fuckyeahftmsofcolor:

Friends, and friends of iPhone. Hi, my name is Billy. I wrote an iPhone app called TranSquat. In a nutshell, it is a gender neutral bathroom finder that locates bathrooms that are gender free relative to your current location. You can search, add and share safe locations. It was written by and for the trans community. It is powered by data from safe2pee. You can help build the app by downloading and adding locations in your own communities.

On a personal note, I wanted to write an app for the trans community. It is also my fundraising goal to get 3000 downloads to help finance my surgery with Dr. Charles Garammone. So far, I only have 2956 to go. Every download helps.

Even better, if you would like to support this project you can donate to my top surgery fund at:
http://billyjack.chipin.com/dr-garramone .

Any help appreciated.

Finally, if you could share this with others whom might find this app useful and would like to support this project that would be much appreciated too!!! Thanks for reading.

transfeminism:

It was just announced that CeCe McDonald, who was being charged with two counts of second-degree murder in an incident of self-defense, has just taken a plea-deal—second degree manslaughter with a recommended 41 month sentence. CeCe McDonald’s sentencing hearing will be in a month.

But Ms. McDonald isn’t the first young Black trans woman to be thrown in jail and aggressively prosecuted for surviving a violent attack on her life. Unfortunately, without real systematic change, she isn’t likely to be the last either.

It should be no secret that young trans women of color (TWOC) are being murdered at alarming rates. This is a social problem largely ignored by most people, including the media, the service/nonprofit sector and government. But this is something people in the affected communities can’t afford to ignore.

But attacks on the lives of TWOC don’t go without resistance, and when TWOC resist sometimes their attackers end up dead. This was the case with Ms. McDonald, but it was also the case last year with Akira Jackson, a Black trans woman currently serving a four-year sentence for “manslaughter” for stabbing her boyfriend in self-defense when he beat her with a baseball bat.

Jackson, a Detroit native, moved to the California Bay Area where she became an advocate for young TWOC. She was a Program Specialist from TLISH (Transgender Ladies Initiating Sisterhood), a transgender youth program where she spent her time counseling young women about housing, government assistance, and employment.

If Ms. McDonald and Ms. Jackson weren’t Black trans women it is likely that their cases might not have ended up differently. By being criminalized for their survival, these two women share something in common with many other women of color, including the New Jersey 4, a group of Black lesbian women who were attacked in the New York City’s West Village and later aggressively prosecuted for defending themselves. The attacker fully recovered, but the women were forced to serve time.

It’s a sad irony that we promote self-defense classes as a way of combating violence against women, yet many of the women of color, trans and cis alike, are currently imprisoned precisely because they fought back against violence in their homes and in the streets.

Too often trans and queer women of color survive violence in their homes and on the streets only to have the police, courts and prison-industrial complex come after them for having the audacity to survive in a world where, as Audre Lorde said in her poem “A Litany For Survival,” they “were never meant to survive.”

(via squintyoureyes)

adailyriot:

South Dakota Seizes 5000 Lakota Children

One afternoon in 2008, Janice Howe—a Dakota Indian—waited at the bus stop for her grandchildren to come home from school. They never arrived.

That afternoon, a social worker had taken Janice’s grandchildren. They were driven to a white foster facility hundreds of miles away. The reason stated in the case file: a “rumor” that Janice’s daughter, Erin Yellow Robe, had been using drugs. She hadn’t. To this day, Janice’s daughter hasn’t been charged or arrested for drugs—or anything else.

For the next year and a half, Janice fought to get her grandchildren back. She called the state’s Director of Social Services. She wrote letters to the Governor. Finally, she convinced her tribe’s Council to threaten the state with kidnapping. A few weeks later, her grandchildren were returned…on a “trial basis.”

Recently, Janice’s story was told in an NPR investigative-series by award-winning journalist Laura Sullivan. If you haven’t listened to the story, it’s a must hear.

Since 2005, the Lakota People’s Law Project has been working with hundreds of families who share Janice’s story. But they haven’t all been so lucky. Over the past decade, the State Department of Social Services has taken more than 5,000 Native American children from their homes. It’s easy to see why—for every Lakota child in state-sponsored care, South Dakota receives thousands of dollars a year in federal monies.

What’s the good news? We can do something about it!

The Lakota People’s Law Project is currently compiling court-admissible evidence and preparing a federal civil rights action on behalf of South Dakota’s Native families. Recently, we helped Janice Howe host a forum to teach parents and relatives about their rights under the Indian Child Welfare Act. More than 160 Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota attended the meeting.

To be successful in this work, we need to build a chorus of support across the country. We hope that you will add your voice to this effort.

You can start by signing a letter of support to Janice Howe and all the other grandmothers like her.

Please forward this email to your friends and share Janice’s story to help us grow a strong network of people who care.

Together, we can help the Lakota reclaim their rights and get their children back!

As we say in Lakota—pilamaya—thank you.
Sara Nelson
Executive Director

Madonna Thunder Hawk
Organizer and Tribal Liaison

(Source: brightmoments, via monkeyknifefight)

deadasdisco:

From ars technica:

Google has also added some new security functionality to Chrome. Every time that the user downloads a file, the browser will compare it against a whiltelist of known-good files and publishers. If the file isn’t in the whitelist, its URL will be transmitted to Google’s servers, which will perform an automatic analysis and attempt to guess if the file is malicious based on various factors like the trustworthiness of its source. If the file is deemed a potential risk, the user will receive a warning.

Google says that data collected by the browser for the malware detection feature is only used to flag malicious files and isn’t used for any other purpose. The company will retain the IP address of the user and other metadata for a period of two weeks, at which point all of the data except the URL of the file will be purged from Google’s databases.

Users who are concerned about the privacy implications of this functionality can prevent the browser from relaying this information to Google by disabling the phishing and malware protection features in the browser’s preferences. You can refer to the official Chromium blog for additional details about the malware detection feature.

(Source: widowings, via fromtoday)

occupyallstreets:

occupyallstreets:

Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said the shooting happened following a struggle with the suspect.  He said an officer from the Special Narcotics Unit fired one time, striking 18-year-old Rahmarley Graham in the chest.

The shooting happened around 3 p.m. Thursday afternoon in the bathroom of the apartment house where Graham lived with his mother and grandmother.

Graham was rushed to Montefiore Hospital and pronounced dead. The suspect’s mother, Constance Malcolm, claims police chased her son because he had marijuana on him and that he was unarmed.

The suspect’s mother also said that the teen’s grandmother and 6-year-old brother were inside the house at the time of the shooting.

“In the bathroom they shot him. My 6-year-old son was there and saw everything,” Malcolm said. “I’m going to get justice.”

The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Unit is investigating the details.

Source

Update: The NYPD has admitted that there was no struggle and the police were undercover and in plain clothes.

It’s not clear whether the officers identified themselves before pursuing Rahmarley Graham.

This marks the third young black man killed by the NYPD in last week.

(via squintyoureyes)