekwondo, spicy food and a good red lipstick. She adopted the English name Angel, and her father hugged her goodbye when she went out on the streets of Mandalay, in central Myanmar, to join the crowds peacefully protesting the recent seizure of power by the military.

The black T-shirt that Ms. Kyal Sin wore to the protest on Wednesday carried a simple message: “Everything will be OK.”

In the afternoon, Ms. Kyal Sin, 18, was shot in the head by the security forces, who killed at least 30 people nationwide in the single bloodiest day since the Feb. 1 coup, according to the United Nations.

“She is a hero for our country,” said Ma Cho Nwe Oo, one of Ms. Kyal Sin’s close friends, who has also taken part in the daily rallies that have electrified hundreds of cities across Myanmar. “By participating in the revolution, our generation of young women shows that we are no less brave than men.”

Despite the risks, women have stood at the forefront of Myanmar’s protest movement, sending a powerful rebuke to the generals who ousted a female civilian leader and reimposed a patriarchal order that has suppressed women for half a century.

By the hundreds of thousands, the women have gathered for daily marches, representing striking unions of teachers, garment workers and medical workers — all sectors dominated by women. The youngest are often on the front lines, where the security forces appear to have singled them out. Two young women were shot in the head on Wednesday and another near the heart, three bullets ending their lives.

Earlier this week, military television networks announced that the security forces were instructed not to use live ammunition, and that in self-defense they would only shoot at the lower body.

“We might lose some heroes in this revolution,” said Ma Sandar, an assistant general secretary of the Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar, who has been taking part in the protests. “Our women’s blood is red.”

The violence on Wednesday, which brought the death toll since the coup to at least 54, reflected the brutality of a military accustomed to killing its most innocent people. At least three children have been gunned down over the past month, and the first death of the military’s post-coup crackdown was a 20-year-old woman shot in the head on Feb. 9.

The killings have appalled and outraged rights advocates around the world.

“Myanmar’s military must stop murdering and jailing protesters,” Michelle Bachelet, the top human rights official at the United Nations, said Thursday. “It is utterly abhorrent that security forces are firing live ammunition against peaceful protesters across the country.”

In the weeks since the protests began, groups of female medical volunteers have patrolled the streets, tending to the wounded and dying. Women have added spine to a civil disobedience movement that is crippling the functioning of the state. And they have flouted gender stereotypes in a country where tradition holds that garments covering the lower half of the bodies of the two sexes should not be washed together, lest the female spirit act as a contaminant.

With defiant creativity, people have strung up clotheslines of women’s sarongs, called htamein, to protect protest zones, knowing that some men are loath to walk under them. Others have affixed images of Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the army chief who orchestrated the coup, to the hanging htamein, an affront to his virility.

“Young women are now leading the protests because we have a maternal nature and we can’t let the next generation be destroyed,” said Dr. Yin Yin Hnoung, a 28-year-old medical doctor who has dodged bullets in Mandalay. “We don’t care about our lives. We care about our future generations.”

While the military’s inhumanity extends to many of the country’s roughly 55 million people, women have the most to lose from the generals’ resumption of full authority, after five years of sharing power with a civilian government led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The Tatmadaw, as the military is known, is deeply conservative, opining in official communications about the importance of modest dress for proper ladies.

There are no women in the Tatmadaw’s senior ranks, and its soldiers have systematically committed gang rape against women from ethnic minorities, according to investigations by the United Nations. In the generals’ worldview, women are often considered weak and impure. Traditional religious hierarchies in this predominantly Buddhist nation also place women at the feet of men.

The prejudices of the military and the monastery are not necessarily shared by Myanmar’s broader society. Women are educated and integral to the economy, particularly in business, manufacturing and the civil service. Increasingly, women have found their political voice. In elections last November, about 20 percent of candidates for the National League for Democracy, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, were women.

The party won in a landslide, trouncing the military-linked and far more male-dominated Union Solidarity and Development Party. The Tatmadaw has dismissed the results as fraudulent.

As the military began devolving some power over the past decade, Myanmar experienced one of the most profound and rapid societal changes in the world. A country that had been cut off from the world by the generals, who first seized power in a 1962 coup, went on Facebook and discovered memes, emojis and global conversations about gender politics.

“Even though these are dark days and my heart breaks with all these images of bloodshed, I’m more optimistic because I see women on the street,” said Dr. Miemie Winn Byrd, a Burmese-American who served as a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army and is now a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. “In this contest, I will put money on the women. They are unarmed, but they are the true warriors.”

That passion has ignited across the country, despite Tatmadaw crackdowns in past decades that have killed hundreds of people.

“Women took the frontier position in the fight against dictatorship because we believe it is our cause,” said Ma Ei Thinzar Maung, a 27-year-old politician and former political prisoner who, along with another woman the same age, led the first anti-coup demonstration in Yangon five days after the putsch.

That passion has ignited across the country, despite Tatmadaw crackdowns in past decades that have killed hundreds of people.

“That was the time I committed myself to working toward abolishing the military junta,” she said. “Minorities know what it feels like, where discrimination leads. And as a woman, we are still considered as a second sex.”

“That must be one of the reasons why women activists seem more committed to rights issues,” she added.

While the National League for Democracy is led by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, its top ranks are dominated by men. And like the Tatmadaw, the party’s highest echelons have tended to be reserved for members of the country’s ethnic Bamar majority.

On the streets of Myanmar, even as the security forces continue to fire at unarmed protesters, the makeup of the movement has been far more diverse. There are Muslim students, Catholic nuns, Buddhist monks, drag queens and a legion of young women.

“Gen Z are a fearless generation,” said Honey Aung, whose younger sister, Kyawt Nandar Aung, was killed by a bullet to the head on Wednesday in the city of Monywa. “My sister joined the protests every day. She hated dictatorship.”

In a speech that ran in a state propaganda publication earlier this week, General Min Aung Hlaing, the army chief, sniffed at the impropriety of the protesters, with their “indecent clothes contrary to Myanmar culture.” His definition is commonly considered to include women wearing trousers.

Moments before she was shot dead, Ms. Kyal Sin, dressed in sneakers and torn jeans, rallied her fellow peaceful protesters.

As they staggered from the tear gas fired by security forces on Wednesday, Ms. Kyal Sin dispensed water to cleanse their eyes. “We are not going to run,” she yelled, in a video recorded by another protester. “Our people’s blood should not reach the ground.”

“She is the bravest girl I have ever seen in my life,” said Ko Lu Maw, who photographed some of the final images of Ms. Kyal Sin, in an alert, proud pose amid a crowd of prostrate protesters.

Under her T-shirt, Ms. Kyal Sin wore a star-shaped pendant because her name means “pure star” in Burmese.

“She would say, ‘if you see a star, remember, that’s me,’” said Ms. Cho Nwe Oo, her friend. “I will always remember her proudly.”

#tw murder #state sponsored violence #Myanmar #activism

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avengershumanresources · 3 years

Text

blood 10 - Strange/Stark!Reader

Relationship: Dr. Strange/Princess!Stark!Reader

Rating: M

Warnings: Adult Themes, smut, adult language, implied sexual violence, general violence

Synopsis: Reader is the daughter of the legendary King Anthony Stark, Uniter of Lands, The Iron Defender, and leader of the realm. When the king disappears during battle, hope is lost and he is presumed dead.

When the late king’s uncle, Obadiah, takes the throne until your brother Peter is of age, he quickly arranges a marriage for you with a wicked king in a neighboring kingdom.

With the realms politics in question, and rumors of an upcoming siege to overthrow Peter’s rule before it starts, you quickly learn who is loyal to the crown and who is not.

part 9 - part 11

Masterlist

Chapter Playlist

10 - a trick

Peter had Sam and Clint notify the guard. Natalia and James secured the Queen and Princess Morgan, and before anyone had time to breathe, Peter stormed Obadiah’s bedchamber.

The king woke with a start, opening his mouth to protest the interruption and stopping immediately when the tip of a sword went to his throat.

“Is this supposed to be a coup?” he mocked while Peter marched him out of the bedroom toward the throne room. “You’re in over your head, boy.”

Peter didn’t reply, keeping his sword up until they were securely in the throne room where Wong, Steve, and Thor waited with crossed arms.

“King Rumlow will not stand for this,” Obadiah’s confident tone faded once Peter shoved him forward. “Whatever you’re planning, you’re outnumbered.”

“Per the law, if the council feels the king is unfit, he may be removed in favor of the next in line,” Wong recited.

“He’s not of age!” Obadiah spat but Steve looked between the men.

“A few months?” he asked the group. “I saw the records say his birth was yesterday, 22 years to the day.”

“It’ll be noted,” Wong hummed, the quartet watching the king for his next move.

“Traitors-,” Obadiah threw a finger between the men accusingly. “Where’s Strange? Not man enough to face me himself?”

“Uncle, if you step down peacefully, you can live out your days unbothered at the border,” Peter offered tersely, watching the manic man for any sudden movements. “Please.”

“Ha!” Obadiah threw his head back, taking a few steps away from the group. “Do you honestly think I believe that? You’ll send that bitch assassin or the cripple missing an arm after me.”

Peter saw Steve tense at the insults, but maintained a firm tone with the disgraced king.

“Please uncle,” he tried to reason. “There are many who wish to see you punished for your transgressions-.”

“Transgressions?” Obadiah spun on to him. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve tried to bring peace to the kingdom. I’ve broken no law.”

“You ordered the death of my father,” Peter stated, unflinchingly. He stated the older, larger man down. “The punishment for treason is death and I am giving you the option of survival.”

Shouting was beginning to rise from the courtyard outside the throne room. Flickers of torches and the whinnying of horses soon meshed into the sounds.

“The men who wish to see you dead far outnumber anyone loyal to you,” Steve warned, eyeing the lights through the stained glass. “You have nothing to offer Rumlow, there’s no guarantee he’ll be willing to waste the men on a lost cause.”

There was a there was a crash from the hall outside the locked throne room door. Swords clanged against once another and the shouting grew louder.

