Thank You State Farm, New Balance, and Walt Disney for Caring About OUR Daughters!

A commentator pointed out that we need to thank these powerful advertisers for smacking some sense into the folks over at XXLmag.com who thought it would be cute and funny to refer to the victim of the Dunbar Village gang rape as "some hooker down in Florida." Now when we called and e-mailed XXL and Harris Publications, they scoffed at us, actually, they ignored us completely. I was still in shock that they would stoop so low. I am still coming to terms with the fact that there are powerful media organizations filled with men and women who hate and despise Black women. I know I know. some of you came to that realization years ago, but I, like many African American women always thought in terms of hatred being directed at us in purely racial terms. It is like a new awakening to realize that there are people within my community who hate women and get to further their agenda through mass media and they are getting rich off of their hatred. BECAUSE WE LET THEM

The truth is that a lot of folks are getting away with their hatred of women because they are Black so no one calls them on it.

Now we can also blame advertisers for being lazy with their brand and oversimplifying the African American community by thinking that if they aim at a "Black" publication or TELEVISION NETWORK that they are a) reaching African Americans and b) those media executives aren't doing anything to offend the advertiser's target audience.

Well they are wrong on both accounts. I don't know what malarky some of these "multicultural" ad agencies are selling these huge corporations, but FYI, I think they are wasting alot of their ad dollars and aren't reaching their target audience. I think they are satisfying some sense of guilt about not providing ad dollars to Black media companies, so they open their check books so Black Enterprise can give them a good "diversity" rating, but they don't hold these Black media companies to the same standards when it comes to discrimination, degredation and outright hate speech.

But today all of you who called New Balance, State Farm, and Disney, need to call or write back and thank them for intervening on our behalf. Should they have been more careful in the first place, yes, but unlike our own people who ignored us ( you know I am going to stop using the term "my people"- cause some of these folk ain't!), these advertisers took immediate action and they should be applauded for it. Now not only is the offending column gone but so are the other that did such things as applaud the beating of Black women

The sad truth is that Black women's greatest allies in fighting back in the War on Black Women will not be civil rights organizations or women's groups, or even Black "leaders." It looks like our greatest allies are going to be advertisers so lets try to cultivate good relations with these folk, we don't only want to contact them to complain and we would much rather be able to jot over an FYI e-mail than put them on blast. I don't care how we DEFUND the War on Black Women as long as it gets done.

Those of you who have been with us from the beginning know that we are learning as we go. Some strategies work more effectively than others, but we're 3 and 0 when it comes to contacting advertisers. Every time we do, something happens and it happens FAST.

Tell these folks Thank You and send some snail mail to the CEOs while you are at it.
STOP FUNDING FOOLISHNESS!

Black Women, That Burning Cross on Your Front Lawn Was Brought to You By .......Corporate America

New details in the Dunbar Village gang rape come out in court. You thought it couldn't get worse? The attackers were looking for a lighter to set the mother and son on fire. They couldn't find one.

I grew up in east Texas. I didn’t grow up reading about hatred. I lived it. I grew up surrounded by “sunset towns“. For those of you not from my neck of the woods, a “sunset town” is one you don’t let the sun set with you still in it if you are Black. They even had signs instructing Black folks when they needed to be gone except they did not call you “Black”. I drove through them and had to compete in sports on the playing fields of these sunset towns. Even today, if I have to roll through one, I make sure I am well below the speed limit and throw up a silent prayer that I don’t get a flat until I get across the bridge.

So as you can imagine, I got a very early introduction to the concept that there are people out there who will beat and kill me just because I am Black. Our mere existence offends them. I was about 12 years-old when Loyal Garner Jr., died down the road in Hemphill, TX. He managed to beat himself to death in a jail cell according to the grand jury. Yeah he managed to beat himself so badly according to my Aunt at the time ”they beat him so badly his brain was coming out of his head .” Every time I drive through Hemphill, my head hurts thinking about it.

On Christmas Day, 1987, Loyal Garner Jr., a black truck driver and father of six, was pulled over by a white police chief and jailed without charge in Hemphill, a small town in east Texas. Two days later Garner, who had never been arrested before, died in a nearby hospital from massive head injuries. Garner was bludgeoned with a blackjack for asking permission to call his wife. (SOURCE)

Up the road in another direction is Jasper, TX, where James Byrd was murdered.

