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Herrana Adisu’s ‘River’ Addresses Ethiopian Beauty Standards – Essence

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Courtesy of Kendall Bessent

What does visibility appear to be? Growing up in Ethiopia, SheaMoisture Grant– Filmmaker and artist Herrana Adisu’s work is devoted to shedding light on women in conflict and sweetness standards in her home country. This can also be the case in her latest film, supported by Tina Knowles. “[River is] “It’s a story that I’ve been writing in my head my whole life because it’s the foundation of my life and my livelihood as a child,” Adisu tells ESSENCE.

Herrana Adisu's

After winning the Blueprint Grant last August, SheaMoisture has taken on the role of a creative agency Chucha Studio to provide a movie that might bring to life a narrative that the black community could relate to. Focusing on culturally and politically sensitive topics—from access to water and education to ancestral lessons, forced marriages, and sweetness standards—Adisu took the funds back to Ethiopia (to work with a neighborhood production house Dog Movies) tell her story.

“I wanted the film to have these complicated conversations that we don’t always have in this day and age,” she says. For example, Ethiopian stick-and-poke tattooing (often known as “Niksat”) is a standard tradition that runs through each of her pieces. “Growing up, I always thought it was beautiful,” she says. “But there’s a certain reluctance to do it, because a lot of women don’t feel like they’re consenting to have a permanent tattoo.”

Herrana Adisu's

Referencing cultural and traditional views of beauty, she cites spiritual icons of black hair within the church as a central theme. “Our old Bibles and paintings that I grew up seeing are of black angels and they have mini afros,” says Adisu, who placed them on the actors alongside cornrows, scarves and hairstyles. “My blackness was so obvious to me that I wanted to show that in the film as well.”

Herrana Adisu's

But as an artist, she also embodies the sweetness she captures. After shooting in Ethiopia, Adisu returned to New York to take part in the series alongside .[Photographer] Kendall Bessant I had the thought to check my limits in doing this cone on my head,” she says. “It’s very easy to push those limits to a certain extent whenever you’re behind the lens after which in front of it.”

Herrana Adisu's

In one photo, she props her chin on a jewellery stand, her hair bouffant, and in one other, her curls are in front of a riverscape, alluding to the source of life within the film. “Water flows in the global South, especially in the rivers of Utopia, are very important not only in rural communities but also in urban ones,” she says.

But the river can also be a source of vulnerability for girls, who’re exposed to violence, kidnapping and trafficking as they carry water. “I thought that was a powerful catalyst that brought the whole aspect of the film together.”

Herrana Adisu's


This article was originally published on : www.essence.com
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Politics and Current

Donald Trump is building the Dallas Cowboys out of a presidential administration

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Donald Trump, theGrio.com

Trump voters remember when America was great.

They remember when smart, capable white men didn’t lose their jobs to unskilled diversity staff. They clearly remember when colleges admitted students based on “merit” slightly than affirmative motion. Before the anti-white “woke mob” began imposing “cancel culture”, black people didn’t at all times complain about racism, men had sex with women, transgender people didn’t exist, women didn’t have abortions, and Mexicans stayed in Mexico.

Except it never happened.

Even if this era of American greatness never happened, many white people. That’s why Trump based his entire presidential campaign solely on white fear, xenophobia and resentment. This is also why his chaotic, racist try and return to the White House was so successful. The recent president-elect has managed to tap into what white America wants most:

Size.

And in the first round, Donald Trump is elected attorney general Matt Gaetz as attorney general.

You should not be shocked that accused of human traffickingelection denial pro-criminal, anti-justice, single parent an adult black child could develop into the next attorney general. After all, Pete Hegseth, the Fox News commentator who was prevented from approaching the president by the Department of Defense because of his connections with extremist groupshe could develop into secretary of defense. Literally nine Indian tribes prohibited Trump’s election to Chief of Homeland Security from their Native American homelands. Right-wing extremist Stephen Miller will function deputy chief of staff policy and advises DHS in its fight against right-wing extremists. Trump desires to allow billionaire whose firms take advantage of the federal government increase the effectiveness of the federal government. To be fair, Musk shall be sharing the position of director of government efficiency with famous people fraud Vivek Ramaswamy. To convey power to the rest of the world, Trump selected Marco Rubio as secretary of state.

If any of the above worries you about America’s future, don’t fret. In America, being average and white is the first requirement for becoming great. In fact, to grasp how white mediocrity has develop into the default in Donald Trump’s plan to construct a white America team, all you have to do is have a look at organizing at the intersection of competitiveness, capitalism, and American exceptionalism.

I remember when the Dallas Cowboys were great.

As a kid growing up in the Eighties, the Cowboys made the Super Bowl almost yearly. Led by one of the best coaches in NFL history, Tom Landry’s team dominated skilled football. Thanks to their dominance, the team gained a nationwide fan base, cementing the franchise in skilled football history as “America’s Team.” That’s why I fell in love with the perfect example of sports exceptionalism – because they were the best. Ask anyone. They remember.

Except it never happened.

