Illinois news

• The Second City’s Algorithm Nation or, The Static Quo feels stuck in the system

  17-12-2018 13:00 via Chicago Reader
  The 107th mainstage revue features talented performers, but it’s strictly by the numbers.On a recent episode of the improv podcast Spontaneanation with Paul F. Tompkins, comedian Tawny Newsome aired some grievances about her time at Second City in Chicago. She said that up until at least 2012, the final year she was a part of the ensemble, female performers were required to wear dresses.…
  
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• Prosecute Cops Caught On Video ‘Planting’ Drugs On Innocent Black Men, Legal Advocate Says

  17-12-2018 00:37 via The Chicago Defender
  Legal Aid Society lawyers urged Staten Island’s district attorney to prosecute two New York City cops who appeared in body camera footage to plant drug evidence after a traffic stop of four Black men in February.
  However, the prosecutor and police officials have denied seeing what’s obvious to many in the video, and they won’t reassess the case in light of the officers’ record of targeting Black and Hispanic drivers.
  SEE ALSO: ‘I Lost Everything’: Innocent Man
  
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• 2 White Terrorists Charged With Hate Crime For Harassing Black Woman

  16-12-2018 20:16 via The Chicago Defender
  Social media users helped investigators in Louisiana to capture two white men accused of terrorizing a Black woman at a Walmart parking lot in November.
  SEE ALSO: FBI Investigates Neo-Nazis Who Stomped Black Man While Celebrating ‘Martyr’s Day’
  The West Monroe Police Department arrested 22-year-old Dylan Reynolds and Michael Walters, 24, on Thursday night and charged them with a hate crime, the News Star reported.
  Reynolds and Walters confronted the woman–calling her the
  
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• Police Kill Black Teen But Charge 16-Year-Old Girl With Murder For The Shooting

  16-12-2018 15:59 via The Chicago Defender
  Authorities held a 16-year-old Columbus, Ohio girl responsible for the death of her boyfriend even though an undercover cop shot and killed him in a police sting operation.
  SEE ALSO: ‘I Lost Everything’: Innocent Man Cleared By DNA Evidence Is Fighting Back
  Columbus police arrested Masonique Saunders on Dec. 13 on charges of aggravated robbery and murder in the killing of 16-year-old Julius Ervin Tate Jr. because of her role in an alleged robbery, WCMH-TV reported.
  The fatal sho
  
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• Prada Accused of Using Blackface Imagery at NYC Store and Online

  15-12-2018 15:11 via The Chicago Defender
  Prada is coming under fire for using blackface-style imagery in at least one of its New York City storefronts and online. As part of a new holiday marketing campaign, the luxury brand was featuring a black caricature with exaggerated big red lips. Photos of the display brought fierce backlash on social media and prompted the company to get rid of the items.
  Chinyere Ezie was walking past a Prada store in downtown Manhattan Thursday when she saw what she described as a “racist and denigrati
  
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• Wells Fargo’s Mobile Holiday Food Bank Makes a Stop in Atlanta

  15-12-2018 13:25 via The Chicago Defender
  The Wells Fargo mobile holiday food bank rolled into Atlanta Thursday, accepting non-perishable food and monetary donations. The pop-up food bank is part of the bank’s program to fight hunger and help people in need during the holidays. Wells Fargo teamed up with Feeding America and its local affiliate Atlanta Community Food Bank for the food drive, and the bank is currently collecting food at about 250 branches in Georgia and thousands of other locations across the U.S.
  The pop-up stopped
  
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• Home Giveaway Lottery Deadline Today; Homebuyer Direct Program To Assist With Fixer-Uppers

  14-12-2018 19:25 via The Chicago Defender
  Elaine Lee (pictured seated in the red hat) is the 2017 winner of the Cook County Land Bank Authority’s first annual Home Giveaway Lottery; she is surrounded by family members.
  Exterior of the home Elaine Lee won in the 2017 lottery giveaway; the deadline for the 2018 giveaway is Dec. 14
   
