Ferguson Response & American’s United Again hosted a Live #BlackPodcastWeek Twitter Chat on Friday April 1st. We welcomed a wide variety of Black Podcasters to join us for a lively & informative discussion about Podcasting – check out the Storify of the chat below:

by Ferguson Response Founder LeslieMac

Last month I created the hashtag #SlaveryWithASmile in response to Scholastic publishing the children’s book “A Birthday Cake for George Washington”. This book infuriated me and was also condemned by educators, librarians, authors and parents as a false representation of the realities of slavery in this children’s picture book.

Creating hashtags like this one is a great way to provoke discussions and start conversations about social justice issues. Moreover, in recent years, social media has become a fantastic tool for educating others about societal issues in an engaging way.

With this in mind, I have been flooded with positive feedback from people keen to hear more about my campaign on Instagram as a result of the hashtag #SlaveryWithASmile. Since starting this social networking campaign, my following has grown dramatically, and I am now able to reach more people than ever before.

Consequently, if you are considering launching an Instagram hashtag to support a cause that you are passionate about I would strongly recommend uniting your followers around a particular issue that interests you all. From here, your Instagram account can grow, and your engagement should increase.

Accordingly, if you would like to learn more about how to grow your Instagram following, you might want to get nitreo. Instagram boosting tools have soared in popularity recently and can be used to increase your follower count to ensure that your message reaches a wide audience.

Going back to the actual roots of my campaign though, in a blog post on this site I said:

This topic is not a new one. Academics, educators, writers & publishers have discussed how to tell the stories of Black people with nuance & truth for decades. But this disturbing push to depict #SlaveryWithASmile and portray the lives of slaves & their interactions with their owners without including the truth & barbaric truths of slavery is getting out of control.

Four days after creating the #SlaveryWithASmile hashtag, and seeing it trend on Instagram, Scholastic elected to pull the book from shelves and issued a statement which included the following admission:

…we believe that, without more historical background on the evils of slavery than this book for younger children can provide, the book may give a false impression of the reality of the lives of slaves and therefore should be withdrawn.

After hosting a full episode of the FRN Podcast on the topic, I began participating in a series of conference calls with a group of amazing Women including Edi Campbell, Alison Criner Brown, Debbie Reese, Atena Danner, Roni Dean-Burren and more. Our conversations were focused on how to bring additional attention to the issue of quality options for children of color in children’s literature.

The author of “A Birthday Cake for George Washington” has repeatedly tried to portray #SlaveryWithASmile as a personal attack on her or one specific title. In reality our issues with “A Birthday Cake for George Washington” were never solely about the content of one book. We continue to question Scholastic about how this book made it through their publishing process in the first place. However, just because this was one bad publishing experience, it doesn’t mean that everyone will face the same thing. In fact, most authors and books are able to swiftly get to the publishing stage, regardless of the comparison you may have made between the self publishing vs traditional publishing route. When people don’t agree on certain aspects, it makes it harder to approve publishing or to even get it published in the first place. Hopefully, the particular issue we have with Scholastic will be resolved soon. We also have larger demands for Scholastic regarding their commitment to providing quality books for ALL children. The pulling of one book did not quiet our need for answers and action on the part of Scholastic.

To that end, we are pleased to announce the launch of #StepUpScholastic – a campaign for teachers, parents, and students to tell Scholastic to publish and distribute children’s books that reflect and affirm the identity, history, and lives of ALL children in our schools. Scholastic must increase the representation of people of color and Native Americans to match their audiences.

The goals of the campaign are simple, encourage children & adults to critique current offerings from Scholastic and ensure that Scholastic hears their voices in this call for substantive change. How can you engage with the #StepUpScholastic Campaign?

• Read the content created by Teaching for Change which walks through HOW to critique these books & catalogs.
• Submit an email directly to Scholastic via our Action Network campaign.
• Submit a photo or video to the #StepUpScholastic tumblr.
• SPREAD THE WORD – share these links via Twitter, Facebook & email with your friends, teachers and fellow parents. Use #StepUpScholastic
• Read the STORIFY from our Mon 2/29 #StepUpScholastic Twitter Chat.

By Guest Blogger Natalie Jeffers

I woke up this monday morning feeling so blessed and privileged to have been present in body and mind at the historic #MLKNow event. My soul was touched deeper than ever before as i connected with powerful radical words that resonated from our past, delivered by new voices heard as fresh as when first spoken.