While I clearly remember the team of my youth appearing in lots of Super Bowls, they really won one championship before I became an adult. Worse still, I used to be probably too young to recollect the 1978 Super Bowl. The Cowboys weren’t even amongst the top 10 teams in the tournament Eighties. According to current mathematicsThe Buffalo Bills of the Nineteen Nineties were higher than the Cowboys in that decade of the Nineteen Nineties. Turns out “great” coach Tom Landry is in the rankings 37 all-time winning percentage and has never been named coach of the yr in his life. And apparently fans didn’t call the Cowboys “America’s Team.” The nickname comes from NFL Videos scenario.

But who cares about these “woke” facts? If you think that the band’s popularity is the result of marketing, selective amnesia, and bandwagoning, then you definately simply hate the Cowboys. If fans feel that their team is the best, that is what counts. That’s why Jerry Jones is the owner the most beneficial sports team in the world. And why does everyone hate Jerry Jones? Yes, his record as an owner was there average since purchasing the team in 1989.

Ultimately, he just desires to make the American team great again.

Yes, Donald Trump is principally the Jerry Jones of politics – a snake oil salesman masquerading as a business tycoon. They are each old men who’ve built fortunes despite ruining their businesses. They share a Love Down penises of male athletes and so they each hate Colin Kaepernick. They each want us to imagine that they’re smart and their sons are smarter. No Jones or Trump they appear to understand how the sun works. But to be fair, there are others. One of them is a racist who has aligned himself with anti-blackness time AND time AND time AND time Again.

The second is Donald Trump.

Despite their dismal track record as leaders, America cannot get enough of them. At the starting of each season’s campaign, their fans are convinced that they shall be great. On the other hand, it is not hard to imagine that Matt Gaetz knows anything about justice in the event you imagine that Dak Prescott will win the Super Bowl. I remember when Ezekiel Elliott was a real runner and Marco Rubio was a real conservative.

But that doesn’t suggest MAGA voters are silly. They are simply fans of their team, and I understand why people imagine that Donald Trump’s right-wing lineup could make America great again.

I assumed I lived in a country that elected a black woman president. I believed that racism, dementia and stupidity could be enough to disqualify a presidential candidate. I believed that white women would reject whiteness to guard their very own interests. I believed Latinos would do the same. I assumed democracy could defeat white supremacy. I truthfully believed that America could truly be great.

I used to be incorrect.

But I am unable to wait for the next season.


This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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Politics and Current

Joy Reid Leaves X, Encourages MAGA Field Day; Don Lemon, Lizzo and 115,000 others flee platform in mass exodus

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Joy Reid has joined a growing list of progressives saying goodbye to X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, which has tilted sharply to the fitting under the mega-billionaire’s leadership.

“It just wasn’t worth it,” said the MSNBC host, who boasted greater than 1.9 million followers. Reid said her departure has every little thing to do with Musk turning X into the News Max of social media – uncompromisingly pro-Trump.

NBC News reports X’s AI-powered trends section commonly promoted election conspiracy theories and coordinated attacks on Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the months leading as much as the election.

The exodus accelerated after Donald Trump regained the presidency. Since then, Musk has – literally – sided with the Republican standard-bearer and was elected co-chair of a commission to streamline government and dramatically cut federal spending.

“I have not published for a very long time. I simply didn’t need to post content that was purchased by the present owner,” Reid said in a press release. Video from TikTok announcing their breakup.

She claimed that she kept her account because she was afraid that “someone would try to take this name and use it for nefarious purposes.”

Reid asked her followers to affix her on BlueSky, created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.

While Company Meanwhile, Instagram Threads claims to have surpassed 275 million lively users.

Former CNN anchor Don Lemon was one other major candidate for BlueSky. He published his farewell video at X, earlier Wednesday, saying the platform had lost its way.

“I loved interacting with all of you on Twitter and then X all these years, but it’s time for me to go,” Lemon said. “I used to believe it was a place for honest debate and discussion, transparency and free speech, but now I feel it is not serving that purpose.”

The Guardian, a leftist publication published in the UKwithdrawn from X earlier this week, citing “disturbing content” peppered with “far-right conspiracy theories and racism.”

Around the time Reid said goodbye, pop star Lizzo announced her departure from BlueSky, saying, “We’re leaving toxicity behind in 2024.”

MAGA users he reveled in retreat of the left.

“The Meltdown is hilarious,” one commenter wrote. “Wait until they realize no one cares and crawl back.”

“These leftists would rather escape the last four years than defend them…. Proving that you cannot defend what (sic!) cannot be defended,” trumpeted one other.

Meanwhile, actress Justine Bateman mocked the momentous statements made by public figures like Lemon.

“First a video about leaving, and now a written statement? This is more information than we received from Biden when he dropped out of the race,” Bateman he wrote.

But not only stars migrate from X.

“Every time I opened it, things were being thrown at me that made me feel bad,” Kara Wurtz, a 39-year-old financial executive from St. Louis, he said NBC News. “I noticed that from Tuesday to Wednesday I started seeing a lot more anti-woman things. And I said, “You know what? It’s personal. I’m done.”