Turning to the men, Obadiah smirked when someone began slamming against the door.

“Are you certain of that, Peter?” he asked, his grin growing wider. “Don’t think I was blind to your schemes. I know all that goes on in this castle.”

He rounded on Peter, a finger prodding the prince’s chest.

“I heard all about the tavern meetings with the Asgardians and this pathetic attempt on my throne,” he glowered down at him. “I knew exactly why the Asgardians were here, a betrothal, don’t be stupid! I knew about that little slut too. Now she’s with her weak father... probably lamenting how I outsmarted them. You’re a fool, Peter, and you’ll hang for this.”

There was a stunned silence, all eyes falling on Peter, who’d backed away with Obadiah towering over him. Shouts and banging could still be heard from the halls, a group now trying to break down the door.

All at once, Peter let out a furious yell. He grabbed the front of Obadiah’s sleeping gown with one hand, the other going for a dagger at his side.

“Do you see this knife?” he snarled, pricking the tip against Obadiah’s neck to draw a single droplet of blood. “My sister used it to defend against that beast you’ve brought into my home. Do you know who gave it to her? One of the most dangerous criminals in the next two kingdoms, pray tell me, uncle- what do you think they will do to do if I don’t kill you now? The assassin who so trusted my beloved sister, he gave her a weapon to defend from you?”

“You’re going to lose.”

“What will they do, Obadiah-,” Peter dug the blade a little deeper into the kings skin, making the man squirm. “When the truth of her death comes out? When the truth of my fathers death? The longest reign of peace and economic prosperity in generations. What will the farmers, whose crops Rumlow burned under your orders, do to you?”

“Peter!” the door burst open and Wong grabbed Peter, teleporting him, Thor, and Steve away before Amora could blast the group.

She rushed toward the king, hands glowing, while she skimmed him over for injury.

“The queen and princess are gone,” she reported. “My king rallied his troops the moment he caught wise of what the prince was planning. Sir, he still commits his men to you, per your agreement.”

“No marriage?” Obadiah practically stammered out.

“My grace, the specifics can be dealt with, should we survive this treacherous siege, now hold on,” she grabbed his wrist and teleported with a cloud of green smoke.

(—)

“The princess was moved to the crypt,” Loki reported once he met Stephen in the courtyard, his troops readying to support the guard within the castle. “One of the priests heard wind of the siege and gave her a quick blessing before fleeing.”

That wasn’t part of the plan.

Stephen had done his best to ensure you would have been removed from the stone coffin before you could risk suffocating. With an active battle, there was no guarantee when he could rescue you.

“I have to move her now,” he realized at Loki’s urgent implication.

“Better now than when the castle is burning,” the prince replied snarkily. His attention was caught by a large flame in one of the guard towers. Obadiah had resisted.

It was time.

“Go, before I go myself to avoid this barbaric carnage,” Loki pulled on his battle helmet and began to rally his men.

Stephen didn’t need to be told twice. He quickly drew up a portal to the Stark family crypt below the castle. He raced to the newest section of the tomb, where your grandfather and your father’s empty coffin sat under a carving of your great-grandfather.

He ignited the torches with a wave of his hand, immediately spotting the recently disturbed stone tomb. Raising his palm, he blasted the lid of the entrapment, pushing the stone aside and summoning a light to better see inside.

To his relief, you were there, arms folded over your chest, body tucked in a hastily wrapped funeral shroud. He ripped the cloth back, pulling your unconscious body out of the stone chamber and draping you over his lap on the ground.

A quick check of his spell, and it was still holding. Your seidr was still concealed and you were still alive, just in a deep, charmed, sleep.

He scooped you up, throwing open a portal to the chambers he’d prepared at his home, and quickly draped you onto the bed.

Sensing his magic, Wanda stepped through her own portal, glancing up at her friend in concern.

“It’s early,” she noted with a tilt of her head.

“Obadiah didn’t surrender or attempt to negotiate. Brock joined the attack,” he explained. “The king needs to rally the troops here and notify our allies.”

Wanda gave a curt nod, disappearing as quickly as she’d appeared.

He returned his attention to you, lightly touching the seidr seal on your wrist and ensuring the spell would hold while he was out of sight.

“I will return my love,” he vowed, tucking a strand of hair out of your face and pressing a chaste kiss to your lips. He double checked the wards around the bedroom a final time before opening a portal to Tony’s encampment within his estate grounds.

(—)

“Peter, what’s happening?” Pepper demanded when the trio sudden appeared in her chambers. James and Natalia were both in their feet, awaiting further instructions.

“Where’s Morgan?” he demanded, moving through the room until he located his baby sister in the old nursery attached to the suite. “We have to get the two of you to safety.”

“She wanted to sleep, James and Natalia told us to stay ready, but-,” Pepper hurried after him. “Peter, what is going on?”

“I’m removing Obadiah from the throne,” he stated matter of factly, scooping up Morgan and grabbing a cook off a nearby hook. “Brock is trying to help him, but our men far outnumber theirs. You and Morgan are being moved to Kamar-Taj for the night, then into the Asgardian keep.”

“And the lords and ladies?” she stammered out, overwhelmed by his calm demeanor despite the screams and fires outside. She absently took her daughter when Peter passed her off, watching James and Natalia assemble a few more essentials into a small silk bag before passing it off to Peter.

“Long evacuated, the men who wished to fight still remain,” Steve supplied. “Wong and myself will be accompanying you to Asgard. Queen Frigga will provide passage to Asgard once Brock’s troops are recalled from the border and Amora’s mystic boundary is broken.”

“Kamar-Taj has a prepared trunk for you,” Natalia explained softly. “I put it together with Peter a few weeks ago. It should have what you need until you reach Asgard.”

“What about the rest of you?” Pepper’s gaze feel on Peter. “What will you do?”

“I’m going to kill Brock and Obadiah,” he promised confidently. “Overcome and conquer.”

Pepper paused, reaching for his face and cradling his jaw with her palm.

“Your father would be so proud,” she whispered, the brief spell broken when an explosion sounded in the courtyard.

“Magic,” Wong confirmed. “Amora probably summoned her apprentices. We need to move to ensure we are not followed.”

“Be safe, my sweet son,” Pepper kissed his cheek and followed after Wong and Steve, Morgan tucked tightly in her arms. “I love you.”

“Goodbye mother,” he replied, watching the spot in the room until the portal snapped shut and he was left with Thor and the assassins.

“What now?” James asked, peeking through the queens window nervously.

“There’s a passage down the hall that should lead you to the armory. Through there, you should be able to reach Loki and our combined men. Mordo and Stephen have called for reinforcements from Kamar-Taj, and they should be able to fend off magic users while we handle the rest.”

“Asgardian forces will be here by dawn,” Thor promised. “With another wave due before nightfall.”

“Obadiah won’t be missing for long,” Peter continued. “He’s a pig, but not a coward. He will want to oversee things in person, likely with Brock. That’s when we hit them and end this.”

“And Amora?” Natalia quirked a brow.

“Leave that to Loki,” Thor muttered grimly. “He has a score to settle with the Enchantress.”

(—)

You jolted up with a gasp.

The room was dark, but something unfamiliar about it sent the seidr in your veins prickling through the goosebumps on your skin.

Reaching around, you swallowed anxiously. The bed was all wrong. The fabrics not the silks and cotton you’d grown up with. Eyes adjusting to the darkness, you realized you weren’t in your bed chambers at all.

A yell and response outside the window had you scrambling to your feet, spying a number of fires burning in the dark sea of land outside whenever you now found yourself.

Your groggy brain ran through its last memories. The assault. The conversation with Stephen.

The sleeping draught.

How powerful had it been?

You looked down at your hands, a faint glow of violet emitting from your hands and up your arms. You’d barely had time to examine it when the door to the room burst open.

“You’re not supposed to be awake-,” Wanda stated, swooping on you and catching sight of the seidr. Eyes wide, she tried subduing the small bit of magic, but the moment the crimson tendrils tried touching the violet, the seidr grew brighter and spread more thoroughly over your body.

“What is going on-?” You reached for your skirts and realized your dressing gown had been changed to a deep crimson formal gown. “Where is Stephen? Where is my home?”

“Princess,” Wanda reached for your hand, but the seidr snapped back at her and she pulled away. “I don’t know what’s happened. Stephen is... I can better explain...”

She looked overwhelmed, her eyes constantly dropping to watch the raw power radiating off of you.

“You’ve been asleep for two days, almost three nights,” she stated briskly, and you shook your head, frowning.

“That’s impossible,” you whispered.

“The sleeping potion Stephen gave you... it was to mimic the effects of death,” she continued softly. “We’re at the main keep for his family. Princess, the kingdom is at war.”

“Wanda, you were supposed to seal it, what’s taking so-,” Loki stopped in the doorway of the room. “Princess.”

He looked as bewildered as Wanda to see you standing and alert. And twice as concerned with the seidr energy coming from you.

“That’s not good,” he stated bluntly. “Amora is going to see you like a beacon in the night.”

“Brock’s men have secured the castle already, if he knows she’s alive-,” Wanda agreed, speaking quickly and tersely with the prince.

“Alive? Of course I’m-,” you paused. Mimic the effects of death. Eyes growing wide with realization as to what Stephen had done, you huffed a sigh. “Brock is still aligned with Obadiah?”

“It’s tentative,” Wanda replied. “But if his Stark bride is alive and well...”

“He’s already calling troops through the Kree empire, and the sea artillery is moving toward Asgardian waters,” Loki frowned, reaching forward and trying to calm your magic with his own. When it spat back at him like Wanda’s, his lips formed a thin line of concern. “Strange’s seal was so powerful I couldn’t sense it, so he isn’t holding right now because of the princess. There’s something else keeping him by Obadiah’s side. This will just soldifiy whatever deal they’ve struck. We need to figure out how to seal the seidr.”

“Could she just learn to control it?” Wanda offered. “I don’t think external means are going to suppress it much longer.”

“Wanda, how long did it take for you to learn to hide your own essence from enemies?” Loki pressed. “We need to locate Stephen.”

