Good morning!
Welcome to Issue 12.4 of Digestable, your daily mouthful of real things happening in the world, minus alarmist pandemic news.
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Today’s news, fermented:
It’s been a hard week for hope. But the visionary demands of Movement for Black Lives and the newly-released, long-researched 8 Can’t Wait policy platform show us a path forward. (Both of those links bring you to ways you can act, from making phone calls to donations to growing food.)
This morning, I woke up to the sound of helicopters circling, most likely doing nothing other than wasting tax dollars. I looked at the news, anticipating the worst. It delivered.
Here are some things that happened in the last day (cw: violence):
Jamel Floyd, a prisoner in Brooklyn, was pepper sprayed after seeming “disruptive” in his cell, which led him to die of a heart attack.
Justin Howell, a peaceful protester in Texas, was shot with something the Austin police said was “less-lethal force.” When other protestors attempted to move Justin and get him medical care, they too were shot at. Justin is now in critical condition at a Texas hospital.
Eric Garcetti, mayor of Los Angeles, a city that has one of the most fraught histories with policing, announced yesterday that he was moving $250 million from the LAPD budget to invest in communities of color. Yes, this is good—but the LAPD budget is $3 billion dollars. Looks like ‘democratic’ officials trying to placate protesters so we can all go home and forget about white supremacy.
Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, apologized to the NYPD, which you know, has only done its best, because he hurt their feelings by saying the department ineffectively ‘tamped down’ protests. I’m not even gonna analyze that, because wow, talk about a no-win situation.
Three NYPD officers were attacked last night on “looting watch” and this is what the NYPD chief said: “It appears to be a complete, cowardly, despicable, unprovoked attack on a defenseless police officer, and thank God we're not planning a funeral right now.” While it’s good that more people were not killed, it’s completely absurd to call police officers defenseless. As we see in the above cases, police are armed, across the country, with all sorts of weapons. I’ve noticed the Boston police’s weapon of choice is a long straight wooden baton. Have you ever, I mean ever, seen an on-duty police officer unarmed or without defenses?
Yesterday, I rode my bike to downtown Boston, mostly, to be completely honest, because when I was down there over the weekend for a protest, I noticed there was a freshly painted bike lane. Was I being naive? Probably. But talk about ‘democratic’ city officials placating people—almost all the streets with said bike lanes were blocked off by armed police, the military police (does anyone know what’s up with this? if so, email me please!), and tanks.
Because I’m a small white person, I thought, cool, let me just go talk to some of these armed state-sanctioned terrorists and see what’s up.
In the course of a few-minute interaction, I was told to ‘educate myself,’ asked if I wanted to ‘stand by while minority business owners had their life’s work destroyed by looters’ (lol idiots, downtown Boston is a place with rich racist history, and every store there is a chain), and that police were ‘great’ for not attacking protestors. When I paused to clarify if one of them had really just said that police should be attacking protestors, another chimed in to say “Oh, you think you’re so clever, trying to get that sound bite on your telephone that you’re recording us on.” I was recording them—maybe I’ll edit it down and share it sometime for your listening pleasure, and in case you need any reminder that All Cops Are Bastards, shorthand for, it’s time to defund the police.
**correction from yesterday: I said that Ella Johnson was elected as the new mayor of Ferguson, but her name is really Ella Jones.
*Hot Goss*
Brought to you by the superb Latifah Azlan.
In the wake of a series of brutal extrajudicial murders of innocent Black people, the uprisings for Black Lives continue on in all 50 states and at least 430 cities across the U.S., with additional protests of support springing up globally from London, to Paris, to Athens, to Tokyo, and even the Marshall Islands.
Celebrities have, of course, chimed in with their opinions on the protests, rallies, and rebellions that have been taking place over the last two weeks. Some have taken to the streets with (extra)ordinary people, some have donated to bail funds and organizations working on racial justice, and some are being called out for statements that are tone-deaf and out of alignment with what their actions have been in the past.
But one is being exposed for the nasty, potentially racist diva that she is – and her name is Lea Michele.
I was never a fan of Glee growing up, but being the gossip fiend that I am, have always heard ruuuumors about how awful Lea Michele is to work with. And I low-key believe it considering shorty hasn’t been in anything that hasn’t flopped since Glee ended. And now we know exactly why.
Over the weekend, Lea tweeted a sentiment of support for the Black Lives Matter protests, only to be called out by actress Samantha Marie Ware for making her life and first television gig as a supporting actress on Glee a living nightmare. Responding directly to Lea in all caps lock, Samantha revealed that Lea told everyone on set that she would “shit in my [Samantha]’s wig” if the opportunity presented itself, “amongst other traumatic microaggressions” that occurred during her time on set.
And truly, this would not have been as big of a story as it became had it not been for other former Glee starschiming in agreement. Even her former Broadway co-stars are coming out to share their own stories of just how terrible it was to work with Lea. And I say “potentially racist” at the beginning of this goss because although Lea seemed to be an equal opportunity b*tch to everyone around her, it’s pretty telling to me that many of her former Black co-stars were the first to coalesce around Samantha’s initial tea-spilling tweet and share their own experiences of her mistreatment of them. Anyway, here’s the inevitable apology. I’ll save you the click too to let you know that Lea basically says “I did a lot of things that were terrible that I don’t remember every single one. I’m learning, ok guys?”
I mean Jessica Lange tried to tell us, guys. I don’t know why we didn’t listen to our Supreme. She’s never been wrong.