A riot began in Chicago when police refused to arrest a white man who was responsible for the death of a young black man, Eugene Williams. The 29th Street Beach on Lake Michigan was used by both black and white Chicagoans. But the man had been throwing stones at the black boys swimming there before hitting Williams.
The Coroner’s report on the riot described the events as follows: “Five days of terrible hate and passion let loose, cost the people of Chicago 38 lives (15 white and 23 colored), wounded and maimed several hundred, destroyed property of untold value, filled thousands with fear, blemished the city and left in its wake fear and apprehension for the future . . . .” The city’s booming economy, especially jobs in the stockyards, had drawn many blacks during the Great Migration from the South, more than doubling their population in just three years. Only one policeman died in the chaos, Patrolman John Simpson, 31, an African American working out of the Wabash Avenue Station. (Read more: https://www.newhistorian.com/2015/07/29/chicago-race-riot-1919/
July 27, 1953
After three years of bloody and frustrating war leading to stalemate, the United States, the People’s Republic of China and North Korea agreed to a truce, bringing the Korean War—and America’s first experiment with the Cold War concept of “limited war”—to an end (South Korean President Syngman Rhee opposed the truce and refused to sign). U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower had taken office six months earlier, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin had died that March.
Korean War Memorialphoto: Heather Stanfield
The armistice signed this day ended hostilities and created the 4000-meter-wide (2.5 miles) demilitarized zone (DMZ), a buffer between North and South Korean forces, but was not a permanent peace treaty. It also set up a system for exchanging prisoners of war: 12,000 held by the North, 75,000 by South Korea, the U.S. and the U.N. allied forces.
There were four million military and civilian casualties, including 16,000 from countries which were part of the U.N.-allied forces; 415,000 South and 520,000 North Koreans died.There were also an estimated 900,000 Chinese casualties. 36,516 died out of the nearly 1.8 million Americans who served in the conflict.
July 27, 1954
The democratically elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, after receiving 65% of the vote, was overthrown by CIA-paid and -trained mercenaries. There followed a series of military dictatorships that waged a genocidal war against the indigenous Mayan Indians and against political opponents into the ’90s. Nearly 200,000 citizens died over the nearly four decades of civil war.
“They have used the pretext of anti-communism. The truth is very different. The truth is to be found in the financial interests of the fruit company [United Fruit, which controlled more land than any other individual or group in the country. It also owned the railway, the electric utilities, telegraph, and the country’s only port at Puerto Barrios on the Atlantic coast.] and the other U.S. monopolies which have invested great amounts of money in Latin America and fear that the example of Guatemala would be followed by other Latin countries . . . I took over the presidency with great faith in the democratic system, in liberty and the possibility of achieving economic independence for Guatemala.”
Known as the “Weep for Children Plowshares,” four women were arrested for pouring their own blood on weaponry at the Naval Submarine Base at Groton, Connecticut, on the morning of the launch of the last-built Ohio-class submarine, the U.S.S. Louisiana. The 18 such submarines carry about half of the U.S. nuclear deterrent – 24 Trident I & II missiles with a range of 7400 km (4600 miles), each with several warheads known as MIRVs (multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles).
n the quaint district of Milho Verde, it’s impossible to go without hearing about Geralda Francisca dos Santos and her biscoito de polvilho (a cassava flour and cheese puff). At 81, Dona Geralda is one of the region’s traditional cooks of quitanda, pastries typical of Brazil’s food culture, especially in the state of Minas Gerais.
Ahead of festivities like the Three Kings’ Day and the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, her daughters and granddaughters — even those living in other districts — join her in the kitchen, surrounding the termite mound, clay, and tile shard oven that Dona Geralda built. They aim to help the matriarch meet the extraordinary demand, but these gatherings always mean something else.
“When my mother and I cook around her oven, she tells me stories of Milho Verde and our family that I didn’t know about,” Silvana Aparecida Santos, 38, who learned the quitanda alchemy from a very young age by watching and listening to her mother, tells Refinery29 Somos. “When we cook quitanda together, we shorten distances between us.”