Eyes glowing, Wanda nodded and disappeared, presumably to retrieve the sorcerer in question.

“Loki, is my family-?” you started and he nodded.

“Your mother and sister are in Asgard,” he replied. “Peter is...”

“He’s on the battlefield,” you finished with a knowing sigh. “Do we stand a chance?”

“The Wakandans have mobilized and will be sending reinforcements soon,” he explained, gesturing for you to hold out the hand with the seal on your wrist. “Incredible. Your power... destroyed the rune. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“The Wakandans have no loyalty to Peter,” you voiced, furrowing your brows. Are they aligned with Asgard?”

“Well, no-,” he started. “They stand behind House Stark but, there is an important thing you should know now that you’re awake.”

He drew a portal, knowing her couldn’t teleport with your present state, and led you to what looked like a massive dining hall within the same building.

Hundreds of men were resting, some singing ballads and others sharing large bowls of stew and bread.

You looked to Loki for explanation.

Was Stephen hurt? Had your brother perished?

He stood stoically, his gaze falling on the back of a man tending to an infantryman’s dressings. When he turned his head, you gasped and rushed over.

“Father..?” you hesitated, his face was covered in mud, and he’d grown a large beard, but as soon as you saw his eyes, you knew.

“Look who had risen from the grave,” he teased. “Welcome to the afterlife. It’s not quite what the priests suggested-.”

You cut him off, throwing your arms around his shoulders.

“You’re alive,” you stammered in awe. “I... how? They say a pike went through your chest.”

“Oh, about that...” he touched the from of his chest. “Loki is a very skilled healer, and Wanda foresaw that particular complication... it’s a long story, best served for better conditions.”

“The seidr broke the potion’s effects,” Loki stated, looking down at the soldier and waving a hand over his bloodied wound. The wound was immediately cleaned and the soldier’s eyes drifted shut, his chest soon rising and falling in a peaceful sleep. “We’re trying to locate Stephen. Wanda and myself couldn’t interact with her.”

“I see,” Tony looked to you, eyes following the new elements of magic dancing lazily over your upper body. “Certainly the wards around the keep should continue to mask it?”

“For now,” Loki reported. “If Amora approaches too close, it could mean exposure.”

“You knew about all of this as well?” you looked to your father, still struggling to keep up with everything being said and plotted. She turned to Loki. “And you knew he was alive”

“And Wanda,” Loki added. “Natalia, and more recently, Stephen.”

“What?” you blinked in surprise. That wasn’t right. Stephen certainly would have told you.

“We couldn’t risk Amora catching on,” your father quickly sensed your shift in emotion. “She was watching you because of your seidr, trying to tamper with your thoughts. You had to be left in the dark until we knew you were a safe distance from her.”

“Amora is a very powerful magic user who betrayed the trust of my mother and yours,” Loki informed you, his hand tensing at his side. “We couldn’t risk her getting ahead of our plans.”

“That’s going to go to waste if we can’t continue the charade you’re dead,” Tony clarified. “Brock is only barely allied with Obadiah. We have the numbers right now, but if he becomes serious about taking our kingdom, he and the Northern Kree far exceed our men, the Asgardians, the Wakandans, and the Southern Kree.”

“Your grace,” a blonde woman in knights armor approached and bowed her head. You noticed that the blood from the cuts on her cheeks was teal- a Kree. “King Odin is riding for us. He will be here within the hour, ready to provide more men.”

“Thank you Lady Carol,” Tony nodded while the female knight bowed and exited the room. Your eyes trailed after her in a dazed stupor. You’d never seen a female knight before. You’d read that the Kree society was more favorable to the female gender, but you never would have imagined the Kree would let a woman directly report to a king.

“We need Frigga,” Tony sighed.

“We would have to ride to Asgard ourselves. The mystic boundary Amora out on the borders of too powerful, no one has been able to teleport or portal through it,” Loki grumbled.

Tony cursed under his breath and stood, a hand on your back, guiding you through the mess of cots and soldiers. Some were injured, most were just worn from battle and resting until they were called upon again.

Leading you and Loki out of the hall, Tony stopped once he was certain you were alone.

“Only the sorcerers and myself are aware of your situation,” he murmured. “Peter and the queen are none the wiser. We need to keep you within the walls of this keep until Stephen is located and we have our next steps.”

“Can I help at all?” you asked, feeling more like a prized hen than someone who was useful. “I know some healing salves and wound mending?”

“We can’t risk it,” Loki looked to Tony who was considering the suggestion. “One incident with the uncontrolled seidr and that could be the end of us.”

“My sweet, I’m sorry,” Tony pulled your head in and kissed the top of your hair. “It won’t be long until Stephen arrives and we can make a clearer decision.”

As if on cue, Wanda appeared, blood coating her hands and the dark robes she wore.

“Stephen was injured in battle,” she explaine, Loki quickly teleporting with her without another word.

“I bet he’s in the master suite,” your dad mused, a wink in your direction. “He has all of his potions and trinkets in there for emergency.”

You paused, hesitating between leaving your newly alive father, and being by your love’s side.

“I’m needed in a war council,” he answered the dilemma. “We can catch up when the world isn’t burning around us.”

He gave your hand a final, reassuring, squeeze before giving you a quick layout of the keep. You thanked him, promised to keep him updated, and dashed down the halls.

As you hurried, you felt your dress restricting your movements, and briefly considered trousers to be a more apt clothing option for the moment.

It was when you felt the restriction around your legs disappear when you looked down and saw your clothes had shifted. Your crimson gown now crimson trousers, your corset a more reasonable bustier, and a cloth shirt tucked under a matching jacket with the Stark sigil subtly embroidered on the chest.

Stopping in shock at the change, it occurred to you that the seidr had merely been responding to your mental requests.

That, you could get used to. No wonder Stephen and Loki were always ready for balls and events faster than you.

You picked up your pace, rushing through the halls until you found the master suite exactly where your father had told you.

A maid was shuffling out as you approached and you quietly slipped in, doing your best to ignore the blood saturated towels tucked under the maids arms.

“It was a toxic arrow,” Wanda was explained to Loki. “It isn’t allowing the blood to coagulate properly. He’s going to bleed out.”

“I imagine Amora had something to do with this,” Loki murmured, glowing emerald hands hovering just over the gushing wound. “Strange. Stay with us. Stay awake.”

You were discarding your jacket and rolling up your sleeves, moving toward the makeshift apothecary stand while Stephen kept his eyes squeezed in pain.

“If she enchanted the poison or venom before applying it, we should be able to pull the toxins magically, right?” you recalled from a text you’d read during one of the long nights in the observatory.

“I’m trying to, but I can’t detect any traces of magic in the wound,” Loki replied tensely.

“I tried isolating a few drops of his blood to detect any foreign components, but the poison is too powerful. It’s using the body’s defenses in its favor,” Wanda looked rattled, a far cry from her usual, composed, demeanor. “If we had more time, I know I could find the proper antidote, but he’s going to bleed out before then.”

Your fingers hovered over the herbs and elixirs, eyes shut while you considered their words and tried to recall the specifics of what you’d learned under his tutelage.

“Is it actively poisoning his body, or just preventing the wound from clotting?” you asked, your finger twitched toward an herb used to create fiberous seals on wounds from cuts.

“Preventing the cut from sealing,” Wanda reported back, watching Loki try and fall to seal the wound magically. All the rags and bandages he piled ontop of the injury just continued to saturate through. “Bandages are not working. He’s bleeding through everything.”

“We need ice on the wound,” you called out, throwing the proper herbs and liquid into a mortar and pestle. “Shrink the blood vessels and slow the bleeding temporarily.”

Loki’s hand turned to ice and he pressed it on the skin around the injury.

“It’s working,” Wanda called back.

“Clean the area,” you instructed, the paste now smooth and plentiful. You turned and searched the room for extra bandages, finding some by a pile of Stephen’s ripped and bloodied robes.

You passed the remedy and bandages to the sorcerers at his bedside, knowing your seidr would prevent you from making close contact with him. The thought in itself breaking your heart. You wanted to wipe the sweat from his forehead, press a kiss to his hand and promise all would be well.

“Put the paste on the bandages and cover the wound. Keep applying the ice until we can get the bleeding to slow,” you watched Wanda move swiftly in tandem with Loki, pressing the seal to the injury and letting the prince take over applying pressure and ice.

“Princess?” Stephen’s voice called, almost delirious.

“I’m here,” you moved within his eyesight, a smile thrown on your features to conceal your deep worry for him. “What did I tell you about getting shot with arrows, my love?”

“You never mentioned arrows,” he grunted, eyes opening briefly to take you in and closing when he winced in pain. “Next time be more- hngh- specific.”

“Next time don’t get shot,” you countered playfully, eyes falling to the white bandage at his abdomen. Ideally, only a little blood would be able to get through. It’d buy enough time for Loki and Wanda to find a better remedy without letting him bleed out.

“It’s working,” Wanda announced, jumping and moving to the large library of books scattered around the room. Her hands began to glow, her fingers pulling texts off the shelves and discarding them almost as fast.

“Strange, were you injured anywhere else?” Loki asked tersely, eyeing a cut by the sorcerer’s eye. “We need seal all of your cuts, just in case.”

“Face,” Stephen replied after a pause. “Hands.”

Loki got to work, smothering the bandages with the salve and covering the cuts.

“Got it,” Wanda held up a book victoriously. “Antidote will take a few hours to prepare. Loki, you’re going to need to move to the front line. Let Peter and Thor know what is happening. I’ll make sure there’s enough for everyone afflicted.”

“I hadn’t heard any reports of similar circumstance,” Loki murmured, looking back down at the bandage to ensure it was still holding. “This seems personal.”

“To our favor then,” Wanda hummed, summoning her ingredients and moving quickly through the steps. “I will report this to King Anthony. Go.”

Loki disappeared with a flash of light, leaving only traces of smoke where he stood.

“You’re not supposed to be awake,” Stephen realized after you’d seated ourself next to him.

“The seidr had other plans,” you noted softly. “Do not worry, we will address each problem as it’s necessary. You need to rest.”