The Riverside Church in Harlem is a true spiritual place, it’s a building that on entering you can feel without touching. It was here in this space that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr gave his speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence.” – A speech that most agree guaranteed his ‘murder’ warrant \ MLK looked over the mountain and beyond the walls of the US and connected US State oppression to other lands, and outlined a plan for economic divestment that offered a strategy to limit the powers of corporate America in more ways than the bus boycott previously had. Riverside has a strong activist history and provides a safe space where the Black radical voice can speak freely, in a way that almost seems protected by its looming walls that saw the moral titans of past and present prophetic resistance. Animated by its long tradition of community, it is a space so strong in its identity and proud of its heritage that 60 years later the beneficiaries of MLK’s legacy could safely regroup and reclaim the message in the tone that MLK had intended.

Continue reading #MLKNOW – Celebrating the Words and Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. →

CLICK BELOW TO LISTEN TO Ferguson Response Podcast – #SlaveryWithASmile

@LeslieMac & Ricky from @AUADOTORG are joined by Mikki Kendall, Roni Dean-Burren,Edith Campbell & Allyson Criner Brown to discuss #ReclaimMLK 2016 and the current, historical and on-going saga of the #SlaveryWithASmile narrative in children’s literature.

UPDATES:

Since this post was published Scholastic released a statement pulling “A Birthday Cake for George Washington” from shelves.

You can read my updated Storify with my thoughts below

We also recommend the following places to find additional information and context for this important discussion:

Debbie Reese curated this page which includes a running list of posts & articles related to this book and the fall out.

#SlaveryWithASmile Tweets

By Ferguson Response Founder Leslie Mac

Last year we saw the book A Fine Dessert released to large acclaim. This children’s book about a dessert – Blackberry Fool – as made by 4 different families in 4 different eras includes a slave woman & her daughter making the dessert for the slave owner.

You can read a few pieces about this critically acclaimed piece of children’s literature here & here & the author’s response to criticism of her portrayal of #SlaveryWithASmile here.

Most importantly I suggest watching author DJ Older’s thoughts on the book & the depiction of slavery in kid-lit:

Now in 2016 we have another entry in the #SlaveryWithASmile genre with Scholastic’s new book “A Birthday Cake for George Washington”. This books release was accompanied with a pre-emptive explanation of the language & imagery used to tell the story of one of George Washington’s slave cook Hercules. You can read that piece written by Black editor Andrea Davis Pinkney here.

Of course many of us have had more to say about this book, it’s subject matter and the general subject of depicting #SlaveryWithASmile

• Book Critic Edi Campbell give a critical dissection of the book. 
• Educator Roni Dean Burren made several videos on the topic here & here and a post in response to the author here.
• The author Ramin Ganeshram wrote this response to all the criticisms of the #SlaveryWithASmile depicted in her book.
• Dwayne Key published his letter to Scholastic
• There is also a petition from Atena Danner to Tell Scholastic Stop Promoting Racist “Happy Slave” Book to Children.
• Conversations on Martin Luther King Jr Day: Cake, Slavery and an Unprecedented Pull by Elizabeth Bird
• Under Pressure, Scholastic Recalls Racist Children’s Book by Deborah Menkart
• Smiling slaves at story time: These picture books show why we need more diversity in publishing too by Paula Young Lee
• #SlaveryWithASmile: How Twitter Can Raise Social Consciousness by Nicole Mirra

This topic is not a new one. Academics, educators, writers & publishers have discussed how to tell the stories of Black people with nuance & truth for decades. But this disturbing push to depict #SlaveryWithASmile and portray the lives of slaves & their interactions with their owners without including the truth & barbaric truths of slavery is getting out of control.

A week from today I will be sitting down for an in depth discussion about #SlaveryWithASmile on Ferguson Response Podcast. I will be joined by some amazing women Roni Dean Burren, Edi Campell & Mikki Kendall. I look forward to this enlightening & honest conversation about how our past as Black people us portrayed in literature.

NOTE: I have reached out & invited both the author & editor of A Birthday Cake for George Washington to join us – neither have responded to the invitation.

We are pleased to share this piece from Julian Long originally posted via Facebook. Click here to FOLLOW (not Friend) Julian on Facebook.

?#?BlackCloudsForMyWhiteFriends?

I do not much care for Blaxplaining the way the world works. I get emotionally exhausted trying to answer “why” questions that have no answer just to show empathy with you showing empathy with me. Blaxplaining makes my intestines itch.

I point out obvious things. Signs in the sky that indicate changing weather.

But I don’t often explain why the weather has changed.

I’m making an exception today, because there’s a darkening in the skies and, in the present context of 150 white men overtaking a federal building, I’m going to try and Blaxplain how this unrest sits with us with hope that some of you, who often read my words but don’t comment, don’t share and don’t “like” them (literally or figuratively) can explain to me what you think comes next.