   
  As a result of entering the home giveaway lottery last year, Elaine Lee, 67, has a new home to celebrate Christmas in this year.
  A sequence of unfortunate events over the course of several ye
  
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• Florida Just Made It Even Harder To Prosecute Cops Who Shoot Unarmed Black People

  14-12-2018 17:46 via The Chicago Defender
  Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law is what has allowed many people to literally get away with murder, as we saw in 2012 when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager whose only crime was having brown skin. But now, the Sunshine State was doubling down on that law — referred to as a license to kill with impunity — by extending it’s courtesy to police officers, who were already heavily protected from criminal prosecution following suspicious sh
  
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• Black District Attorney Removed From E.J. Bradford Investigation Because Of A Facebook Photo

  14-12-2018 15:17 via The Chicago Defender
  There have been many questions regarding how the investigation into the shooting of Emantic “E.J.” Bradford is being handled. Now there is another incident that is raising concerns: the Black district attorney was removed from the case. 
  See Also: Ben Carson Believes The Transgender Community Will Attack Women In Bathrooms
  Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr was originally on the case, but now Attorney General Steve Marshall is taking over due to do a photo C
  
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• Textured Hair Category Continues to Revolutionize the Retail Beauty Marketplace

  14-12-2018 15:07 via The Chicago Defender
  The textured-hair category is inarguably the hottest in the haircare space today. This has been driven by the proliferation of founder brands started by curly and coily consumers and consumers who increasingly want products specifically for their texture type. According to the 2018 TextureTrends Report, more than 80 percent of women with curly and coily hair say they purchase products specifically for textured hair versus general market products.
  This trend is underscored by the latest insi
  
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• Spelman Receives $30 Million Gift to Support New Center for Innovation & the Arts

  14-12-2018 15:03 via The Chicago Defender
  Spelman College has received the largest gift from living donors in its 137-year history from long-standing Spelman trustee Ronda Stryker and spouse William Johnston. The transformative $30 million gift will help build the Center for Innovation & the Arts, the College’s first new academic facility since 1996.
  Chicago architect, Jeanne Gang, founding principal of the firm Studio Gang, has completed a schematic design of the 85,000-square
  
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• Open Enrollment Ends Dec. 15, But There’s Still Time and Options

  14-12-2018 13:09 via The Chicago Defender
  It’s not too late to enroll in the HealthCare.gov marketplace before the December 15 deadline. Coverage may be more affordable than you think.
  A new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found that millions of Americans could actually pay nothing in premiums.As the Affordable Care Act’s open enrollment period nears an end in most areas this week, a new analysis from KFF finds that 4.2 million currently uninsured people could get a bronze-level plan for 2019 and pay nothing in p
  
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• Racetraitor guitarist Dan Traitor on connecting hardcore and union organizing

  14-12-2018 13:00 via Chicago Reader
  Current musical obsessions of Racetraitor guitarist Dan Traitor, Decline front man Fern X Decline, and Reader associate editor Jamie LudwigA Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. …
  
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• Isaac Gomez wanted to know more about the women who were abducted on their way to work in Juarez. So he wrote La Ruta.

  14-12-2018 13:00 via Chicago Reader
  The El Paso-born playwright’s newest work premieres this week at Steppenwolf.Some writers write to explain. Others write to entertain, Isaac Gomez, the 27-year-old author of La Ruta, now receiving its world premiere at the Steppenwolf Theatre, writes because he can't not write; writing is how he finds words for as yet unnamed, unexpressed ideas and feelings.…
  
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• In Shoplifters, the sharpest insights are blurred by sentimentality

  14-12-2018 13:00 via Chicago Reader
  Hirokazu Kore-eda’s film about an impoverished makeshift family won the Palme d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.Orson Welles has made films with his right hand and films with his left hand," Francois Truffaut once wrote. "In the right-handed films, there is always snow, and in the left-handed ones there are always gunshots."…
  
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• Atlanta Super Bowl Host Committee Announces First Round of Musical Acts, Partnerships

  14-12-2018 11:45 via The Chicago Defender
  With Super Bowl LIII exactly 51 days away, the Atlanta Super Bowl Host Committee (Host Committee) has unveiled additional details around Super Bowl LIVE presented by Verizon, including partner activations from Hyundai, Frito-Lay, Ford and Verizon, as well as the first round of musical acts and a breakdown of musical talent by genre for each night of the festival.
  “Super Bowl LIVE presented by Verizon is a free, family-friendly event that gives the general public an opportunity to be involv
  
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• ‘Lynching,’ Blackface And An Afro Wig: Black Cops Terrorized By Racist White Coworkers, Lawsuit Says

  14-12-2018 00:34 via The Chicago Defender
  Examples of rampant, uncheck racism in a Maryland police department included white cops calling for the reinstitution of lynching and painting blackface on a training dummy, according to a federal lawsuit.
  See Also: Police Department Hires White Supremacist As If It’s No Big Deal
  Those were just a few of the examples a group of current and former Black and Hispanic officers alleged in their discrimination suit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Maryland against Prince George’s
  
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• Honoring the vanishing musical culture of Wicker Park

  13-12-2018 21:45 via Chicago Reader
  In some ways, Dorian’s is just one more boutiquey bar and restaurant. But its record store and music bookings connect it to Wicker Park’s 1990s arts community. Last month, Block Club Chicago broke the news that Texas cooler company Yeti would open its second brick-and-mortar store in the 4,796-square-foot Wicker Park space occupied till February 2017 by long-running music venue the Double Door.…
  
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• Overlooked mayoral hopefuls share bold visions for Chicago

  13-12-2018 21:30 via Chicago Reader
  They may have little name recognition and no campaign funds, but the regular people running for mayor are committed to making the city thrive. With 21 candidates vying to be the next mayor of Chicago, hearings on challenges to their nominating petition signatures and other paperwork began this week at the Chicago Board of Elections.…
  
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• Busted! Cop Caught On Video Sucker Punching Unarmed Black Man Lied On Police Report

  13-12-2018 21:17 via The Chicago Defender
  A video showing an apparently unprovoked Florida cop sucker-punching an unarmed Black man earlier this month was more than just shocking; it also served as proof that the on-duty officer lied about the violent confrontation.
  The fictional version told by Officer Adriel Dominguez began to unravel when a fellow officer breached the blue wall of silence by giving the Miami Herald footage of the encounter on Dec. 3. Dominguez was relieved of patrol duties while the police department was conduct
  
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• Print issue of December 13, 2018

  13-12-2018 20:15 via Chicago Reader
  Volume 48, Number 11
  
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• Closing the Education Gap With More Black Male Teachers

  13-12-2018 18:24 via The Chicago Defender
   
  Two recent programs in Chicago are aimed at increasing the number of Black male teachers in the classroom.
  Men of Color in Education (MOCE) is an initiative from Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and City Colleges of Chicago to support men of color in pursuing careers in the education field.
  “Those of us who have walked through the door of opportunity have the responsibility to not slam it behind us, but to reach back, grab someone else’s hand, and pull them through too,” Emanu
  
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• Melania ‘I Really Don’t Care’ Trump Claims ‘Opportunists’ Are Ruining Her Family’s Good Name

  13-12-2018 16:02 via The Chicago Defender
  Every time Melania Trump opens her mouth, she rambles hypocrisies and delusions that she either truly believes or that prove she is willfully ignorant. Now she is blaming her family’s trash reputation on “opportunists.”
  See Also: President Donald Trump’s Voter Fraud Claims Could Lead To More Voter Suppression
  In an interview with Trump’s BFF, Sean Hannity, he asked her the hardest thing about being the First Lady of the United States. She answered, “I wou
  
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• Obama Honored With Human Rights Award While Trump Is Dismantling Human Rights