“Wasn’t I just tell you that?”

“Then listen to your own words, you do often boast of how good your own advice is,” you teased.

He reached for your hand, but you pulled away, frowning apologetically at him.

“The seidr is… it doesn’t like magic-users at the moment,” you explained quickly.

“That’s… unfortunate,” he mumbled, lolling his hand forward and staring up at the ceiling. “Ever the more reason not to die, I suppose.”

(—)

11- a battle cry

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writefightandflightclub · 4 years

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Rally the troupes

What is this? 10 of 14 requests for my last follower celebration. The prompt is “emergency dance party”!!!! Fluffy one-shot. Poe gets creative with ways to cheer you up!

Also: 100% need to mention this awesome audio by @bluebellhairpin which shoudl put you in the mood!

Warnings: the rhythm is gonna get ya.

Word count: 2.6k, alarmingly.

GIF: source

“What’s the emergency?” Finn exclaims breathlessly, rocking up to the hangar and throwing open the doors. He jogs purposefully past the crowd of convened comrades right up to Poe.

“Did I say ‘emergency’?” the pilot dismisses innocently. “I don’t think I used the word ‘emergency.”

“You did. That’s exactly what you said.” Finn insists.

“Just get in formation, Finn.” Poe deflects, clamping his hands on his friend’s shoulders to scooch him over and position him amongst the other rebels. “If you stand right about....” Poe’s eyes trail along the rest of the line as he makes another adjustment, before releasing his grip. “...there. That looks symmetrical.” For the first time, Finn peels his eyes away from Poe and scans over the crowd. Poe has various pilots, mechanics, medics, and command-room crew assembled, everyone arranged in lines and forward-facing.

With a spring in his step, Poe makes his way back to the front of the pack. For an emergency, he doesn’t seem overly concerned, Finn observes.

Poe gains the attention of his assembled team, who are muttering confusedly amongst themselves. “Can everyone see me from where they’re stood?”

There is a general murmur of agreement.

“Good.” Poe claps his hands together in excitement. “For the next thirty minutes we have a very important task. You may have noticed that a good friend of mine has been a little down lately, and so I hoped we could do something hilarious to help cheer them up.”

Poe’s eyes are drawn to Finn in the crowd as a grin of realisation inches across his face, no further explanation necessary. “It’s an emergency dance party!”

Poe returns his smile as Finn pumps his fist in the air and whoops in approval. This was way better than most of the things Poe had previously convened people for. “Hell yes it’s an emergency dance party!” Poe echoes, opening his palms and inviting the whole crowd to share in his and Finn’s evident enthusiasm. “In half an hour, we’ll have an amazing, surprise routine ready to perform. First, I’m gonna need you to come up here, one-by-one, and give us your most ridiculous dance move to add to the sequence.” A murmur of energy, apprehension, and self-consciousness flickers through the crowd but Poe taps his chest; “I’ll make an idiot out of myself first, don’t worry”, he reassures.

“Well, that’s standard!” Rey hollers out good-naturedly from amidst the throng.

“Rey will go second.” Poe counters mischievously.

There is a flutter of laughter through the crowd at both the insult and rebuttal, but Poe’s enthusiasm is for the most part infectious. One could even suggest that the man has leadership skills, or at least enough charisma and heart for people to get behind him. “Everyone in?” he asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer; his mind is set and this is happening. He turns to the astromech unit by his side with a point of his finger. “Hit it, Beebs.”

The funky sounds of music fill the hangar as Poe gets his boogie on.

***

You walk towards the hangar to begin your shift, practically dragging your feet. Truth be told, as much as you loved your work and would welcome the distraction, you wished you didn’t have to deal with Poe right now. You had been having a hard time lately, and Poe was one of the few people who could see right through the brave face you’d been wearing.

When you arrive at the hangar, though, the door is pulled closed - which is unusual - with a droid stationed outside. “Scoot!” you caution, shuffling the unit out of the way. The second item of suspicion is that it’s eerily quiet, none of the typical sounds emanating from inside. No clank of metal on metal, whirr of machines, or voices barking orders.

You push the door open with some caution, expecting it to be empty, and you startle as the faces of a large group of rebels greet you, grins plastered on their faces. Poe is heading up the group and their unusual formation, his grin widest of all. You barely have any time to register this or to discern what’s going on before the music kicks-in over the hangar speakers. You startle as arms are suddenly thrust into the air, everybody moving in unison. The hangar is darkened, the lights in the cockpits of the X-Wings programmed to flash on in time with the music.

They’re dancing. Your hands come up to your face in shock as it sinks in. They did this for you. Poe did this for you.

You venture further into the hangar, watching with glee as the troupe of troops fling themselves enthusiastically around, delighting you with a series of ridiculous shapes. All the classic dance moves are in there; the droid, the X-wing, the twist. BB-8 is even in on the action, circling elaborately around Poe’s legs and wobbling his adorable little head.

“From the top” Poe yells, and the sequence begins to repeat. After every spin and jump and clap his eyes return to you, carefully studying your reaction. You can practically see the relief sink into his movements as he sees you laughing, and he returns your easy smile. If it’s possible, he throws even more gusto into it, especially into any move that calls for a wiggle of his hips or butt.

Happy tears bloom in the corner of your eyes as the ridiculous, shambolic, and yet utterly perfect routine plays out, punctuated by whoops and peals of laughter from your friends. Part way through, Finn and Rey give up and fold over in mirth. When the structured part of the routine is over, the group break off into freestyle and Poe, still intent on you, reaches his hand out, nodding his head encouragingly as he mouths “Wanna dance?.

How could you resist his sweet, open, hopeful face. You reach out to him and he grins, wrapping one arm around your waist and pulling you close to him. “Is this ok?” he checks, respectful as ever.

“Yep. It’s very ok.” His eyebrow cocks up in slight surprise at the mildly suggestive look which appears in your eyes, and he takes the liberty of pressing his body a little closer to you than necessary. Maybe this was something you should explore later. Especially after seeing that butt wiggling. You expel a light-hearted chuckle at the thought, your cheeks beginning to ache from smiling and flush from the sudden proximity.

Poe beams at you as he leads you around the floor, swivelling and twirling you all over in a raucous and bouncy fashion. It seems that finally seeing you smile again has made him feel like he’s uncovered some kind of buried treasure, judging by the unfiltered delight in his eyes. “Poe,” you communicate in between steps, in the moments where he pulls you back in to his chest at intervals. “This is the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

“If I had my way you’d have nothing but sweet things.” he offers in a way which is effortlessly sincere.

You study his eyes a moment, blown away by his words, forgetting to move your feet and smashing into his chest. He throws his arms out to steady you and you’re locked like that -despite the chaotic and jubilant whirling occurring around you- until Poe snaps you out of it by wrapping an arm around your shoulder and gesturing beyond you. “Hey, I think there’s a dance-off brewing. Come on.” He nods his head in the direction of the circle of people forming, where hands and feet are beginning a steady clapping rhythm.

You howl in amusement when you approach. Of course Finn is in the middle. The spectators part for you, making space for you to join its circumference, and Poe stands beside you, never dropping his arm from around your shoulders.

“If Rey levitates you that’s cheating, Finn!” you yell into the centre of the circle through cupped hands as Finn, much to his surprise, is lifted off the ground to perform an elaborate spin.

Finn wails and points at you, quickly shouting that you’re up next. You shake your head and wave a hand in protest, looking to Poe for back-up. He just shrugs and smiles. “Looks like you’re up next.” You would feel self-conscious, but the way Poe is beaming at you and you only makes you want to dance for joy, and so you shimmy into the centre of the circle, throwing your body around wildly to hoots of approval. Apparently Poe approves too, judging from his enlivened shouts and foot stomping.

Of course, when your turn is over, you point at Poe to have him take your place, and he makes a determined march towards you, throwing you a wink as you cross paths on his way into the fray. Poe is right in the centre of it all, pulling out some vigorous moves, the cheers from the group and the banging music and flashing lights feeling like they’re about to raise the roof.

That’s the moment Leia chooses to ceremoniously enter the hangar, cape flowing behind her as she pushes aside the double doors. A hush ripples out across the crowd of ad hoc partygoers and Poe glances over, alerted to the presence of the General. He offers her his most charming smile, but he keeps up with his cavorting. Leia looks like she might scold him, but then she surveys the faces of her rebels, perhaps realising that it has been a long time since everyone has been smiling like this. Since morale has been this high. Instead of halting the proceedings, an expression which is both mock-scolding and supressing amusement passes over her face. She simply waves her hand in a ‘carry on’ motion. You hear her subdued laughter next to you as the General slots in to the space in the circle.

“You ok kid?” she asks you, with a gentle nudge of her elbow. You nod at her, probably looking brighter than you have in some time. It doesn’t go unnoticed. “Poe Dameron is something else, isn’t he?” Leia asks, shaking her head in fond disbelief as you both spectate his moves, watching him peacock and strut around the floor. As if he knows that he’s being talked about, he turns to wiggle his ass in your and the General’s direction. “Oh my!” Leia exclaims, holding her hands up as if to block out the sight, then feigning to fan herself with a chuckle.

Then, Leia leans in as though to whisper a secret to you. “I’m sure you all know how much I detest gossip, kiddo. But if I were you, and a man with moves like that was looking at me the way Dameron’s looking at you...” Leia trails off. “Well, it might not be proper to say what I’d do, but I just hope that you plan to do something about it.” She pats you on the shoulder and smiles knowingly at you. “You know, if you want to.”

What was Leia implying? Was Poe really looking at you in some kind of way? You don’t have time to complete the thought though, as Poe extends his hand towards Leia and tugs her into a surprisingly elegant waltz around the middle of the circle, to the delight of everyone, their smiles warm and soft-centred.

You feel a rush of affection for the man who has put a smile on everyone’s face - yours included. He’d taken an off-hand comment you’d made, whilst feeling blue, and turned it into something beautiful. After a string of horrible events, you were struggling to be “okay”, or to find hope again. One aspect weighing on you, was that you couldn’t say for sure when any of this would be over. Couldn’t say when, if ever, people would be able to live again, to dance again, to love again. Poe was showing you that no matter how bleak it got, that you didn’t have to wait for moments like this. They could happen now.

