| No Images? Click here   There’s this James Baldwin quote that I love: “To be a negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” And it’s so true: To be “woke,” to be even slightly aware of the way systemic racism and marginalization function in 21st-century America, is to be angry. Rage is what I felt when my friend and I were profiled and followed around the store like we were just itching to steal something (an experience black women and girls know all too well). Rage is what I felt at a different bookstore when I was asked to show ID to sign my own books, even though my picture was printed in the back. If I, a well-dressed and “articulate” New York Times best-selling author, am being treated like I’m not good enough to sit in a bookstore let alone to write a novel, the brown and black kids I write for are having these dehumanizing experiences too. In fact, for many of our young people of color, it’s much worse. Rage is what I felt almost six years ago when I first heard about the death of a kid listening to loud music in a convenience store parking lot, and then rage again when a mistrial was initially declared on the murder count in the case. I felt rage when I heard a guy allegedly selling loose cigarettes had been choked to death by police — despite informing them that he couldn’t breathe. Rage when I heard a kid with a toy gun had been shot in a park. Rage when a woman wound up dead in a jail cell after a traffic stop. And of course there’s rage over the lack of indictments — let alone convictions — in most of the cases where a black American has lost his or her life at the hands of person supposedly paid to keep everyone safe. Read Nic Stone's full essay here.  In case you missed it
 What's trending Spike Lee thinks becoming jaded and tapping out of the voting process is a bad idea.The director told CNN Tuesday that he hopes his new film “BlacKkKlansman” will inspire audiences to get more involved and vote President Donald Trump out of office in 2020. “I hope that (viewers would) be motivated to register to vote.The midterms are coming up, then this guy in the White House is going to run again, and what we’re going through is demonstrated, I think, is full evidence (of) what happens when you don’t vote, when you don’t take part in the process,” Lee told the news source. In light of LeBron James and Akron Public Schools’ creating the I Promise School for 240 third- and fourth-graders, thousands of folks have been inspired.They’ve been inspired to the point at which they have put a petition together calling for current U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to be fired. Indeed, they want James to be hired.“LeBron James is an inspiration to kids all over the country,” the petition reads. “He’s shown he cares about America’s youth and understands the power of public education in helping children meet their true potential.”
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