When purchasing Twitter in April 2022, Musk promised that the web site wouldn’t take sides.

“For Twitter to be worthy of public trust, it must be politically neutral, which in reality means worrying the far right and the far left equally,” he added. he said.

Musk maintains that X is politically neutral.

“At Platform X, we are very strict about the principles of fair play, a level playing field and fairness to all parties,” he said this month at a town hall event in Pennsylvania. “We want both sides to say their piece and allow for a free debate.”

A spokesman for X wouldn’t say what number of users had left the platform, but indicated metrics revealing 942 million posts last week, an all-time record. David Carr, news and research editor at Likeweb, told NBC that a complete of greater than 115,000 people have had their platform deactivated since Election Day.

X may even see more accounts closed from Friday when a latest regulations for the availability of services goes into effect requiring all users to consent to their posts getting used to coach artificial intelligence.

Regardless of the numbers, it’s clear that X is well on its technique to becoming the subsequent right-wing echo chamber.

BlueSky, however, appears poised to emerge as a leftist enclave, which implies that after again the most important loser will probably be thought diversity.


This article was originally published on : atlantablackstar.com
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Politics and Current

Trump’s Successor to Four-Star General Lloyd Austin: 44-Year-Old ‘Anti-Wake’ Veteran and Former FOX Host Pete Hegseth

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Lloyd Austin and Pete Hegseth

America’s next defense secretary could also be completely different from any the country has ever seen.

On Tuesday, just in the future after Veterans Day, President-elect Donald Trump chosen 44-year-old Pete Hegseth, a former FOX News commentator and former Army Ranger, to lead one of the crucial powerful military forces on the earth.

Hegseth will succeed Secretary General Lloyd Austin III, the nation’s first Black Secretary of Defense, a historic 2021 selection by President Joe Biden.

Austin, 71, is a four-star general with 41 years of service within the Army. He earned the Silver Star for his leadership within the Iraq War and later, as commander of the United States Armed Forces, oversaw all combat operations in Iraq in addition to military operations in Afghanistan within the 2010s.

Hegseth, a Trump loyalist who previously influenced the previous president to pardon a bunch of military men accused of war crimes, has been outspoken against women serving in combat and critical of what he calls a “woke” military.

“Any general, any admiral, anyone, with ties to DEI or ‘woke’ must go,” Hegseth was quoted as saying on the show latest podcast.

Hegseth can also be a graduate of Princeton and Harvard, universities often criticized by conservatives as bastions of the “liberal elite.” He first served within the Minnesota National Guard, working in finance. A yr later, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay as an infantry platoon leader.

After the Baghdad tour, Hegseth entered politics, forming a conservative group called Vets For Freedom and becoming a television commentator.

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – NOVEMBER 16: Host Pete Hegseth speaks on stage in the course of the 2023 FOX Nation Patriot Awards at The Grand Ole Opry on November 16, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo: Terry Wyatt/Getty Images)

Richard Brookshire, Army and National Guard veteran and CEO Black Veterans Projectrespectfully acknowledged Hegseth’s service, which incorporates earning the Bronze Star Medal. However, Brookshire questions the balance between Hegseth’s experience and the seniority required for the position.

Brookshire also noted that DEI efforts, often maligned by conservatives like Hegseth, have played a key role in ensuring that qualified candidates like Secretary Austin are usually not missed.

“I attended the White House Veterans Breakfast the other day, and meeting in person with Secretary Austin and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff made me reflect on how they got to their positions – not because they didn’t do a great job, because they absolutely did, but through concerted recruiting efforts in the Black community that began in the 1970s.” Brookshire said. “There has been a commitment to provide pathways that did not previously exist, and now there is an attempt to dismantle those efforts through affirmative action.”

Lloyd Austin, theGrio.com
WASHINGTON – SEPTEMBER 16: Gen. Lloyd Austin III, commander of U.S. Central Command, testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee on ongoing U.S. military operations to counter the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) during a hearing within the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, September 16, 2015 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Bakari Sellers, a CNN political analyst, echoed the concerns of many Americans about Trump’s recent cabinet selections, but Hegseth particularly.

“People argue about DEI and the lack of qualifications, then rave about Pete Hegseth being put in charge of the most powerful military in the world,” Sells wrote on Twitter. “Watching mediocrity rewarded is a hallmark of the Trump administration.”

The Department of Defense oversees a budget of roughly $842 billion– says the department’s website.

Brookshire expressed concern that with President-elect Donald Trump and a possible defense secretary so hostile to diversity efforts, legitimate issues resembling racial disparities in veterans’ disability compensation will proceed to omitted.

For Black veterans, it could actually be life-changing.

“Sometimes my biggest concern is that the civil rights ecosystem is just not being attentive to the military-industrial complex. And so far as I can see, the veteran ecosystem doesn’t care about black veterans. So nobody is actually going to fill that support gap, Brookshire said.

Hegseth will need to be confirmed by the Senate before he officially replaces Austin as Secretary of Defense.

Harriet Tubman was posthumously commissioned general during a Veterans Day ceremony

This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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