If you had your way, that man would have nothing but sweet things. He deserved it.

***

The dancing had continued into the afternoon, until the time had come when work really did need to be done. Still, the music had stayed on over the speakers, everyone had continued with a little spring in their step, and laughter had been much more frequent than usual as the crew went about their business. You, in particular, had been on a rare high all day.

You’d gotten stuck back in to your tasks, but whenever a thought of Poe surfaced you couldn’t hold back the smile and butterflies which followed. To distract yourself, you had immersed yourself in your work repairing the ships. As was typical, you were lying beneath the undercarriage of a craft, and had lost track of the passage of time. You didn’t notice almost everyone else in the hangar had cleared out until you felt a soft -and then more insistent- kick to your boots; Poe’s usual signal that you’d been under there too long. That or he’d fling a casual ration bar underneath to remind you to eat something.

You duck out from underneath, and look-up at him, still pressed to the floor. “What’s going on?” you enquire. Did you always feel this nervous when he looked at you, or was this new?

“Got one more routine I wanna show you.” Poe informs, offering his hand. You reach out and he wraps your wrist, tugging you to a standing position. “Beebs, hit it.” The astromech tootles in delight and a slow, romantic song begins to emanate from his speakers. In succession, the lights throughout the hangar then flick out, replaced once again by the lumination of X-wing cockpits, giving the room a soft, almost magical glow.

Taking your fingers in his, Poe twirls you gently and then pulls you close to him, tucking you into his body, his warm and sturdy arms encasing your waist. “Is this still ok?”, he asks you softly.

“Yes” you breathe, nervously, as he sways you in his arms to the sweeping rhythm of the music, your movements perfectly in sync. With mild trepidation, you raise your arms to wind them around his neck, slotting the ‘v’ of your thumb and forefinger over his shoulders, your fingertips twisting in the overgrown curls at the nape of his neck.

Pulled in to him like this, your bodies are so close that you feel the heat of him through your respective oil-coated uniforms. You are close enough to drink in his disarming, musky scent. Your lips twitch up in a nervous smile as his dark eyes meet yours, fervent and unwavering as you shuffle over the hangar floor together. He is as warm and welcoming and compelling as a blazing hearth, and you fear that if you pull away now you would almost certainly freeze. He’s a comfort you always want to be beside, yet a small part of you feels unworthy of his ardour.

“Poe.” you venture delicately. “I don’t know how to thank you. I could try and thank you for today, but it wouldn’t be enough. I don’t know how to thank you for being everything that you are. For just being who you are.”

Your eyes glisten with tears, which causes Poe’s eyebrows to knit together with heaviness. “You don’t have to thank me.” he insists, gingerly bringing the pad of his thumb up to brush your cheek. “I’d been trying to find the words to tell you that things could be good again. That you weren’t alone. But it turns out there are some things words are just no good for. So, I wanted to show you things can be good. And...” Poe hesitates, becoming uncharacteristically shy. “...if you’ll let me... I want to keep showing you.”

You smile softly, suddenly lost for words yourself. But maybe words aren’t what’s needed right now; only dancing. The dance of his fingertips over your jaw, the quickstep of your heart. With his hands on you, it as if he is working a sweet melody down his arms and spreading its warm, dulcet tones throughout your body. It feels increasingly like you’re melting in to one another, into one song, your hands sliding up a little further into his hair, his hands exploring gentle circles on your back, your need evident and in sync as you both build towards the swell of the refrain.

Then, quite simply, Poe tucks his hand under your chin and tips your lips up towards his. He searches your eyes for a moment before asking: “Can I kiss you?”

There’s nothing that could pull you apart from Poe in this moment. You feel as if your lips are an instrument with which you seek to compose harmonious music. As if you have all manner of crochets and minims and quavers in your mouth which his tongue could bend into a song for your heart to sing. “Not if I kiss you first.”

Then, quite simply, you spin the pilot, pinning him up against the ladder of his X-wing as your mouth meets his in a crush. You are very pleased to learn how much Poe leads with his tongue, and you dissolve into this kiss.

Maybe one day if the war was ever over, you would tell people; it was horrible and sad and monstrous, yes. But at least you could also tell them; sometimes, there was still dancing. Sometimes, there was still music.

As you break apart from Poe, your heart is beating fast. Poe smiles contentedly and pulls you into an embrace, squeezing you firmly and leaning your head against his chest. You hear his heart pounding with equal ferocity to yours.

Finally, you believe that things can be good. That you’re not alone. You’ve been dancing a duet all along. You don’t know the names of all of the rhythms to say if it’s a bossa nova or a tango or something else. But you know for sure that his heart is dancing for joy. Just like yours is.

THE END

Like this? I hope the story brought you some joy and that’s more than enough. However, if you do have the energy and inclination, I would love to hear from you! Feedback in an ask or comment genuinely makes my day! ILY.

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chiseler · 3 years

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The House of D

As one of his final acts in office, Mayor Jimmy Walker broke ground in 1932 for the New York City House of Detention for Women, built on the site of the old Jefferson Market jail in Greenwich Village and colloquially known as the House of D. According to sociologist Sara Harris’ Hellhole (on John Waters’ list of recommended reading), It was intended as a model of prison reform. Opened in 1934, the twelve-story monolith of brownish brick with art deco flourishes loomed behind the old Jefferson Market courthouse on Sixth Avenue, looking more like a stylish if somewhat cheerless apartment building than a prison. Windows were meshed instead of barred, and the one sign on its exterior merely gave the address, “Number Ten Greenwich Avenue.” There were toilets and hot and cold running water in all four hundred cells, and it was going to focus on rehabilitating its inmates – prostitutes, vagrants, alcoholics and/or drug addicts – rather than merely punishing them. From the start the reality was at variance with the intentions, and the facility quickly became infamous as a combination of Bedlam and Bastille. Within a decade it was chronically overcrowded with a volatile mix of inmates: women who couldn’t make bail awaiting trials that were sometimes months off, women already convicted and serving time, alcoholics and addicts, the mentally ill, violent lesbian tops, street gang girls, hookers and other lifelong multiple offenders, and teenagers spending their first nights behind bars. Tougher, more experienced prisoners brutalized and sexually assaulted the weak and inexperienced. So, of course, did the staff. The halls rang with the howls of inmates suffering the agonies of drug or alcohol withdrawal. There were cockroaches and mice in the cells and worms in the food. Village lesbians called it the Country Club and the Snake Pit. The IWW organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn did time in the House of D, as did accused spy Ethel Rosenberg and Warhol shooter Valerie Solanas. In 1957, Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, spent thirty days there for staying on the street during a civil defense air raid drill. Her ban-the-bomb supporters picketed outside every day from noon to two; the Times called them “possibly the most peaceful pickets in the city.”

Despite its bland exterior, the House of D made its presence very known in the neighborhood through the daily ritual of inmates yelling out the windows or down from the exercise area on the roof to the boyfriends, girlfriends, dealers and pimps perpetually loitering on the Greenwich Avenue sidewalk – a carnivalesque Village tradition for almost forty years. Waters first caught the spectacle in the early 1960s. “It was amazing. No one can ever imagine what that was like. All the hookers would be screaming out the windows, ‘Hey Jimbo!’ And all the pimps would be down on the sidewalk yelling stuff.” Writer and film producer Jeremiah Newton initially encountered it at around the same time. “It was this huge, monolithic building, looking like the building the Morlocks dragged the Time Machine into, and the girls were always yelling down, screaming obscenities and throwing things out the window. It was the biggest building there. I sat on a stoop watching the people walk by. I’d never seen anything quite like it before.” The Village writer Grace Paley lived near the facility in the 1950s and 1960s, and walked her kids past it regularly. She wrote that “we would often have to thread our way through whole families calling up – bellowing, screaming up to the third, seventh, tenth floor, to figures, shadows behind bars and screened windows, How you feeling? Here’s Glena. She got big. Mami mami, you like my dress? We gettin you out baby. New lawyer come by.”

Women arrested at antiwar rallies during the Vietnam era found themselves locked up in the House of D with the hookers, junkies, crazies and butch lesbians. On Saturday, February 20 1965, two eighteen-year-old college students, Lisa Goldrosen of Bard and Andrea Dworkin of Bennington, were arrested during an antiwar protest at the UN and sent to the House of D. There, they later testified, they were brutally mistreated and humiliated by male doctors “examining” them for venereal diseases, and forced constantly to fend off the rough advances of other inmates. They were not allowed to use a telephone until Monday. That March, the New York Post ran an exposé based on their testimony. They didn’t experience anything other women hadn’t for thirty years by then, but in the 1960s those other inmates were overwhelmingly poor black and Hispanic women. Dworkin and Goldrosen were white, middle-class college coeds. As so often happens, that’s what it took to generate public outrage.

When Grace Paley herself was arrested at another war protest some months later, she was detained in the facility. Conditions had slightly improved in light of the outcry the Post had stirred up. Paley had been arrested before at antiwar protests, but it had always resulted in at worst overnight stays. This time a judge threw the book at her and gave her six days. “He thought I was old enough to know better,” she later wrote, “a forty-five year old woman, a mother and teacher. I ought to be too busy to waste time on causes I couldn’t possibly understand.” At least she could look out her cell window and watch her kids walking to school.

In October 1970, Angela Davis was arrested in the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge at Eighth Avenue and Fifty-First Street and taken to the House of D. It was not her first time in Greenwich Village. She was born in 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama, where her father was a car mechanic and her mother was a teacher and a civil rights activist. They lived in a black neighborhood called Dynamite Hill because the Klan had firebombed so many homes there. With help from the American Friends, she and her mother moved to New York, where her mother studied for her Masters at NYU while Angela attended Elisabeth Irwin High School in the Village. She went on to study philosophy at Brandeis, the Sorbonne, and at the University of California, earning her Ph.D. One of her teachers was Herbert Marcuse. By the late 1960s she was an avowed Communist, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and affiliated with the Black Panthers. She lectured in philosophy at UCLA until 1969, when her Communist and radical affiliations got her fired.

