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Black Kos Tuesday: The personal and the non-political? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-13
Being nonpolitical
Commentary by Chitown Kev
I will acknowledge that I am seduced enough by a certain diary trending at the top of the wreck list that I tipped the diary.
The diary does mention source material that I have not even skimmed through and that is my only reason for not reccing the diary. The form of the diary does foster a political dialogue using various other written Daily Kos comments. entire diaries, and people sort of as political interlocutors and...I mean, I majored in classics and one of my “almost-minors” (one class short) was in philosophy with an emphasis on ancient philosophy so...I like that sh*t.
A subthread of the comments section zeroed in on what is political and what is nonpolitical and whether one can engage in being nonpolitical.
LOL, I wish.
Since the 2024 presidential election, I have sought to “escape” as much as possible from the day-to-day grind of politics that Daily Kos specializes in and I seem to have found a refuge in reading philosophy and watching philosophical talks and lectures on YouTube. I’m even going to take some formal (but free!) classes.
As to the very idea of escaping from the political grind in studying philosophy….jeez, Athens sentenced Socrates to death (for other gods and supervising young aristocratic men in the wrong direction), Aristotle broke out of Athens faster than Usain Bolt once Alexander the Great died, Cicero wound up getting his head chopped off, Seneca was forced to commit suicide by his former pupil (hell, philosophers were forever getting banned from ancient Rome). One of my non-ancient philosophy classes was on Spinoza’s Ethics and...well, Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated and jailed. Bringing it up to the 20th century, Antonio Gramsci was jailed by the Mussolini regime and died there. Walter Benjamin committed suicide to avoid capture by the Nazis.
Now maybe philosophers don’t get jailed and executed for their philosophy but they do get “canceled” from time to time, nowadays.
And, of course, I am a Black gay man and I’d really like to mind my own Black gay man business as I see fit most of the time.
Of course, all the various descriptors of my identity have been problematized and pathologized (is that even a word?) for as long as I have lived right on down to the food that I eat, who’s been sleeping in my bed, who hasn’t been sleeping in my bed. People have been legislating for my death and have sought that I can only exist in certain ways and...hell, I can’t even be a pilot even if I want to, according to them.
I’d really like to mind my own Black gay man business as I see fit…
Unfortunately, I am not allowed to do that, ever!
It must be nice, though.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The plus-size Black woman statue with her hands on her hips has MAGA in a full-blown meltdown. The Root: A 12-Foot Bronze Statue of a Black Woman Pops Up in Times Square and MAGA is Absolutely Losing it
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Times Square in New York is one of the world’s most popular tourist locations. Folks from all over the globe descend upon the tourist attraction all year-round, so it serves as the perfect place to make a statement. That’s exactly what’s happening after a stoic, 12-foot tall bronze statue of a Black woman popped up seemingly out of nowhere smack dab in the middle of Times Square. And MAGA is losing their ever-loving minds.
The piece was created by artist Thomas J. Price, a relentless legal adversary of President Donald Trump who has sued his administration over immigration and environmental policies. His artwork is part of a series called “Grounded in the Stars,” which organizers say confronts preconceived notions about identity and representation. The statue is of a woman wearing a plain T-shirt, pants, braided hair, an expressionless face and her hands resting on her hips.
Times Square Arts Director Jean Cooney explained how the artwork “is making a statement, potentially asking questions, about what we value as a city, as a society, and hopefully it’s a tribute to our shared humanity.” Per Price’s website, the statue was created to “disrupt traditional ideas” about what a “triumphant figure” ought to look like.
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Growing up in Atlanta in the 1940s and 1950s, Susan Levine’s visits to New York City relatives included being the star of an impromptu novelty show: Her cousin invited over friends and charged 25 cents a pop for them to listen to Levine’s Southern accent.
Even though they too grew up in Atlanta, Levine’s two sons, born more than a quarter century after her, never spoke with the accent that is perhaps the most famous regional dialect in the United States, with its elongated vowels and soft “r” sounds.
“My accent is nonexistent,” said Ira Levine, her oldest son. “People I work with, and even in school, people didn’t believe I was from Atlanta.
The Southern accent, which has many variations, is fading in some areas of the South as people migrate to the region from other parts of the U.S. and around the world. A series of research papers published in December documented the diminishment of the regional accent among Black residents of the Atlanta area, white working-class people in the New Orleans area and people who grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina.
More than 5.8 million people have moved into the U.S. South so far in the 2020s, more than four times the combined total of the nation’s three other regions. Linguists don’t believe mass media has played a significant role in the language change, which tends to start in urban areas and radiate out to more rural places.