Even though you know that there are people out there that hate you. It is always somewhat jarring to see that hatred displayed in a tangible way but for some reason when the hatred comes from a White person, we stand up and take arms, but when that hatred comes from another Black person, we write it off.

And so I bring you the story of another Black man who died near me in east Texas. His name was Bill Simpson.

In 1993, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development got it into their heads that they were going to desegregate one of these “sunset towns” by moving Black people into public housing projects. That went over real well. Klan members and neo nazis from all over the country rolled into town. This was the 90’s not the 60’s

Bill Simpson was one of the first Black people to move into Vidor, TX under this plan, his name will probably stay with me for the rest of my life as it still does almost 15 years later. You see Bill Simpson was a local celebrity because he was one of the Black folks crazy enough to be willing to move into Vidor. He was very memorable. He was a bear of a man. He was 7 feet and 300 pounds. For six months he endured the Klan, the taunts and the threats on his life and the harassment of the sunset town, then he left and went back to a nearby town that at the time was 38% Black.

Bill Simpson, who in March became the second black person to move to Vidor in recent times, is also leaving. "It's gotten to the point where my nerves have been on edge," said Mr. Simpson, who at 7 feet and 300 pounds, has never been physically threatened but is tired of the harassment. "I don't want to worry who's going to do something and what they're going to do, when it's going to happen, where it's going to happen." (SOURCE)

USA TODAY has more about the failed attempt at desegregation.

Cry for help. Simpson later submitted an affidavit to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development claiming that a neighbor named Edith Marie Johnson regularly hurled obscenities, racial taunts and threats at him. She pleaded guilty in April to a charge that she had slurred Simpson and was sentenced to 40 hours of community service. Simpson also wrote that he had "been called 'nigger' by people in Vidor more times than I can count." And in a letter to HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, he declared: "I must raise my voice in a cry for help. ... I fear for my own life and well-being." His only black neighbors, Brenda Lanus and Alexis Selders, were challenged by some local whites, and a group of teenagers paraded through the project screaming, "Get those niggers." Soon enough, all the blacks moved out. (SOURCE)

Hours after Bill Simpson left Vidor, TX, he was dead. He was shot while walking on the street in his old neighborhood. Some African American gang members asked him for a quarter ( as was their practice back then) . When Bill Simpson said he didn’t have one, they shot him in cold blood. HOURS LATER!

Is he any less dead because his killers look like us instead of a White person? Does the burning cross sitting in your front lawn burn brighter because a White person stuck it there?

So how is a burning cross in the front lawn any different than a magazine which delights in the fact that it’s columnists openly proclaim that they “Hate Black Women.” They are both tangible manifestations of hatred.

The difference is that when a Black magazine puts on a tangible display of hatred, it does so with the help of corporate sponsors like New Balance Shoes. New Balance is currently sponsoring a magazine website whose columnist called the victim of the Dunbar Village gang rape “some hooker down in Florida.” This statement comes from a columnist whose claim to fame is that he hates Black women. Would they get away with saying that they hate White, Hispanic or Asian women or men for that matter?

Mind you that New Balance says that they value “Responsible Corporate Leadership”

Would New Balance be able to get away with sponsoring a hate rally or cross burning? Um No. So why are they getting away with sponsoring a website that delights in declaring that it hates Black women?

Because we let them get away with funding this foolishness. So what are we going to do about it? This contact information is thanks to Symphony over at Essential Presence.

New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc.
Tel: 800-253-7463
Online Contact
Or the corporate Communications Manager amy.vreeland@newbalance.com

*Entourage Soundtrack
HBO and Atlantic Records are owned by Time Warner
Time Warner Inc Headquarters (NY)
212.484.8000

Edward Adler
Executive Vice President
Corporate Communications
(212) 484-6630 (direct line)
Edward.adler@timewarner.com

Keith Cocozza
Executive Director
Corporate Communications
Keith.cocozza@timewarner.com

Richard Plepler
Executive Vice President
Phone 212.512.1960

Quentin Schaffer
Senior Vice President
HBO, Corporate Communications
Phone 212.512.1329


*Ad for ABC Family's Lincoln Heights.
ABC and all its subsidiaries are owned by Walt Disney Company
Disney/ ABC
ABC (818) 569-7500 Mon-Fri (8am-6pm)

Disney CEO/President Robert A. Iger
Email: robert.a.iger@disney.com

Zenia Mucha
Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications, The Walt Disney Company
Zenia.mucha@disney.com
(818) 560-5300