In August of 1970 a black teen named Jonathan Jackson took over a Marin County courtroom and demanded the release of his older brother, Panther member George Jackson, from nearby Soledad prison. He took the judge, the district attorney and three jurors hostage. In the attempted getaway, Jackson, the judge and one other person were shot and killed. When police discovered that Davis, who knew George Jackson, was the registered owner of Jonathan’s weapon, she was charged as an accomplice to murder, a capital crime in California. She fled the state, which put her on the FBI’s most wanted list. A beautiful twenty-six-year-old with a huge and magnificent Afro, she became a global pop star of the revolution a la Che Guevara. When the FBI arrested her she’d spent a few days walking openly in Times Square, unrecognized because she’d slicked down the Afro and dressed like an office worker.

Within thirty minutes of her being locked up in the House of D a crowd of protesters began to gather outside the monolith, chanting; prisoners stood in their windows and chanted along, their fists raised. The NYPD sent a Tactical Defense Force unit – riot police – and House of D officials turned off all the lights inside, hoping to quiet things down. Instead, women set small fires in their cells, and demonstrators cheered the flickerings in the windows. They dispersed without major incident. Placed in isolation, Davis went on a ten-day hunger strike. She spent nine weeks in the facility while fighting extradition to California, where, she was quite convinced, she’d be convicted and put to death. In fact she would be acquitted of all charges in a San Francisco courtroom in 1972, after spending eighteen months behind bars.

Davis was the facility’s last celebrity tenant. Through the 1950s and 1960s, Greenwich Village civic and neighborhood groups had constantly called for the facility to be removed to some location more appropriate, which is to say far away from where they lived and walked their children to school. More liberal souls in the neighborhood thought it should stay, fearing that if the women were shifted to some more isolated location they might be all the more easily mistreated. Before he wrote the hit Broadway musicals Hello, Dolly! and La Cage aux Folles, Villager Jerry Herman wrote a satirical revue called Parade, which included a song about the House of D controversy:

Don’t tear down the House of Detention

Keep her and shield her from all who wish her harm

Don’t tear down the House of Detention

Cornerstone of Greenwich Village charm…

So I say fie, fie to the cynic

Know that there’s love in these hallowed walls of brown

There’s love in the laundry, there’s love in the showers,

There’s love in the clinic

'Twas built with love, my lovely house in town

Save the tramp, the pusher and the souse

Would you trade love for an apartment house?

Dworkin and Goldrosen’s testimony before a commission studying conditions at the House of D helped lead to its being shut down in 1971. Inmates were moved to a new facility on Rikers Island. After some debate about possible new uses for the Village monolith, it was simply torn down in 1973. The site is now a small, fenced-in garden. In 1974 Tom Eyen’s spoofy play Women Behind Bars, set in the House of D in the 1950s, premiered. John Waters’ star Divine performed in a later production.

by John Strausbaugh

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baeddel · 3 years

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@canmom a few things re: the ‘putsch’

1. In terms of police collusion, I think that the police didn’t really help them as much as we thought. Despite what some reports say, the police did use tear gas. I wasn’t there for it but the guy who’s stream I watched talked about it all day. I also saw them pepper spray protestors at least a few times before they broke in. One account by someone who participated (or claimed to) described people being arrested and so on, before they even tried to enter the building. The by now infamous footage of the police lifting the railings and backing away was after they had already been routed & were retreating because they were so outnumbered.

I think one thing that we don’t really talk about a lot is that these guys are for the most part anti-cop. All throughout the livestream you could hear people yelling “traitor!” at them & exchanging some anti-cop rhetoric. They actually think that the police went easy on or even actively supported the summer unrest because they’re part of the deep state conspiracy to destroy America. While the cops have famous links w/ the KKK and neo-nazis, the putch seemed to me to be mostly made up of old-guard fundamentalist christians, NRA, 3%ers, militia movement, etc. etc. Think: the far right militants who bomb abortion clinics. Q subsumed those movements & they have an ambiguous relationship to the nazis, alt right, NRx etc. Think: Waco, Ruby Ridge, the FEMA Camp conspiracies, etc. The alt right etc. do not beleive in QAnon & generally don’t support Trump anymore; I’m not sure what, if any, role they played in the events.

But, this is the important part, I think it’s right to say that the police basically colluded because there were so few cops. This wasn’t the spontaneous eruption of a Trump rally around the corner, as it’s sometimes been described; it was planned months in advance, publically on facebook and so on. A few days ago George Takei was on twitter telling people not to go counter-protest them (and no one did!). So they had to know people were going to march on Capitol Hill and they put barely everyone there. So the police actually present fought as hard as they could, but they were basically set up: they couldn’t contain them and whoever put them on knew that. So, whats going on there? The police have their own ‘all power to the soviets’ moment here, colluding with a tendency that wants to destroy them (the situation is somewhat similar to police & british army collusion w/ loyalists in Northern Ireland).

2. In terms of ‘do they think most people support them?’, yes, they are mostly QAnon ‘patriots’ who believe that Trump & his allies actually have everything under control already and are just waiting on the right moment. Q has been saying for about the last year that it’s going to be up to patriots to make the first move, go and pull the deep state traitors from their homes and execute them, and when they do so the military & so on will come out to support them. So they were executing a theory of insurrection that has been pretty long in the making & was well discussed and well understood by them. It just happened to be completely delusional. I’m sure that not everyone involved was Q, but the people who broke into the building all had ties to that tendency, & Q just looms so large on the far right...

Also, 3. I think you’re a little pessimistic about the actual potential for a coup to start this way! Again, if we imagine that they were able to surprise the senate, bomb the staff floor & take hostages, as they may have planned (re: the unexploded incendiary and all the zip ties), and they were able to go out and make demands, I really do think that people would come out on the streets and attempt to enforce it in every state. It’d be a very hard road because of the military and because leftists would also be opposing them, but I believe extremely strongly that it’s not unwinnable. If it is unwinnable, we should give up on communism and become liberal reformers. But the evidence imo points to the contrary. Numbers are not that important, the asymmetry of the objectives are strongly in the favour of insurgents, and the US military is disorganized, demotivated and heavily committed overseas. The US has been unable to control the population during the pandemic, it was unable to control the summer unrest, and it was unwilling to even try to control the Capitol Hill putsch.

That said, we can’t really look at this for strategic lessons too much, because (as Clausewitz would tell us) strategy cannot be disimbricated from the political objective. The objective of the putch was to prevent a corrupt election (as they saw it) and restore the rightful president. They believed that if they could scare off the deep state traitors, the evidence of voter fraud could be made public and the votes could be recounted to show that Trump really won the election by a landslide. From their perspective they were actually restoring democracy. Once they do that, no one in the US could go on believing in the government; the deep state would lose its legitimacy and people would back the patriots, etc. So the strategic objective is to go in, destroy the enemy, and show everyone the truth that is waiting right there in Capitol Hill. Then the real work would begin. The problem for them is that even if they were more successful, completely successful, this wouldn’t happen because it’s all based on a lie.

As you say, the objectives of left insurgents are quite different & there’s relatively little for us in big political buildings to seize. There’s a Tiqqun quote I can never find written in the aftermath of some anarchists entering a government building in Greece where they say that the moment you get in there you find there’s nothing whatsoever to do there - no levers of power to pull. (One twitter user made a funny sarcastic comment, “Politics is stored in the building.”)

The lesson of the Capitol Hill putsch is perhaps that an effective strategy is no match for an impotent political objective. Once again what was it’s strength (a seductive conspiracy theory that led to highly motivated protestors) was also it’s downfall (they could not possibly achieve what they wanted to).

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woman-loving · 4 years

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Brenda Howard: Mother of Pride?

A lot of mythology has sprung up around the Stonewall Riots and the annual Pride celebrations that commemorate them. This mythology often serves a community function: by lifting up a particular narrative of events, and emphasizing certain actors, communities create a history that provides legitimacy for their current identity, values, and goals.

As well-intentioned as these mythologies may be, they aren't always historically accurate, and may end up obscuring more complex realities and the contributions of other actors.

One myth I'd like to examine is that bisexual activist Brenda Howard created the first Pride parade.

You can see this claim repeated in various forms in online LGBTQ magazines such as The Advocate, Curve, LGBTQ Nation, Pride, and Instinct, as well as places like the History Channel site, CNN (8th slide), Bi Pride UK, LGBT History Month, and various other blogs and sites. The 25th anniversary edition of Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out also includes this (poorly-edited) footnote on bisexual activist history:

Bisexual activist Brenda Howard (1946-2005) conceives and co-coordinates a one-month Stonewall Rebellion rally, and a one year anniversary march and celebration. This became the annual NYC Pride March that, in turn spawned Pride Marches around the country and the world.

Much of what's been written about Brenda Howard's contribution to Pride is misleading. While it seems that she was on the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee as a representative from the Gay Liberation Front, she was not the primary organizer of the event, nor did she come up with the idea for it. Describing Pride as "conceive[d]," "organized," "planned," or "invented" by Howard suggests that she played a much more prominent role than she did. And when Howard is the only person whose involvement in Pride is highlighted, it results in a distorted narrative where other, more principal organizers are erased.

Brenda Howard has likely received the spotlight due to her representational value to the bisexual community. The presence of bi people at Pride--and even within LGBTQ communities--has often been challenged, and what better rejoinder is there than to say that it was a bi woman who started it all? (A bi woman who later partnered with a man, no less.) The narrative of Brenda Howard as creator of Pride therefore works to justify bi people's place in "queer" communities and history and counter the misconception that bi people are merely apolitical spectators to community activism.

It makes sense that bi people and their allies would spread around such histories. However, the justification for bi people's belonging doesn't rest on this one figure or the role she played in Pride. Brenda Howard is an example of a bi participant in general "gay" activism (as well as specifically bi activism), and her role in Pride doesn't need to be inflated to find value in her legacy.