“Quitanda goes beyond the kitchen. Before the dish became a local culinary symbol, it helped fuel a resistance movement.”
BEATRIZ MIRANDA
For many women like Aparecida Santos and Dona Geralda, quitanda goes beyond the kitchen. Before the dish became a local culinary symbol, it helped fuel a resistance movement. The tradition of cooking these pastries has crossed generations of women workers (predominantly in Minas Gerais), with the food continuing to represent the means to a better living. Quitanda is the technology through which artisanal cooks build their self-esteem, identity, community belonging, financial autonomy, and female networks of mutual support.
According to scholar Juliana Bonomo, quitanda originated in the 18th century when lords sent women enslaved workers to the nearest urban centers to generate complementary income. The word “quitanda” derives from the Kimbundu language, alluding to the tray where one sells food. But back in those days, it referred, as Bonomo explains, “to everything from haberdashery items to snacks.”
PHOTO: NEREU JR.
To this day, despite industrialization, most quintandeiras use no artificial ingredients. These snacks blended local ingredients (such as coconut, corn, peanuts, and cassava) with Portuguese recipes (cakes, biscuits, and pastries) and African techniques, rites, and beliefs. “Quitanda is a multicultural food,” Bonomo adds. “Pastry would often be prepared in silence. One couldn’t hit the pan with the spoon because it would bring bad luck.”
But it’s this move from the private to the public sphere that transformed this slave lord-run business into something revolutionary.
“As these women left their lords’ houses to work on the streets, they started learning and sharing ideas about freedom with other quitandeiras and their own customers — many of them also enslaved workers,” the researcher says, pointing to Luiza Mahin, a quitandeira from Bahia State who played a pivotal role in the Revolta dos Malês (1835), the biggest uprising of enslaved workers in Brazil. Once authorities perceived them as a threat to the slavery system, the first quitandeiras faced persecution.
“As these women left their lords’ houses to work on the streets, they started learning and sharing ideas about freedom with other quitandeiras and their own customers — many of them also enslaved workers.”
JULIANA BONOMO
However, quitandas ultimately emancipated many women. “By finding a way to sell quitanda, they were able to buy manumission for themselves and their relatives,” Bonomo says. The food ensured dignity for women in the 18th and 19th centuries, something that resonates in the lives of quitandeiras even today.
“The selling of quitanda helped me raise my 10 children,” says Dona Geralda, who grew up in the Ausente quilombo, a community that descends from enslaved workers who fought the system. Even though Aparecida Santos runs a bar in Milho Verde, she cites quitanda as a major source of income.
PHOTO: MARCELO RAMOS.
In the historical village of Congonhas (home to Minas Gerais’s biggest quitanda festival), Raquel Ramalho tenderly recalls her first memories with the pastries. “When I close my eyes, I can visualize my grandmother making biscoito de polvilho for us in the wood-burning stove before we went to school,” she says.
While quitanda has always been intrinsic to her identity, Ramalho’s life changed 15 years ago when she established herself as a professional quitandeira. “I used to be a housewife and felt excluded from social life. As I started working with quitanda, I started traveling to promote my work in other places, meeting new people, and conquering my own space,” she says. “It raised my self-esteem and gave me autonomy.” The 47-year-old now has a dedicated YouTube channel to share her quitanda knowledge with the world.“
“By finding a way to sell quitanda, they were able to buy manumission for themselves and their relatives.”
JULIANA BONOMO
Quitanda is also a protagonist in the life of 60-year-old Angela Resende, who wakes up every day at 4 a.m. to cook. In the last 20 years, she has spent many of her mornings preparing quitanda in the Minas Gerais city of Paracatu, where she serves customers a homemade breakfast in her yard. In spite of the hard work, Resende asserts she wouldn’t choose any other profession.