  13-12-2018 15:21 via The Chicago Defender
  Barack Obama is being honored for his stellar record on human rights, which is a sharp contrast to our current President who has helped to tear the country apart with his anti-Black, anti-labor and anti-immigrant policies.
  See Also: The Disturbing, Growing Trend of Police Fatally Shooting Suspects In The Back Without Consequence
  On Wednesday, Obama was honored with the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award in New York. The award celebrates “leaders of the international b
  
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• Minority Business Development Agency Awards Nearly $2 Million to Historically Black Colleges and Universities

  13-12-2018 14:41 via The Chicago Defender
  Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), announced grant awards of nearly $2 million to four Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) — including $499,497 for Clark Atlanta University to develop a STEM entrepreneurship curriculum that increases student interest in the innovation economy at three Atlanta University Center Consortium campuses.
  In June this year, MBDA invited HBCUs to propose projects that will
  
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• This year’s Animation Show of Shows amuses more than astonishes

  13-12-2018 13:00 via Chicago Reader
  The 15 international selections use a variety of forms, from pencil to clay animation.The selections in this year's Animation Show of Shows (curated, as always, by Ron Diamond) tend to be more amusing than inspired; my favorite works in the program provided me with momentary delight rather than lasting astonishment. The most representative piece may be Business Meeting, a pencil-drawn short from Brazil that delivers an absurdist send-up of corporate conferences.…
  
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• The Winter Wolf is so delightful, with its infinite capacity for wonder

  13-12-2018 13:00 via Chicago Reader
  Otherworld Theatre presents a cozy, nourishing holiday story.With his original 70-minute Christmas "fairytale play," Joseph Zettelmaier takes a stab at creating a new family-friendly holiday classic, and director Lauren Nicole Fields makes a concerted effort to up the Hallmark coziness of the surroundings. Audience members can sit on big, comfy sofas, ensconced amid a half dozen tastefully decorated artificial Christmas trees, and listen to Grandfather tell young Cora the legend of the Winter Wo
  
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• In Stomp, power comes not from being the loudest but from sharing what you have

  13-12-2018 13:00 via Chicago Reader
  And just about anything can be an instrument—even the kitchen sink.To be mortal is to sense that time passes and is finite. To make rhythm is to know that time subdivides infinitely—the more you make, the more you have.…
  
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• Hellcab's appeal remains just as mystifying now as it was in 1992

  13-12-2018 13:00 via Chicago Reader
  Despite the update to a female cabdriver, the script's fundamental flaws remain unaddressed.The reason for the popularity of Hellcab, Will Kern's evening-length one-act set in a Chicago taxicab right before Christmas, has long eluded me. Famous Door's original 1992 production, initially slated for 12 performances, ran for ten years, a nearly unheard-of feat for an off-Loop show. In the middle of that streak, Chicago's New Crime Productions turned it into a movie, featuring Gillian Anderson, John
  
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• Sickle Cell Treatment Act of 2018 Passed in Congress, Now Awaits President’s Signature

  13-12-2018 12:38 via The Chicago Defender
  On December 10, 2018, S.2465 – The Sickle Cell Disease and Other Heritable Blood Disorders Research, Surveillance, Prevention, and Treatment Act of 2018  – was passed by the Congress and now moves forward for the President to sign into law.
  The bill represents a commitment by the government to continue much-needed research geared towards increasing the understanding of prevalence, distribution, outcomes, and therapies associated with sickle cell disease (SCD). It also reau
  
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• Bennett College Faces the Loss of its Accreditation

  13-12-2018 12:02 via The Chicago Defender
  Bennett College has been on probation for the past two years. It won’t get a third.
  The private women’s college on East Washington Street faces the loss of its accreditation after years of financial and enrollment struggles and an announcement Tuesday by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.
  Bennett President Phyllis Worthy Dawkins said Tuesday that the college has appealed the decision by its accrediting agency. She plans to appear at a hearing Feb
  
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• Gwinnett School Board Gets Its First Member Of Color

  13-12-2018 12:00 via The Chicago Defender
  The Gwinnett County school district is the state’s largest school system. It is also one of the most diverse — 76 percent of Gwinnett’s 176,000 students are people of color. However, voters had never elected a person of color to the school board until Tuesday.
  Everton Blair, a 26-year-old African-American  who works in the nonprofit sector, won an open seat in District 4. Blair graduated from Gwinnett’s Shiloh High School, which is also in District 4. He went to
  
