Josephine Baker, later known as ‘Bronze Venus’, ‘Black Pearl’ and ‘Créole Goddess’ was born in America in 1906 and later moved to France to become a singer, dancer, and actress. She was the first African-American woman to star in a major motion picture, and became famous worldwide.
Though she grew up as a maid in wealthy white households she eventually became an exotic dancer in France, famously appearing in next to no clothing, and became a French citizen in 1937.
Ernest Hemingway referred to Baker as ‘the most sensational woman anyone ever saw’ and she received approximately 1500 marriage proposals in her life time. She became a muse for Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Christian Dior. She had a variety of exotic pets including a cheetah named Chiquita, a chimpanzee named Ethel, a pig named Albert, a snake named Kiki, a goat, a parrot, parakeets, fish, three cats, and seven dogs.
When WWII broke out, Baker became a volunteer spy for France, and assisted the French Resistance by smuggling messages written in invisible ink on sheet music. She made great efforts to aid those in danger of enemy attack, sent Christmas presents to French soldiers, and smuggled information she gathered in Spain back to France by pinning notes containing the information on the inside of her underwear. She was awarded the Medal of Resistance with Rosette and later named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.
Baker also aided many civil rights movements by refusing to perform to segregated audiences and storming out of a club in Manhattan with actress Grace Kelly after she was refused service. She worked with the NAACP and spoke at a Washington march alongside Martin Luther King Jr. as the only official female speaker. Baker was actually asked by Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow to take his place as leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, but Baker declined on the grounds her twelve adopted children ‘were too young to lose their mother’.
Baker died in 1975, four days after her final show, attended by such names as Mick Jagger, Shirley Bassey, and Liza Minnelli.
Oh and she was queer and had a relationship with Frida Kahlo. All around badass.
I’d like a movie about her life too, please.
(via aquapunk)
“I would totally watch wrestling if the wrestlers where this adorable”
boy do i have bad news for u
see you next raw bye
SEE, GUYS? WRASSLIN!
![aquapunk:
gopherfrog:
allisticntprivilege:
girljanitor:
goldenheartedrose:
joanthedeductionist:
allisticntprivilege:
fyeahpdp:
Privilege Denying Dude: [Picture: Background: 8 piece pie style color split with red and teal alternating. Foreground: White guy with glasses and light shadow wearing a sweat shirt over a button down and short black hair. Has a smug, arrogant facial expression and crossed arms. Top text: “ [People with learning disabilities] ” Bottom text: “ [should be paid less than minimum wage] ”]
I don’t think this needs a trigger warning but unfortunatly,this is a political view here in England. http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/adult-care-blog/2011/06/tory-mp-let-disabled-work-below-minimum-wage-to-gain-jobs.html I’m not even joking, I wish I was. The link contains the “logic” behind this including quotes from the original claims made by a conservative MP (our prime minister is conservative) that people, like myself, are “less productive” and therefore should be paid less in order to “help us”.
I don’t think I even need to point out everything that is wrong with this, the exploitation that will result is apparent even to my less productive brain.
SO:
This is a UK story, and what is called learning disabilities in the UK covers at least intellectual disability and possibly some other disabilities in the USA.
This exists in the USA already in the form of sheltered workshops and has for years.
Also the bolded.
this is terrifying and disgusting wow
Yep. I really am surprised more people don’t know or care. Like, great, boycott the Salvation Army because they’re cissexist and heterosexist. Yes, do! But don’t you dare say Goodwill is a good company/ a good alternative when they pay disabled workers just PENNIES per hour. Don’t you fucking DARE.
To clarify:
It has been legal to pay people with disabilities subminimum wages since the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1938. Specifically, for more than seventy years Section 14(c) of the FLSA has allowed the secretary of labor to grant special wage certificates to entities that provide employment to workers with disabilities, permitting them to pay their disabled workers at rates that are lower than the federal minimum wage and excluding people with disabilities from the workforce protection of the federal minimum wage enjoyed by all other Americans.
And yes, this includes people with Autism, anxiety disorders, physical disabilities, and cognitive/developmental disorders:
Employed in a publicly funded sheltered workshop in Beaverton, Ore., Paula Lane has earned as little as 40 cents an hour. Lane, who has autism and an anxiety disorder, works with 100 other people with mental and physical disabilities.
Sheltered workshops hire people with disabilities to do simple labor, such as folding bags, packaging gloves, and shredding paper. The only nondisabled people the workers interact with are staff and managers. Their jobs don’t offer training for advancement, and environments can be noisy, crowded, and hazardous.
While promoted as stepping stones to mainstream employment, these ghettoized workplaces are often nothing more than sweatshops. The National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) published a scathing critique, called “Segregated and Exploited: the Failure of the Disability Service System to Provide Quality Work.” The report said that these job sites “have replaced institutions in many states as the new warehousing system,” one that “keeps people with disabilities in the shadows.”
More info, including on why sheltered workshops are bad.
My sister, who has down syndrome, was paid $0.80 USD per hour when she did janitorial work for a local restaurant while I was in high school. I didn’t understand how that was ok, back then, or how anyone could get away with something like that, but now I know that it’s because people with ANY kind of disability are looked at by society as a whole as “inferior” and “less capable”. And this shit fucking ENRAGES me.