“People used to think that we were quitandeiras because we had no option because we didn’t go to university,” she says. “There used to be this prejudice.”
For Bonomo, this misunderstanding of quitandeiras stems from the patriarchal work division that prevails in society. “Professions that have historically been connected to domestic work (like cooking) are still seen as not real work,” she says, pointing out how empowering the role is. “[With her income], the quitandeira is responsible for buying her son’s school uniform, for example, or helping pay the family’s food expenses.”
PHOTO: MARCELO RAMOS.
Being a quitandeira can also be a lifeline. “When my grandfather became physically disabled, my grandmother became the breadwinner,” says Mariana Gontijo, 40, a culinary school professor born in Moema. “By selling quitanda and washing and ironing clothes, she provided for a family of seven people.”
After years of working as a lawyer, Gontijo returned to her roots. “My first source of research was my mother’s cookbook, where I reconnected to recipes that have accompanied me through my whole life,” Gontijo says. An advocate of local traditional cooking, she now runs O Tacho, a food consultancy company, and Roça Grande, a restaurant in the capital of Minas Gerais that celebrates the food of her land.
For Gontijo, quitanda is a tradition that has long represented a means of survival and emancipation for many women. Or simply put, “quitanda is an act of resistance.”
“Quitanda is an act of resistance.”
MARIANA GONTIJO
It also requires a profound knowledge of nature and themselves. “By using corn flour, banana tree leaves, and even their own arms to measure the temperature of the wood-burning stove, they ensure the food preparation is on point,” she says. “These are purely empirical and poetic techniques that shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Gontijo continues: “Before we look to international cuisine, we need to understand, respect, and value what we have here — like the quitanda culture. If you don’t know where you come from, you don’t know where to go.”
(I ran across this on currentstatus.io . Also, Mr. Musk is a bigger ass yet than I already thought he was. Vivian Wilson, on the other hand, seems well adjusted.)
Vivian Wilson is fact-checking own father after billionaire Elon Musk made bigoted comments about her gender.
The billionaire recently attacked gender-affirming care in an interview with conspiracy theorist Jordan Peterson for conservative platform the Daily Wire, claiming that the life-saving treatment “killed” his daughter while repeatedly misgendering her.
Musk said that when his daughter wanted to begin transitioning, he “was essentially tricked into signing documents” before he “had really any understanding of what was going on.” He said that doctors told him his daughter “might commit suicide” if she was prevented from receiving care.
“I lost my son. They call it ‘deadnaming’ for a reason,” Musk said. “The reason it’s called ‘deadnaming’ is because, your son is dead. So my son is dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”
Wilson has since responded to Musk’s assertions on Threads, the rival to his platform Twitter/X, saying that her biological father’s claims are so blatantly false that she’s “just started to find it funny at this point.” “
“Calling me dead on a podcast with JORDAN PETERSON of all people while basically admitting you have zero reading comprehension by saying you were “tricked” into signing documents that you read over multiple times is basically a parody of itself,” she wrote. “Like it’s honestly camp-“
Wilson then debunked some of Musk’s other assertions about her, among them several homophobic stereotypes about her youth, including that she was a fan of musical theatre (she wasn’t) and picking out clothes for Musk to wear (she didn’t). Musk also claimed that Wilson was “born slightly autistic.”
“This entire thing is completely made up and there’s a reason for this. He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there, and in the little time that he was I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness,” Wilson wrote. “Obviously he can’t say that, so I’ve been reduced to a happy little stereotype f*g-ing along to use at his discretion. I think that says a lot about how he views queer people and children in general.”https://www.threads.net/@vivllainous/post/C91xDGJSUX_/embed/
Wilson, 20, is one of six children (five living) Musk had with his first wife, model Justine Wilson. She filed a petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court in April, 2022 to legally change her name and gender, citing the reason as “Gender identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”
Wilson then shot back at her father’s claims that she is “not a girl,” telling Musk to “go touch some fucking grass.”