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• With Container, Ren Schofield continues to walk the line between techno and harsh noise

  13-12-2018 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  Musician Ren Schofield has been making deranged sounds for years in projects such as noise-rock outfit Gang Wizard and challenging electronic collective Form a Log. With his solo project, Container, the Providence musician is able to fuse all of his past artistic identities into one.…
  
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• Soraya Lutangu creates otherworldly dance music with global inspirations

  13-12-2018 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  Swiss-Congolese producer Soraya Lutangu, who records and performs as Bonaventure, makes music that sounds like a late-night Internet-surfing session fueled by sugar and adrenaline. “I really don’t have any agenda or strategy when it comes to composing music.…
  
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• Shemekia Copeland takes on a wealth of social issues on the hard-driving America’s Child

  13-12-2018 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  When 19-year-old Shemekia Copeland exploded onto the blues scene in 1998 with Turn the Heat Up (Alligator), the reaction was immediate: adjectives like "sizzling," "storming," and "incendiary" began following her around like starstruck groupies; some reviewers even dragged relics like the dreaded "red-hot blues mama" out of storage to describe her. Overheated as some of the encomiums may have been, most captured who she was as an artist pretty well, but some of them missed the mark: Within the i
  
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• Polymath Tatsu Aoki celebrates his kanreki with a night of bass and drums

  13-12-2018 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  No matter where you’re from, turning 60 feels significant, but in Japan they have a name for it. Kanreki signifies the start of a new cycle of life with your troubles and responsibilities forgotten.…
  
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• Music sounds like it comes easy to Chicago rapper Solo Sam on Itis

  13-12-2018 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  Solo Sam started his rap career while playing NCAA Division 1 football for Valparaiso University, and the arts have long been in his DNA. His father, Ghanaian painter Samuel Akainyah, moved to Chicago in 1975 to attend the School of the Art Institute, and Solo Sam followed in his footsteps and became a multidisciplinary artist.…
  
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• L.A. VanGogh proves he's one of the best rapper-singers in town on Everything is Subjective: Episode 2

  13-12-2018 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  On “Goldmember’s Alchemy” Chicago rapper-singer L.A. VanGogh extols the value of labor, with lines arguing that the only way to attain riches yourself is to put in the work. And with his new Everything is Subjective: Episode 2 (Private Stock), he makes sure to show you how.…
  
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• Kurt Vile gets freaky again on Bottle It In

  13-12-2018 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  I was certain that Philadelphia musician Kurt Vile had shed all his weirdness as he grew older and his public profile lept from underground phenom to indie success. On his breakthrough third album, 2009’s Childish Prodigy, Vile was a ramblin’ psychedelic storyteller, playing freaky fingerstyle folk through lush, hazy soundscapes.…
  
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• Josefina's pop strum has come a long way but sounds right at home

  13-12-2018 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  Josefina Asconapé was born in Buenos Aires and began her career performing jazz standards and chansons in Paris. Now based in Chicago, her current style fits neatly into the local indie-pop scene, with touches of country and folk thrown into the mix.…
  
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• Get out your holiday angst with Macabre at the 21st Holiday of Horror

  13-12-2018 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  As saccharine as holiday-themed foofoo can get, there’s always a dark current beneath the tinsel—consider the tradition of Christmas ghost stories, for example. Chicago murder metal institution Macabre are at the core of a distinctly local custom that reliably provides an opportunity to harmlessly vent aggressions in the mosh pit: Holiday of Horror.…
  
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• Celebrated percussion duo reconvenes for their 29th annual winter solstice sunrise concerts

  13-12-2018 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang played their first sunrise percussion concert in 1990. Timed to coincide with the winter solstice, the performance was an open invite, non-preachy spiritual gesture to welcome all their friends who felt out of place attending more conventional holiday-oriented festivities.…
  