In August of 2014, in a small suburb of St. Louis called ?#?Ferguson? , our nation sent The National Guard along with militarized police to squelch the protests of a few scores (that later grew to be hundreds) of citizens who were appalled at the grizzly murder of ?#?MikeBrown?. These protesters were largely Black, unarmed civilians. There was some property damage. Luckily for some store owners they have insurance from somewhere similar to this Commercial Insurance Broker Toronto company or somewhere more local to them. The media continually called it rioting.

Dozens were arrested. Beaten. Pepper Sprayed. Shot with rubber bullets. And whilst some managed to defend themselves with the most powerful stun gun they could get, more were unable to do anything against the onslaught.

Some months later we pointed out how in a town in ––New Hampshire, I believe –– I dunno, someplace that just sounded really white, large groups of white unarmed civilians overturned cars, burned property, took to the streets over…pumpkins. The media called them revelers. The police were called but they didn’t bring their tanks.

It was whitesplained to us that this was different –– because it wasn’t a hot-button issue and likelihood of severe damage or loss of life was minimal. The Ferguson protests went on for DAYS, we were told – THATS why it had to come to the boiling point that it did.

We didn’t accept that. But we knew it would become the company line. Drawn in the blood on the pavement. Never to be crossed.

So then…Baltimore. ?#?FreddieGray? was given a “rough ride” that severed his spine. And the city went nuts. Students were beaten, corralled into a mall. The police leaked a false rumor about a “Purge” that they were supposedly defending against and so militarized police were called in. Again too, the National Guard. We saw images. Stark, powerful images –– of a man thrown by his dreadlocks to the ground, pepper sprayed in the face for literally doing NOTHING. We saw a gleeful cop flash a Kool-Aid smile to the camera as he tackled this Black man,like a big game hunter after he’d just sniped a lion with a scope on a high-powered rifle from 300 yards away. But no. Can’t be that. We cry for lions. We mourn fallen lions. (?#?RIPCecil?)

There were other images too.

Continue reading #BlackCloudsForMyWhiteFriends →

It has been a week since I returned from my trip to Minneapolis to support the Black Lives Matter crew there & my UU sister Lena.

If you were unaware, the #4thPrecinctShutdown began when #JamarClark a 24-year old black man was killed by police a block away from the 4th Precinct. Eyewitness accounts of the shooting differ WIDELY from the police issued narrative and what began as a Black Lives Matter-Minneapolis occupation of the vestibule of the Precinct became a 19-day (!) community encampment outside of the station.

In the wake of the shooting of 5 Black #4thPrecinctShutdown protesters by White Supremacists a call was made for support on the ground in Minneapolis. And even though I was still in Cleveland completing the #YearWithoutTamir actions when the call went out – I felt moved to answer. I spent 2 days at home mostly doing laundry & cooking Thanksgiving dinner & then headed to Minneapolis.

While I usually do not recap my on the ground work, I felt compelling to write about my experience in Minneapolis for a few reasons:

1. Folks ask me all the time “But what do you DO?” when I say going to a city.
2. MANY people answered MY call for financial help with this trip & I wanted them to know what good their support did.
3. The story of the #4thPrecinctShutdown is something that needs as much documentation as possible – it was & is THAT amazing.

I arrived in Minneapolis on a very cold Black Friday night – Lena one of the leaders of BLM-Mpls picked me up at the airport along with a few other folks who arrived to support the team. We immediately went to the #4thPrecinctShutdown site.

I didn’t really have an expectation of what I would see, but I was surprised to see a full-on encampment, with a soup kitchen, headquarters, press tent, bonfires (it was 19 degrees that night) and more than that: a COMMUNITY connecting outside a police station. This was emblematic of a society that wants to see a change in policing. That is not to say that we don’t respect the good that most police officers do for our neighborhoods. In fact, the shutdown has even concerned locals that there is support for lawlessness here but that simply is not the case. Many have looked towards solutions like a smart house alarm after watching the news coverage of some bad eggs in the demonstrations heading out onto people’s private property. I would say that is not a bad idea but they must understand that what they’re reacting to is not emblematic of the movement as a whole.

I noticed many other things – the police lights bright as the sun on the side of the building, the clearly homeless folks taking refuge in the space created by this shutdown, the circle of people sharing their hopes & feelings about this process.

Lena was the person who called me to Mpls, so my first job was to simply ask her what she & the team needed. I sat in on core team meetings & offered my services in anyway I could.

I created social media images & FB event page notices. I helped run a Direct Action training with several other folks who were from out of town. I assisted in planning a full day clergy & citizen led occupation of Minneapolis City Hall in the #Taleof2Cities action.

Continue reading #4thPrecinctShutdown – My visit to Mpls →