Arts & Culture
Students attend the March to Reclaim Our Grounds. Photo by Kaylah Jackson / Medill News Service
Instead of preparing for the first day of school Tuesday, several hundred students at the University of Virginia spent Monday night rallying to call for more racial diversity at the school and to highlight its history of discrimination.
Image via Step Facebook page
It’s a powerful setup, and the girls’ (and their team’s) journeys are inspiring. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that Lipitz is more concerned with crafting a tidy, three-act narrative than with taking an honest look at who these girls are, and the issues they face.
Image via Baltimore Heritage/Flickr
This morning's statue removals follow a weekend of violence in Charlottesville, Va., centered on the planned removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. On Monday, the Baltimore city council voted to remove and destroy the statues. That process took nearly immediate effect, in the middle of the night Tuesday and early Wednesday.
Rescue workers assist people who were injured when a car drove through a group of counter-protestors in Charlottesville, Va. Aug. 12, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
At least one vehicle hit a crowd of people gathered in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday, hours after police broke up a clash between white nationalists and counter-protesters, according to witnesses.
A member of a white supremacists militia stands near a rally in Charlottesville, Va., August 12, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
Can you imagine one of the white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., making this same argument for the swastika, somehow trying to suggest that it isn't a display of hate but of the heritage of the ancient Hindu principle of "making of goodness"?
Madrid Museo Nacional del Prado's Goya galleries, including "The Second of May" and "The Third of May." Courtesy of the Prado.
More than 50 years later, California still lists lethal gas as a legal execution means. So do five other states: Arizona, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wyoming, although Mississippi and Oklahoma, which use nitrogen hypoxia, don’t use that term. (More on that below). I learned this as I searched on my phone standing in front of John Singer Sargent’s monumental 1919 painting “Gassed,” which is on display in the New-York Historical Society’s exhibition “World War I Beyond the Trenches” (through Sept. 3).
Photo by Jazmine Steele / Sojourners
The newly released movie Detroit inflames past wounds of race, poor economic conditions, and police brutality in a city still gripped with these issues. I won’t give spoilers to the movie but I will share how Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ recent trending statement ‘reclaiming my time’ provides wisdom for a divided community to heal and waste no time re-living the past.
We’re made in the image
The Message expresses,
The Good News attests
That we’re formed out of sod,
That we’re made every one
1. When To Trust A Story That Uses Unnamed Sources
When are unnamed sources valuable, and when do they undermine credibility? FiveThirtyEight presents a five-step graphic to how to weigh your daily news.
2. Why Is the U.S. Handcuffing Incarcerated Women In Childbirth?
Just five percent of women in the world live in the U.S., but the U.S. accounts for nearly 30 percent of the world's incarcerated women.
Image via Eva Blue/ Flickr
Gay is a true prophetic voice. She laments her life, her trauma, and her weight. She doesn’t promise victory but speaks to the pain that so many people feel: victims and survivors of sexual violence, bisexual people, fat people, and lonely people.
Image via The Big Sick trailer
But really, the best performance in the film belongs to Nanjiani —no surprise, since it’s partly his own story. The affection he feels for his parents makes him afraid to upset them, but to really come into his own as a person, and as a comedian, he has to be honest with them about what he wants for his life.
FILE PHOTO: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos testifies before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Capitol Hill. June 6, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein
In a letter published in Teen Vogue Wednesday, 114 survivors of sexual assault ask Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos not to dismantle Title IX guidance they say “enabled many of us to complete our education.” The letter comes the day after it was announced that DeVos would this week meet with survivors’ rights groups — alongside men’s rights groups — to advise the department on the government’s role in ensuring Title IX enforcement.
Liberty and freedom aren’t fancy words or individual guarantees. They’re a process that requires everyone’s participation. We can’t have liberty and justice for all until we’re willing to see the injustice and the lack of liberty all around us, and commit ourselves to doing something about it.
Nick Hamm, director of ' The Journey'
Olcese: In the creation of the film, did you find yourself sympathizing with one character or the other? Was one character easier to make more sympathetic?
Hamm: No. I couldn’t. I absolutely wanted to make the film balanced and fair to both sides. That was completely essential. Don’t forget, both these figures were not liked in Europe before they became statesmen. They were both radical. McGuinness was an ex-member of the IRA, Paisley was a firebrand preacher on the right. These were two men who were pretty much despised universally outside of their own base. It’s like The Odd Couple in the back of a car. I think what the humanity of that is when you take all that away, when you remove from the politician the artifice, and you get a chance to look at them as people, and I think that’s what happens in the movie.
Image via The Journey trailer
Unfortunately, the script, by writer Colin Bateman often tends toward the bland, with the exception of a couple of pivotal scenes. Both Paisley and McGuinness were big, powerful personalities, with many facets to explore. The script, however, takes what could be a truly interesting exploration of two dynamic characters, and often reduces them to a pair of old men arguing in the back of a car. There are some standout moments where beliefs are challenged and moments of real emotional honesty are reached, but it takes some waiting to get there.
Image via Baby Driver Facebook page
The new film Baby Driver is a movie that expresses joy through art, specifically music. The action film from director Edgar Wright connects the joy of listening to a favorite song to the way those musical rhythms color our everyday lives. At its best, the film is a celebration of joy in creativity that bleeds over into a joy in creation itself. It struggles, however, to turn that aesthetic delight into something of substance.
Image courtesy Joe Kay
There are so many loud and shrill voices in various religions today, ones filled with fear and self-righteousness and arrogance and judgement and hatred — the very things that faith tells us to avoid. Those voices try to divide us and diminish us. They twist religion into the opposite of what it’s meant to be, hoping to advance their personal agendas.
A woman protestson the capitol steps after a jury found Jeronimo Yanez not guilty of second-degree manslaughter in the death of Castile, in St. Paul, Minn. REUTERS/Eric Miller
Video footage of the fatal shooting of a black motorist by a Minnesota police officer released on Tuesday showed how quickly the incident unfolded but shed no light on whether the victim had reached for the gun he told the officer he was carrying.
In a nation founded on violence, how are we to respond when young indigenous people are beaten to death by police or young black men are shot in the front seat of their cars? What do we do when young Muslim women are assaulted on the way to say prayers with their community? In an attempt to protect ourselves from violence, we actually bring violence to our schools and neighborhoods, because we live a gospel of violence perpetuated over time by our attitudes of hate and racism toward one another.
FILE PHOTO - Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez. Courtesy of Ramsey County Sheriff's Office/Handout via REUTERS
After five days of deliberation, a jury has found the police officer who fatally shot Philando Castile not guilty on all charges.