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• Celebrated percussion duo reconvenes for their 28th annual winter solstice sunrise concerts

  13-12-2018 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang played their first sunrise percussion concert in 1990. Timed to coincide with the winter solstice, the performance was an open invite, non-preachy spiritual gesture to welcome all their friends who felt out of place attending more conventional holiday-oriented festivities.…
  
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• Inside SAIC’s Bio Art Lab, where art is life—literally

  13-12-2018 00:00 via Chicago Reader
  In a basement below Michigan Avenue, poetry turns into viruses and yeast into music. David Hale doesn't know whether his poem will kill the culture.…
  
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• Anti-Abortion Mississippi Governor Blows His Racist Dog Whistle

  12-12-2018 22:59 via The Chicago Defender
  Mississippi’s Republican governor, while speaking at an annual criminal justice forum, blew a racist dog whistle about “baby daddies”—a new low to add to his previous comments about abortion as “Black genocide.”
  See Also: Macy’s Dragged For How It Portrays Black Fathers In New Holiday Ad
  Gov. Phil Bryant brought up fatherhood at the 2018 Mississippi Summit on Criminal Justice Reform Tuesday in Jackson, the Jackson Free Press reported.
  In his remarks, the
  
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• Racist Gun Club That Won’t Admit Black Members Is Under Fire

  12-12-2018 18:41 via The Chicago Defender
  South Carolina’s Charleston Rifle Club lost the support of two major organizations as the besieged private club finds itself under fire for refusing to accept Black members.
  See Also: Black People Don’t Get To Be ‘Good Guys With Guns’
  The March of Dimes, a charity focused on the health of mothers and infants, confirmed on Saturday that it’s no longer associated with the club. And on Monday, Charleston’s chapter of the Kiwanis Club, a community services organiz
  
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• Black Boutiques for Gifts

  12-12-2018 17:55 via The Chicago Defender
  Getty ImagesIf you’re dreaming of a Black Christmas–one where you support local businesses–
  check out a few of our favorite Black-owned boutiques for the perfect holiday party outfit or gift for someone special! Stay connected to the Defender for more gift ideas.
  Best sellers at Bronzeville Boutique* include: everything glam; “people want glitz and glam for the holidays…dresses, jumpsuits, etc.”
  Some gift ideas from Bronzeville Boutique: accessories starting
  
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• Black Christmas: New Christmas Movies Featuring African Americans

  12-12-2018 17:50 via The Chicago Defender
   
  A Majestic Christmas
  It’s about that time again. The lights and tree are up, the gifts are wrapped (or just about wrapped), we have received the snow already and many are checking those lists again– all because the Christmas season is upon us!
  Alongside the family visits, cold weather and hot chocolate, your TV, laptop and media devices have nonstop Christmas and holiday programming for the next few weeks. In the age of streaming and Peak TV, there are so many holiday things t
  
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• Chattanooga Cop Caught On Video Savagely Beating Handcuffed Black Man

  12-12-2018 15:24 via The Chicago Defender
  On Dec. 3, Detective Blake Kilpatrick and other officers reportedly spotted 24-year-old Charles Toney outside of a home in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Toney reportedly had a warrant out for his arrest for drugs and weapons-related charges. The police report accused him of having marijuana or a cigar, but they claim he threw away the blunt and it was not found.
  Toney was arrested and Time Free Press reports, “While he was handcuffed, Kilpatrick said, Toney kept trying to reach into hi
  
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• Dr. Stanley J. Pritchett Resigns as President of Morris Brown College

  12-12-2018 14:20 via The Chicago Defender
  Dr. Stanley J. Pritchett, president of Morris Brown College has tendered his resignation to the school’s Board of Trustees, effective December 31, 2018. He initially informed trustees at the beginning of the academic year of his intention to step down.
  In a statement, Morris Brown officials said: For 12 years, Pritchett gave untiring and dedicated leadership to Morris Brown College. He assumed leadership at a time when many predicted the end of the life of Morris Brown College, but his wor
  
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