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Falsely imprisoned for 22 years, Jermaine Hudson now fights alongside his accuser to end split jury convictions in Louisiana—a powerful story of justice and redemption. The Grio: A split jury and a lie sent him to prison. Now he’s working to change Louisiana’s law
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As 18-year-old Bobby Gumpright rode his bike home from his bartending job in New Orleans in 1999, he began to concoct a story about why he didn’t have any money. In the throes of addiction and not wanting to admit he had spent his paycheck on drugs, Gumpright lied to his father and said a Black man had robbed him at gunpoint.
The fabrication spun out of control when a detective, armed with photos of potential suspects, asked Gumpright to point to the culprit.
Instead, he was charged with a crime he didn’t commit.
Even though two jurors didn’t believe Gumpright’s story, Hudson was found guilty by a split jury, a practice that 20 years later would be deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, which acknowledged its origins from racist Jim Crow laws.
Nearly 1,000 people convicted by split juries remain in prison in Louisiana.
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Republicans are still fighting to dilute the black vote Newsone: Federal Court Rules Alabama’s Racist Voting Map Dilutes Black Voting Power…Again
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As much as Republicans, especially in the MAGA era, fearmonger about election security and voter fraud that largely does not exist in the U.S., the true threat to American voters that we really don’t discuss enough is the years-long trend of red states redistricting their congressional maps with the clear intent — and often the expressed purpose — of diluting Black voting power. It’s a strategy that has already worked in Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana, where the Republican-led Supreme Court has allowed state legislators to reduce the number of predominantly Black voting districts in their states, typically, to a number that fails to represent the state’s Black population.
In Alabama, Republican leaders have fought court orders to draw a second predominantly Black voting district for years. On Thursday, a federal court, once again, ruled that Alabama “engaged in intentional discrimination when it refused to draw a congressional plan with a second Black majority district after courts, including the Supreme Court, repeatedly rejected maps with just one such district,” CNN reported.
“This record thus leaves us in no doubt that the purpose of the design of the 2023 Plan was to crack Black voters across congressional districts in a manner that makes it impossible to create two districts in which they have an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, and thereby intentionally perpetuate the discriminatory effects of the 2021 Plan,” said a three-judge panel that consisted of one President Bill Clinton appointee and two judges appointed by none other than President Donald Trump (in case any MAGA rubes are reading this, ready to start blustering about liberal commie “woke” judges that hate the orange messiah).
So, now, the federal court will determine whether to put Alabama under a Voting Rights Act provision that would require it to get federal approval of its congressional map for all elections going forward.
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Jamaican officials have hailed a sharp reduction in murders but rights campaigners warn that tackling crime should not come at the expense of accountability amid an “alarming” rise in fatal police shootings.
Already burdened with the highest homicide rates in the region, Jamaica has recently struggled with a surge in gang-related violence. But the number of murders per capita has been falling this year, with a marked decline between January and April.
“April 2025 has marked another historic milestone. For the second time this year, we have recorded the lowest number of murders in over two decades,” Dr Kevin Blake, the police commissioner, said in a statement.
Jamaica Constabulary Force, the Jamaica Defence Force and their strategic partners. He added that this “progress is not accidental” but a result of “careful planning, tireless execution, and a commitment to excellence” by theConstabulary Force, the Jamaica Defence Force and their strategic partners.
According to Blake, compared to the same period last year, between January and April, there has been an 18% decline in overall major crimes, and murders are down by 37%.
“These are not just statistics. Each number represents lives saved, communities stabilised, and a signal that the tide is turning,” he said.
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Porto Alegre’s Boca de Rua is sold and written by some of the city’s most vulnerable people, giving homeless people a voice and a sense of purpose The Guardian: ‘Now I steal people’s attention’: how a Brazilian newspaper has turned a city’s rough sleepers into journalists
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Every Tuesday afternoon, Michel Vasconcelos goes to an open-air market in Porto Alegre, a city in southern Brazil, his backpack full of newspapers to sell, to which he contributes words and illustrations. “I used to steal and deal drugs,” says Vasconcelos, 43, who ended up living on the streets due to a family fall out.
It was there that he got involved, nearly 10 years ago, with the project Boca de Rua (Word on the Street) and became, in his own words, a paperboy and journalist. “Now, I steal people’s attention and deal in information,” he says, flashing a smile.
Boca de Rua is one of more than 90 such newspapers across 35 countries, according to the International Network of Street Papers, an anti-poverty organization that supports these types of publications, which are typically sold by people experiencing poverty or homelessness.
The Porto Alegre-based quarterly has the sellers responsible for content – from choosing article topics to reporting the stories and taking photographs.
Michelle Marques dos Santos
Participants have a meeting every week to collectively write the articles. They are then given a stack of about 50 newspapers, which they sell for R$3 (40p) outside shops and at traffic lights. Each vendor keeps the money they make.
“In truth, our newspaper doesn’t have a price,” says Anderson Joaquim Corrêa, 45, who often receives more than 3 reais a copy. “If you get 50 reais [£6.60] in a day, that’s decent,” he says.
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH
IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF.
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