Tag Archives: Black Lives Matter

June 19, 2025

Juneteenth 2025

Today is Juneteenth, formally Juneteenth National Independence Day, a national holiday commemorating the ending of slavery in the USA. Here is the official Juneteenth flag:

It uses the same colors as the American flag because the descendants of slaves are Americans. (It has been suggested that these days that any Americans protesting a tyrannical government should wave as many American flags as possible to highlight that they are Americans protesting an unamerican government — unamerican as defined by our founding and 200+ year history.)

Here is a good post giving some background on the flag, and here is another good post pointing to more background on Juneteenth.

Black Lives Matter!

P.S. If you’re a science fiction fan and have never read Octavia E. Butler, I highly recommend checking out her work. She’s among the best I’ve ever read, and each book is a unique gem. [see Octavia E. Butler for details].

Stay antiracist, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

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Leave a comment | tags: #BLM, Black Lives Matter, Juneteenth | posted in Society

June 19, 2023

Juneteenth 2023

By Wyrd Smythe

A badly slanted worldview.

There is a disease of the mind, an awful meme, usually passed from parent to child, that sees a person’s paint job as an all-defining aspect of their personality. This disease blinds the mind’s eye, disabling it from seeing past the color of someone’s skin.

Historically this disease has been one of the great sources of human evil. It’s bestial, a hearkening back to the primitive animal reactions of the perceived other. Tragically, the same minds that rise us so far up give us tremendous power to conceive hate, evil, and destruction.

At its worst, this disease — racism — leads to casual murder of human beings.

5 Comments | tags: Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, Juneteenth, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin | posted in Opinion, Politics, Society

August 28, 2020

MLB BLM: Jacob Blake

By Wyrd Smythe

Because of the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin (the most recent in a horrifying long list of names), the Minnesota Twins postponed yesterday’s game until today, which is designated baseball’s official Jackie Robinson day — the day all the players wear #42 in honor of the great Jackie Robinson (it’s normally April 15th, but baseball didn’t start this year until the end of July).

Today would have involved a double-header, yesterday’s game plus the scheduled one against Detroit today, but the Twins voted to postpone both those games.

Baseball teams across the country are standing down in solidarity and support for Black Lives Matter.

The text reads:

“The Minnesota Twins remain committed to using our platforms to push for racial justice and equality. Therefore, we fully respect our players for their decision to not play tonight’s game versus the Detroit Tigers. The recent shooting of Jacob Blake, a mere three months after the killing of George Floyd, shows again that real change is necessary and far overdue in our country, and it is our responsibility to continue playing a role in efforts to affect meaningful reform. We stand in solidarity with the Black community and, as full partners with others in the Twins Cities and beyond, we are committed to creating the change we want to see in the world — where everyone is protected, safe and welcome. There is no place for racism, inequality or injustice in our society.“

Yes, yes, and yes!

Bravo and kudos to the Minnesota Twins and all those other teams standing up by standing down. I support them 100% in this (apparently not everyone does, which is pathetic).

The Twins also posted this in their Twins Diversity twitter account:

Which I thought was pretty cool.

Stay committed to racial justice, my friends! Black Lives Matter!

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7 Comments | tags: Black Lives Matter, Jackie Robinson, Minnesota Twins, Twins 2020 | posted in Baseball, Life

June 11, 2020

Black Lives Matter — Triton Station

By Wyrd Smythe

I don’t normally reblog, but I’m still trying to find my voice on this, and I thought this post very well expressed many of the things I’m feeling. I’ll get out of the way and let you read it.

I started this blog as a place to discuss science, and have refrained from discussing overtly political matters. This is no longer possible. Today is June 10, 2020 – the date set to strike for black lives. I want to contribute in a tiny way by writing here. If that seems inappropriate to you or […]

via Black Lives Matter — Triton Station

Black Lives Matter.

Leave a comment | tags: #BLM, Black Lives Matter | posted in Basics, Life

September 25, 2016

Take A Knee

By Wyrd Smythe

I’ve been considering this business of sports figures kneeling during the national anthem…

My initial reaction was, “WTF?” But after a bit of thought, I decided I was more, “Meh, whatever.” It seemed mostly to be going on in football along with some other sports I really couldn’t care less about

(And, full disclosure, I have a definite antipathy towards the NFL; do not like them at all.)

But then I realized that this was both important and right. Civil disobedience is the very quintessence of necessary but painful social change.

We’re noticing. We’re talking about it. This is where it starts, if it is starts anywhere at all.

Yesterday I read a New York Times article¹, apparently a regular thing they do highlighting the best comments of the week on their social media platform.

The first one was interesting, a lady blamed not being shot after being stopped by the police on being white. But it was the second one that really, really grabbed me. It says perfectly what I’ve been searching to say about the taking a knee thing: