Tag Archives: #BLM

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.


Black Lives Matter — Triton Station

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.


Take A Knee

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

kneeling

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:

Rioting and angry protest … “Why can’t you just peacefully protest?”

Kneeling peacefully … “No, not like that.”

~Darius Ensey (on Facebook)

Exactly. Nail; hammer; head! I can’t think of a better way to put it.

Because here’s the awful thing: When you’re black, sometimes there’s just no winning.

So maybe we should all take a knee and keep talking about this. Hell, maybe we could even do something about it.

Ya think?


[1] I’m a White Lady. Perhaps That Is Why I Am Not Dead., By Lela Moore and Lindsey Underwood, September 24, 2016.