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Now I'll turn to look more closely at the claims made about her role in Pride, and the evidence for them.

First of all, I must mention that I'm not an expert on Stonewall or its legacy. I haven't done an exhaustive search on all the sources that document the origins of Pride, so it's possible that I've overlooked some evidence. If anyone has any other sources that would illuminate her role in Pride, I'd be happy to consider them.

As far as I can tell, most of the online information about Howard's connection to Pride can be traced to an obituary written by her partner, Larry Nelson, after her death in 2005. Part of the obit is quoted in these memorial articles:

A militant activist who helped plan and participated in LGBT rights actions for more than three decades. Ms. Howard was a major player in starting the annual Pride celebrations that take place every year around the world. She coordinated the 1-month anniversary rally and the 1-year rally/march commemorating the Stonewall Rebellion, which became the annual New York City Pride March. Howard also originated the idea for a week-long series of events around Pride Day, called Pride Week. Most U.S. states and many countries and cities around the world now celebrate Pride Day/Week annually, descended directly from those first marches and rallies in New York City which Howard coordinated and created.

As you can see, several of the other articles take language directly from this obit, which appears to be their source of information. (The Bi Any Other Name footnote also uses similar language.) The only additional details come from the Lolita article, which describes Howard as "one of the organizers of the first Christopher Street Liberation Day march in 1970." Considering that this author includes the correct name for the first march in New York, I'm inclined to believe that her knowledge (or research) extends beyond Nelson's obituary. I think it's notable that she describes Howard as merely "one of the organizers," in contrast to Nelson, who doesn't qualify her leadership in any way.

Another article called "A Long History of Activism" was posted to Gay City News a few weeks after her death. This article draws quotes from a number of people who worked with Howard, and provides more details about her activism and community involvement. Other than mentioning that she was "there at Stonewall," it has nothing to say about her role in organizing the Liberation Day march. This would seem to contradict the claim that Howard was known as the Mother of Pride. The origin of this moniker may be the title of the Bilerico article from the previous set: "Pride founding mother, Brenda Howard's, memorial service announced." None of these articles call her the Mother of Pride.

The one pre-2005 source I've found that connects Howard to the Christopher Street Liberation Day march is the book Stonewall by Martin Duberman (1994). But before I turn to that, let's see what else we can find about the one-month anniversary rally at Washington Square Park and the 1970 Liberation Day march.

I happen to have a book about post-Stonewall activism called Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America by Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney (1999). I checked the index for Brenda Howard, but her name wasn't listed. However, it does discuss the two events Nelson credits to Howard. I'm going to outline and quote some of it to give you a better sense of what happened leading up to them.

According to the authors, in the weeks following the Stonewall riots on June 27 1969, the New York Mattachine Society began distributing leaflets proclaiming that their organization “stands ready to arrange a meeting” with public officials. A man named Michael Brown saw one of the leaflets and went to the MS office, calling for a more “aggressive response.” The executive director of the MS, Dick Leitsch, “put Brown in charge of a new Mattachine Action Committee, and called for a public forum on July 9 at the Freedom House, where the Mattachine Society held its monthly meetings.” (Out for Good, p 26)

The people who met at the forum were “younger, more radical, new to the world of homophile politics,” and included Marty Robinson, Jim Owles, Lois Hart, and Martha Shelley (p 26). Martha Shelley was a member of the New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis, and is credited with proposing the idea of a rally:

Leitsch wanted to work quietly within the system, and he argued against the creation of any new groups that would, he said, divide the limited energies of the movement. But shortly after he called this meeting to order, Martha Shelley rose and proposed a different idea: a march and rally at Washington Square Park to protest police harassment. Leitsch wearily asked if anyonetruly through this made sense. Hands shot up across the room, so Leitsch unhappily suggested that anyone who wanted to organize the march move to acorner of the room. (p 27)

Martha Shelley’s own account corroborates this:

Shelley remembered, “As soon as I found out that gays were rioting against the police, I called Joan Kent, who was running our local DOB chapter, and said, ‘We need to have a protest march.’ She said that if the Mattachine Society agreed, the two organizations could co-sponsor it. So I called Dick Leitch, the head of NY Mattachine, and he said to come to a meeting at Town Hall and propose the march idea to the membership.

[…] Town Hall held 400 people, and it was jam-packed with 398 men, one female member of Mattachine, and me. When I proposed the march, Dick asked how many were in favor. Everyone’s hand went up. So he said, 'Whoever wants to organize it, go to that corner after the meeting.’ A few of us formed a march committee. We subsequently met at the Mattachine Society office to work out the details.

The rally occurred on July 27 1969 at Washington Square Park, one month after the Stonewall riots. My book describes Shelley addressing the crowd of 500 from the rim of a fountain:

“Shelley had taken responsibility for obtaining whatever permits were needed to rally at Washington Square Park and march the four blocks to the Stonewall Inn. It turned out the only permit needed was for a sound system. And Shelley[…] decided she would rather yell than ask for a permit from the New York City Police Department. So there she was in the middle of the Washington Square Park–all five feet four inches of her, as fierce as ever–bellowing at the top of her lungs, a little taken aback by how many men and women had turned up (mostly men), many wearing the lavender armbands she and Marty Robinson had handed out that morning.” (p 28)

She and Marty Robinson are described as “the principle speakers” at the rally (p 29).

Shortly thereafter, Shelley would be among the founding members of the Gay Liberation Front. She is even credited with coming up with the name--or at least proposing to use "gay" (p 31). She and Jim Fouratt were "probably the most forceful" personalities "responsible for setting [the group’s] tone as much as its ideology" (p 41). The Gay Activists Alliance would split off from this group by the end of 1969 (p 46-47).

Considering that Brenda Howard was also a member of GLF--and that some of the early members were rally coordinators--I don't think it's a stretch to believe that Howard was involved with planning the rally. However, it doesn't sound like it was her idea or that she was the primary organizer.

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However, crediting her with "coordinating" the 1970 Christopher Street Liberation Day march is an even bigger claim. Everything I’ve read points to Craig Rodwell being the primary coordinator. I'll start drawing on some other sources here, too, especially "Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth," by Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Suzanna M. Crage (2006).

Before the Stonewall Riots, Rodwell already had a history of gay/homophile activism. He created Mattachine Young Adults in 1964 and the Homophile Youth Movement in Neighborhoods, and was a member of East Coast Homophile Organizations. He opened the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in Greenwich Village in 1967, which served as an informal community center (Craig Rodwell Papers, p 3). For five years he participated in the Annual Reminder pickets, which were first organized by Frank Kameny in 1964 to bring attention to the lack of civil protections for gays and lesbians. Apparently, Rodwell was the one who suggested making this an annual event. ("Movements," p 736.)

Some months after Stonewall, an Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations took place on November1-2, 1969. A resolution was introduced "by Craig Rodwell, representing the Homophile Youth Movement, and Ellen Broidy of NYU’s Student Homophile League" (Nation Historic Landmark Nomination: Stonewall, p 19). It proposed changing the Annual Reminder into an annual Christopher Street Liberation Day:

RESOLUTION #1: that the Annual Reminder, in order to be more relevant, reach a greater number of people, and encompass the ideas and ideals of the larger struggle in which we are engaged—that of our fundamental human rights—be moved both in time and location.

We propose that a demonstration be held annually on the last Saturday in June in New York City to commemorate the 1969 spontaneous demonstrations on Christopher Street and this demonstration becalled CHRISTOPHER STREET LIBERATION DAY. No dress or age regulations shall be made for this demonstration.

We also propose that we contact Homophile organizations throughout the country and suggest that they hold parallel demonstrations on that day. We propose a nationwide show of support. (“Movements,” p 738)

The authors of "Movements" say that Rodwall had friends from NYU’s Student Homophile League introduce the resolution, so it might have just been introduced by Ellen Broidy. Frank Sargeant, who was Rodwell’s partner at the time, says that "two women, Ellen Broidy and Linda Rhodes, were instrumental in getting a resolution for that first march passed"(1970: A First-Person Account of the First Gay Pride March). Another resolution was passed to form the Christopher Street Liberation Day Umbrella Committee (“Movements,” p 738).

So what role did Brenda Howard play in coordinating the march? Returning to Duberman's Stonewall, she was apparently one of the GLF "mainstays" on the coordinating committee:

The first thing Craig did, after the final ERCHO convention in November 1969 gave its blessing to the formation of a Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee, was to diplomatically send out notices to all of ERCHO’s constituent groups that such a committee had indeed come into existence. The niceties performed, Craig then had to find people to do the actual work. He began by notifying all the New York gay groups of the committee’s formation and–making clear (more niceties) that the planned celebration was not owned by any one organization–asked that they send representatives.

GAA delayed until some six weeks before the celebration, and Mattachine was overtly negative until the last minute, when DOB also decided to join in. But GLF responded immediately, and from that group Brenda Howard, Marty Nixon, and Michael Brown became mainstays. To fill out the committee, Craig buttonholed some of his regular customers at the Oscar Wilde Bookshop, and managed to bag Judy Miller, recently arrived in New York from Denver, and a pair of lovers, Jack Waluska and Steve Gerrie. All three turned out to be hardworkers, and stayed the course. (Stonewall, p 270)

The also book notes that "the small group of eight or so people began to meet monthly in Craig’s apartment on Bleecker Street[…]” (p 271).

However, as I was doing some additional research for this post yesterday, I found a comment responding to a Brenda Howard article that appears to be from Frank Sargeant, although I see no way to verify it:

We should talk. I was one of the four people that proposed the march at the Nov 69 meeting of the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations. Brenda Howard was not there. ERCHO created the Christopher Street Liberation Day Umbrella Committee to organize the march. I served on the finance committee of the CSLDUC and at the head of the march. Brenda Howard was liason or representative from GLF that attended one meeting at my apartment. Once.

I don’t know what sources you’re relying on but if it’s the family website created after she died in 2005, it not a reliable source.