“As for if I’m not a woman… sure, Jan. Whatever you say. I’m legally recognized as a woman in the state of California and I don’t concern myself with the opinions of those who are below me,” she wrote. “Obviously Elon can’t say the same because in a ketamine-fueled haze, he’s desperate for attention and validation from an army of degenerate red-pilled incels and pick-mes who are quick to give it to him.”
I’ve become cynical in the last decade, but I am holding out hope that Vice President Kamala Harris can lead the country into a new chapter.
This piece first appeared in our weekly newsletter, The Fallout.
By now you’ve heard President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race on Sunday and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, which either puts the nation on a path to more progressive reform and the first woman president or catapults Donald Trump back into the White House.
As a college student, I am excited for the possibility of Harris winning the nomination at the Democratic National Convention, and I’m eager to see who she chooses as her running mate. However, I am also terrified by the chaos because it has made the results of this presidential election so unclear, and the impact of the outcome will last longer than a four-year term.
This turn of events has to be a resounding wake-up call for our country. I was worried that choosing Biden to beat Trump in 2020 was putting a placeholder president in the White House, and one that wouldn’t offer much change. But I was wrong. And with Harris as the presumptive nominee, the country gets an even stronger advocate for reproductive rights.
In 2019, co-sponsored the EACH Woman Act—repealing the Hyde Amendment, which prevented federal funds from being used to provide abortions.
By Monday evening, Harris had already amassed the endorsements of enough delegates to clinch the nomination. Delegates from more than half the states—including California, Florida, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas—have already pledged their support. The rest are expected by the end of the week.
I’ve become very cynical in the past decade, but I am holding out hope that Harris can lead us into a new chapter. I am tired of choosing the best of the worst options when I stare down a ballot, and if she wins, a little of my faith in our country will be restored.
Harris would not only be the first woman president and the first Black and Asian woman president, but would open doors for more radical change. I’ve decided that we cannot be complacent with blind trust in the Democratic Party, nor paralyzed with fear of what another four years under Trump would bring. For the first time in my lifetime, the Harris nomination presents a real choice to move forward, and I hope the country takes it.
So the other day I was so tired I couldn’t function. Ron got home after driving straight through to get home that night, so I was up until midnight after getting up at 3 am the morning before. So I was in no shape to blog. So I spent the day with my hubby after he got home from being on a long trip to bury his brother and seeing his family. Then I got up this morning at 3 am, and after feeding the cats I went on the MS site I always check first. I have been sharing and helping others on the site and have started to get quite a few doing private chats with me. They say I am kind, caring, and nice to talk to … I will take it.
But just before I was to get off there and go to my blog, a guy showed up blaming his once … unwanted … blow job from a man overturning his entire life and now he is anti gay people, rainbow flags, pride, and any showing of gays in society because they are all abusers and child molesters. He went on at length about how abusive and dysfunctional gay people were, how they were flaunting themselves in an abusive way in society, so on and so on. Remember he is in a site for males abused as children sexually and in other ways.
Anyone who knows me knows I can not resist such shit. He threatened right in his first post that if people said he needed therapy, he was bi or searching, or that he was a bigot then he was gone. I was like OK. I answered every paragraph he wrote, telling him he needed help professionally on some, telling him that because he says he now had thoughts of sex with men that he might be seeking and should again talk to professionals about it, as that is not the way sexual assaults work. One forced blow job doesn’t make a man who only thought of women before gay. I called out his bigotry when he posted how gays were now in schools with rainbow stickers to make kids gay. I even outright asked him if he was a troll. We will see. But I have been there on that site since basically 3 am to now nearly 1 pm. I am going to skip posts and go right to comments. Again like always if I missed your comment because it dropped off the list please resubmit it, I will do my best to reply. Hugs Scottie
Korean War Memorialphoto: Heather Stanfield
Jacobo Arbenz
Scottie's Playtime 