DD:
Fuckkkkk that](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmzdxcR6Cz1qgy0fio1_400.jpg)
Privilege Denying Dude:
[Picture: Background: 8 piece pie style color split with red and teal alternating. Foreground: White guy with glasses and light shadow wearing a sweat shirt over a button down and short black hair. Has a smug, arrogant facial expression and crossed arms.
Top text: “ [People with learning disabilities] ” Bottom text: “ [should be paid less than minimum wage] ”]I don’t think this needs a trigger warning but unfortunatly,this is a political view here in England. http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/adult-care-blog/2011/06/tory-mp-let-disabled-work-below-minimum-wage-to-gain-jobs.html I’m not even joking, I wish I was. The link contains the “logic” behind this including quotes from the original claims made by a conservative MP (our prime minister is conservative) that people, like myself, are “less productive” and therefore should be paid less in order to “help us”.
I don’t think I even need to point out everything that is wrong with this, the exploitation that will result is apparent even to my less productive brain.
SO:
This is a UK story, and what is called learning disabilities in the UK covers at least intellectual disability and possibly some other disabilities in the USA.
This exists in the USA already in the form of sheltered workshops and has for years.
Also the bolded.
this is terrifying and disgusting wow
Yep. I really am surprised more people don’t know or care. Like, great, boycott the Salvation Army because they’re cissexist and heterosexist. Yes, do! But don’t you dare say Goodwill is a good company/ a good alternative when they pay disabled workers just PENNIES per hour. Don’t you fucking DARE.
It has been legal to pay people with disabilities subminimum wages since the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1938. Specifically, for more than seventy years Section 14(c) of the FLSA has allowed the secretary of labor to grant special wage certificates to entities that provide employment to workers with disabilities, permitting them to pay their disabled workers at rates that are lower than the federal minimum wage and excluding people with disabilities from the workforce protection of the federal minimum wage enjoyed by all other Americans.
Employed in a publicly funded sheltered workshop in Beaverton, Ore., Paula Lane has earned as little as 40 cents an hour. Lane, who has autism and an anxiety disorder, works with 100 other people with mental and physical disabilities.
Sheltered workshops hire people with disabilities to do simple labor, such as folding bags, packaging gloves, and shredding paper. The only nondisabled people the workers interact with are staff and managers. Their jobs don’t offer training for advancement, and environments can be noisy, crowded, and hazardous.
While promoted as stepping stones to mainstream employment, these ghettoized workplaces are often nothing more than sweatshops. The National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) published a scathing critique, called “Segregated and Exploited: the Failure of the Disability Service System to Provide Quality Work.” The report said that these job sites “have replaced institutions in many states as the new warehousing system,” one that “keeps people with disabilities in the shadows.”
More info, including on why sheltered workshops are bad.
My sister, who has down syndrome, was paid $0.80 USD per hour when she did janitorial work for a local restaurant while I was in high school. I didn’t understand how that was ok, back then, or how anyone could get away with something like that, but now I know that it’s because people with ANY kind of disability are looked at by society as a whole as “inferior” and “less capable”. And this shit fucking ENRAGES me.
DD:
Fuckkkkk that
I wish people wouldn’t just see me as the Asian girl who beats everyone up, or the Asian girl with no emotion. People see Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock in a romantic comedy, but not me. You add race to it, and it became, ‘Well she’s too Asian’, or ‘She’s too American’. I kind of got pushed out of both categories. It’s a very strange place to be. You’re not Asian enough and then you’re not American enough.
God damn. Damn damn damn.
(Source: joanwatson)
I LOVE THIS FOREVER.
shittin on your ableist language
Philadelphia: High school students walk out of class and march to City Hall to protest severe budget cuts and planned school closings, May 9, 2013.
The budget cuts are absolutely horrific. Here are some of the proposed changes:
- Schools with more than 1,000 students would no longer be required to have librarians or librarian assistants.
- Schools would no longer be required to have counselors, and counselors’ caseloads would no longer be capped.
- Teachers could be assigned to unlimited classes outside their subject area, and high school teachers could be assigned an extra class without pay. There would be no limit on amount of consecutive time taught in a school day.
- There would be no limit on class size
- The district would no longer be required to provide copy machines, or “a sufficient number of instructional materials and textbooks.”
- Counselors would no longer be guaranteed to have rooms with privacy and confidentiality, a telephone, a locked filing cabinet and a door.
There’s more here.
notice most of the posters are children of color
I just want you to notice
(via aquapunk)
Watching a show called “Your Style in His Hands”.
Or, more accurately, “Throw Away All Your Wife’s Clothes, Buy New Ones That Make Her Feel Uncomfortable And Are Only Appropriate For Summer And In So Doing Assert Financial Control Over Her, Reinforce The Idea That She Needs Your Approval For All Her Outfits And Social Outings And Make Her Feel Even More Shit About Herself Than She Does Already Probably All Thanks To Being Married To A Cunt Like You”
For the love of god this is actually a show?