Brenda Howard was very peripherally involved the march and had no role in the organizing committee. Her group, GLF, did not have anything remotely like the myths suggest in organizing march any more than any of the many other groups whose names are now forgotten but that I’d be happy to tell you about.

This would again confirm that she did have some invovlement, but it seems to contradict Duberman's characterization of her as a "mainstay." In contrast, Duberman writes that "Foster [Gunnison] fully credited Craig with being the heartbeat of the committee: He was "like a guru," Foster later said, "everything revolved around him[…]" (p 271).

In any case, the march took place on June 28, 1970. It "covered fifty-one blocks, from Washington Square Park to Central Park," and ended with a "gay-in" at Sheep Meadow (Out for Good, p 63). There "were no floats or platform displays, at the insistence of Rodwell, who feared they would distract from the political significance of the day” (p 63). Several thousand people participated in the march and gay-in. Jean DeVente, also known as "Mama Jean," headed the march (p 63).

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In the obituary, Nelson also credits Howard with "[originating] the idea for a week-long series of events around Pride Day, called Pride Week."

"Gay Pride Week" is related to, but not interchangeable with, the Christopher Street Liberation Day march (or Pride parades more generally). The march was the central event, which had already been proposed as an annual commemoration by the time Brenda Howard apparently joined the coordinating committee. While it's possible that Howard may have first floated the idea of a week-long series of events surrounding the march, or even have had a larger role in planning these events, that needs to be understood in its larger context. We shouldn't credit her with creating "Pride parades" or "Pride" in general if she just proposed expanding on already planned events.

I haven’t had much luck finding information about the 1970 Gay Pride Week in New York, so I can't say exactly what role Howard played in it. All I’ve gathered so far is that:

It was sponsored by the Christopher Street Liberation Committee. (National Historic Landmark Nomination: Stonewall, p 19)

"To accommodate the interests of the many different groups participating, the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee named the days leading up to the march "Gay Pride Week,” when individual organizations could host their own events and activities." (Out History exhibit)

"Lesbian activities organized by Women of Lesbian Liberation were centered at [the new Lesbian Center at] the Church of the Holy Apostle, where they held a discussion with WL women and Daughters of Bilitis on the connection between feminism and lesbian liberation. Communal suppers and all-woman dances were held." (here, see more discussion here)

It "suffered some glitches–some poorly attended events and a double-booking with the pro-Castro Venceremos Brigade[…]" (“Movements,” p 741). It was also criticized as "not very well organized" in Iowa City’s women’s lib newspaper Ain’t I a Woman?

The events included "workshops, dances, art shows, conferences, and a culminating 'mass march'..." (Nation Historic Landmark Nomination: Stonewall, p 20; footnote 52: “A Week of Gay Pride,” Village Voice June 25, 1970.)

Given that this is one of the more specific claims in the obituary, and that there's no evidence to directly contradict it, it's perfectly possible that Howard did come up with the idea of "Pride Week." On the other hand, considering Nelson's track record here, I feel like I ought to take his account with a grain of salt.

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Another piece of online trivia about Brenda Howard appears to originate from the webpage "Pride (trope), Homolexis," for which I’ve only found broken links. This information on Howard’s wikipedia page is sourced to it:

Additionally, Howard along with the bisexual activist Robert A. Martin (aka Donny the Punk) and gay activist L. Craig Schoonmaker are credited with popularizing the word "Pride" to describe these festivities.

I’ve not found anything else about Howard’s role in this, which doesn’t make it false. For his part, Craig Schoonmaker does take credit for this:

My name is Craig Schoonmaker, and in 1970 I authored the word ‘pride’ for gay pride. Somebody had to come up with it!

We had a committee to commemorate the Stonewall riots. We were going to create a number of events the same weekend as the march to bring in people out of town, and wanted to unite the events under a label. First thought was ‘Gay Power’. I didn’t like that, so proposed gay pride.

There’s very little chance for people in the world to have power, but anyone can have pride.

As for Stephen Donaldson (Robert A. Martin), as far as I'm aware, he wasn’t involved with the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee at all. It seems he was mainly involved in the Student Homophile League at Columbia. In fact, he says that "late in the spring of 1970 I dropped out of the gay movement, for a number of reasons, one of them the increased hostility from within the movement to my own bisexuality.[…]" (In 1977 he returned to Columbia--and to the SHL, which was then “Gay People at Columbia-Bernard.” You can read his own account of the creation of the SHL and some of their activities. [cw for rape and homophobic violence on p 258/30, second paragraph under “Background”])

Whoever came up with it, it seemed to catch on pretty quickly.

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Although I'm challenging the narrative of her responsibility for Pride, I don't mean to downplay Brenda Howard's activism or community involvement, which appears to have been extensive. Here are some other things she did (info taken from the memorial articles, and other sources):

Involved in the anti-war movement

Member of the Gay Liberation Front

Member of the Gay Activists Alliance and longtime chairperson of the Agitprop (Agitation-Propaganda) Committee, GAA’s speakers committee (source; also source: Howard is mentioned on p. 19 and you can read about the speakers committee on p. 16)

Active in the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights (an umbrella group co-founded by GAA to rally support for the New York gay rights bill, which would pass in 1986)

Worked at a phone sex service starting in 1985

Co-chair of the S/M-Leather Contingent for the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights (I found a notice she wrote about it in a National Leather Association newsletter p 3; link's broken now)

Ran the New York Area Bisexual Network’s Info Line (and possibly was one of NYABN’s founders in 1987?)

Involved in BiPAC ("Bisexual Political Action Committee," of the NYABN)

Worked with the Queens’ chapter of the Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (they now give out an annual Brenda Howard Memorial Award)

Ran "the nation’s first Alcoholics Anonymous chapter for bisexuals" and also ran a bi S/M group

Active in the (successful) campaign to change the 1993 March on Washington name to "The 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Rights" (source: p. 2 mentions that she gathered signatures in New York, and p. 5 says that she was one of seven out bisexuals at the Bisexual Caucus at the National Steering Committee, where the change was voted on)

A coordinator in BiNet USA

Worked on organizing the "Stonewall 25" or “Spirit of Stonewall March” in 1994, which celebrated the 25th anniversary of Stonewall

A member of ACT-UP New York (she was jailed following a “protest of the firing of a lesbian from the state attorney general's office" which occured in 1997)

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While that's all I have to say about Brenda Howard, I wanted to include a bit more information on the first Stonewall commemorative events for those who are interested. The Christopher Street Liberation Day march and Gay Pride Week in New York weren’t the only ones that took place in 1970. The New York committee reached out to other organizations to participate, and events occurred in three other cities.

Chicago activists also celebrated a Gay Pride Week ending with a rally and a 150-person march on June 27, a day before the others (“Encyclopediaof Lesbian and Gay Histories and Cultures,” p 871). Moderate activists in San Francisco declined to get involved, but a few more radical activists organized a small gay-in, and there was apparently an unrelated march as well (“Movements,” p 741).

Los Angeles activists also organized a parade under the name "Christopher Street West." They had trouble obtaining a permit from the Chief of Police, and had to get a court order for him to issue it (“Movements,” p 741). In contrast to the New York march, this event may be more properly described as a "parade":

With the permits in hand, Morris Kight and Troy Perry led their march through West Hollywood. By their count, 1,163 people showed up at McCadden Place at 6 p.m. on June 28 to mark the anniversary of Stonewall. There was a sound truck blasting martial music, a GLF float featuring a homosexual nailed to a black-and-white cross with a sign reading “In Memory of Those Killed by the Pigs,” a GLF guerrilla theater skit with “fairies” dressed with wings being chased by vice cops with night sticks and even an Orange County contingent hoisting a banner that said, “Homosexuals for Ronald Regan.” (Outfor Good, p. 64)

Pat Rocco was another organizer for the 1970 Christopher Street West parade. He takes credit for creating the first Pride "festival" following the parade in 1974. (Although I know Toronto’s 1972 Gay Pride Week had a “Festival of Gay Culture” at the homophile center to kick off the week, which included “carnival events.”)

There’s a video of Rocco talking about it, and I typed up a partial transcript [starting around 1:25]:

So what happened is that they had a big--a whole bunch of the people together in Hollywood--got together and elected me the very first president of a Gay Pride organization. […] And I said, ok we got to do two important things at the very beginning. One, we’ve got to get our 501c3. […]

And I said the second thing is: we got to stop stopping everything that happens at the end of the parade. The parade ends and everyone just goes their way. I said I’d like to have something where everybody in Hollywood gets together at the end of the parade. I said let’s have a festival, and let’s have the parade end at the festival. And let’s just make it that way.

And they said no way! You want us to be there in the middle of people? It’s one thing being on Hollywood Boulevard, and then you’re off and nobody sees you anymore. But another thing is being some place for three days--I wanted a three-day festival--and we show ourselves and everybody knows--I said yes, what everybody knows is that you don’t have horns. You’re not strange, you’re not unusual. […] I said just do it, and I think you’ll be surprised.

They finally gave in. We had a three-day festival. I had seven carnival rides. I had 24 booths. I had a big lot on Sunset Boulevard, one block from the end of the parade. And the place went crazy. The place was packed every day. And at the end of the parade, everyone on Hollywood Blvd has to go to the festival. They all ended up there.

So it was an idea that not only caught fire, but people were calling: what is that guy Rocco doing in Los Angeles, in Hollywood? San Francisco was calling and they said well we’re gonna do it next year. And I said fine. Since then there have been parades and festivals combined together all over the world. And I’m the proud papa. And I’m so proud to be.

I don't bring this up to turn the spotlight to Paul Rocco and say, "oh, he's the real inventor of Pride as we know it," and I don't have any other information to confirm or deny his account. Rather, I include this as an illustration of how Pride continued to develop even after the first year, and how multiple people may have had a hand in shaping what it looks like today and what it's looked like in different cities.

Well, I hope this has been an interesting history lesson, or at least a cautionary tale about how easily poorly-sourced information can spread online and beyond. Had you heard this myth before?

#brenda howard #bisexuality #bi tumblr #lgbt history #lgbtq history #pride #stonewall

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