Kevin Brockman
Senior Vice President, Communications, Disney-ABC Television Group
Asst. David Johnson
PHONE: (818) 460-6655

Hope Hartman
Vice President, Media Relations, ABC Entertainment
Assistant: Edwin Escobar
PHONE: (818) 460-6360
Hope.C.Hartman@abc.com


*Ziploc
SC Johnson
Phone: 1.800.494.4855
Online Contact

Media Contact: Nancy Van Dis
262-260-3620
NMVanDis@scj.com

Media Contact: Petrell Ozbay
262-260-2114
PMozbay@scj.com

How long are Black women going to allow corporate sponsorship of the burning crosses sitting in our front yards?

XXL Magazine calls Dunbar Village Victim "some hooker down in Florida"

UPDATE: More gruesome details regarding the Dunbar Village gang rape came out in court today. Read more here. and six of these bastards are still running around.

Welcome XXL Readers Despite the fact that our efforts related to THAT SHOW haven't been posted about on this blog for almost a month and we've moved on from a certain D-List comedian. Folks are still writing about it and apparently they have been on vacation since May or something. Now, in an effort to attack me and this blog (like I care), this XXL writer has called the Dunbar Village victim a "Hooker"

She’s also been involved with the protests against rap music that have stemmed from the Don Imus incident as well as the protests against the comedian DL Hughley, who had the sheer balls to suggest that the Rutgers University women’s basketball team were some of the ugliest women he’d ever seen in his life. That fucking racist. Based on a cursory perusal of her blog, it looks her latest mission involves protesting media outlets that haven’t devoted enough coverage to the gang rape of a black woman by about 20 black men somewhere down in Florida.

I don’t know about the rest of you fruits, but I hope she’s successful in this effort. Raping a woman is just wrong, and I thought she brought up a good point in comparing the media coverage of this incident to the coverage of the execution-style killings of four college students in New Jersey. What’s worse, that some hooker down in Florida is out $300, or that four college students in New Jersey are no longer living? If you answered the latter, I wonder about your solidarity with the black race (read a black woman’s ego). (SOURCE)

First, I never compared the media coverage of the Newark murders to the media coverage of Dunbar Village. I applauded the actions of Mayor Corey Booker and Governor James Corzine when compared to West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel and Governor Charlie Crist. I was just as saddened and horrified and have talked about the lack of attention by civil rights organization to violent crimes against Black people.

Second, hate on me all you want, but this woman in Dunbar Village was not a hooker. She was a 35 year old single mother who was selling Avon and delivering phone books to pay the rent when ten Black males invaded her home and gang raped her for three hours and beat her son. While the mother and son were screaming, her neighbors didn't bother to call the police. The attackers forced this mother to perform oral sex on her 12 year-old son and then poured cleaning solution on them as they laid naked in the tub, blinding the son and burning the mother's skin. This woman was not a hooker and you are going to BURN IN HELL for referring to her as one in an attempt to attack me. You can read about this horrible crime here. Yeah, they really hate us that they can't have compassion for what happened to this woman.

Again, I have never called for an apology from DL. I haven't tried to shut down any of his shows. All I have ever said is that I respectfully disagree and that his First Amendment defense of his foolishness.

I will not apologize for standing up and saying that the days of using African American women as sacrificial lambs should be over. This isn't about censorship, this is about a) pushing back against images and messages that have gone unchallenged for too long and b) refusing to subsidize things that demean and degrade Black women.

DL and his Hip Hop brethren have the right to say whatever vile and disgusting things they want, I just don't want to have to pay for it by purchasing the goos and services of companies who do.

I don't even have the heart today to respond to the fact that this bastard called the Dunbar Village victim a "hooker." Wow. I thought folks were exaggerating and being melodramatic, but some folks REALLY have an enduring hatred of Black women. It is just always shocking to see it in print.

I don’t expect Harris Publications(Phone: 212-807-7100), publisher of XXL to be compassionate or be a good corporate citizen or not hate and despise Black women, their business model does not allow it, but they could at least try to be accurate about a vicious hate crime.

All I ask is that their editors review the known facts related to the Dunbar Village gang rape and determine whether it is appropriate for one of their columnists to refer to this 35 year-old single mother who was raped and sodomized for three hours by ten men and boys while they beat her child and later forced her to perform a sex act on her 12 year old son as “some hooker down in Florida.”