What does God look like? Renaissance artists painted God into their own cultures, often giving him the white skin and flowing golden hair of a European aristocrat. But that traditional image has been challenged by many over the centuries. This age-old question is now picking up steam on Facebook, particularly in the light of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Dylan Chenfeld, a self-described Jewish atheist, is throwing his ideas into the mix. “I Met God, She’s Black,” Chenfield says in posters that he’s allegedly pasted all over Manhattan during the past few days. The 21-year-old doesn’t claim to have invented the phrase, saying the trope has existed for quite some time. He’s just the one who decided to put it on a $30 T-shirt. …

What does God look like?

Renaissance artists painted God into their own cultures, often giving him the white skin and flowing golden hair of a European aristocrat.

But that traditional image has been challenged by many over the centuries. This age-old question is now picking up steam on Facebook, particularly in the light of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Dylan Chenfeld, a self-described Jewish atheist, is throwing his ideas into the mix.

“I Met God, She’s Black,” Chenfield says in posters that he’s allegedly pasted all over Manhattan during the past few days.

The 21-year-old doesn’t claim to have invented the phrase, saying the trope has existed for quite some time. He’s just the one who decided to put it on a $30 T-shirt.

In fact, William P. Young, author of The Shack, pictured God as an African American woman named Elouisa. Black feminist Ntozake Shange, in her poem “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow is Enough,” says, “I found God in myself, and I loved her fiercely.”

But what does an Upper West side-raised Jewish guy have to do with all of this?

The slogan has certainly become a source of business for Chenfield. When he initially started printing the shirts about one year ago, he says many of his buyers were white. He’s also gotten celebrities like Drake and Cara Delevingne to be photographed wearing his shirt.

“I like poking fun at sacred cows,” Chenfield told HuffPost. “I’m taking the idea that God is a white male and doing the opposite of that, which is a black woman.”

Although he’s trying to make money from the campaign, there also seems to be a spiritual side to his motives. Chenfield said that, compared to the other members of his Jewish family, he was always the one asking more questions about what God is really like. His grandparents are Orthodox Jews, he says, who follow a conservative strain of Judaism that doesn’t allow women to have a bat mitzvah.

“Sometimes when you get really religious, it becomes sexist and that’s when I tap out,” Chenfield says. “And that’s why I’ve never been a super religious person.”

He says he stepped away from Judaism and all organized religion after his 13th birthday. He’s hoping his shirt will help people question the image of God as a white male.

But he wasn’t expecting his products to become swept up into the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

The shirt’s message actually speaks to a deep desire for people to see God in their own image, says The Rev. Dr. Jacqueline J. Lewis, a Senior Minister at Middle Collegiate Church who has been involved in protests against Eric Garner’s death at the hands of the NYPD.

In the Abrahamic traditions, God introduced God’s self to Moses by saying, “I am who I am.” God is too mysterious to truly know, so we make God accessible to ourselves by conjuring, imagining, speculating, and guessing. . . How we image God helps us to image ourselves. There is power in thinking of God as a little like us, just as there is power in thinking of ourselves as a little like God. It does not change the fact that God is mystery, it just makes God more accessible. Though God has no race or gender, Jesus had both. Claiming the Afro-Semitic ethnicity of Jesus the Christ has been powerful for me as a Black woman, a wife, a daughter and a clergy.

After protests in support of #BlackLivesMatter erupted across the country, Chenfield says that he’s gotten an increased interest in the shirts, seen through interactions online, but that this hasn’t necessarily translated into increased sales.

Even if it’s a Jewish atheist behind the business, Lewis says that doesn’t dismantle the good outcome.

“It’s important for people to keep the contemporary conversation going about who God is, what God wants and how we relate to God,” Lewis told HuffPost. “The good outcome is if some black child somewhere bumps into it and goes, ‘Well maybe. . . maybe God’s not an old white guy and if so, what does that say about me?'”

What do you think about the shirts? Tell us in the comments below.

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Jewish Atheist’s Controversial T-Shirt: "I Met God, She’s Black"

WASHINGTON (AP) — The 114th Congress that convenes Tuesday will count more minorities and women than ever, although lawmakers remain overwhelmingly white and male in the Republican-controlled House and Senate. A record 104 women will serve in Congress, and for the first time, African-American members of both genders and representing both parties will be among the ranks on Capitol Hill. The number of female lawmakers is up slightly from 100 at the close of the last Congress, but represents about 20 percent of the total in Congress. It’s far less than the nearly 51 percent of the U.S. population. A total of 94 racial minorities will serve in Congress, about…

WASHINGTON (AP) — The 114th Congress that convenes Tuesday will count more minorities and women than ever, although lawmakers remain overwhelmingly white and male in the Republican-controlled House and Senate.

A record 104 women will serve in Congress, and for the first time, African-American members of both genders and representing both parties will be among the ranks on Capitol Hill.

The number of female lawmakers is up slightly from 100 at the close of the last Congress, but represents about 20 percent of the total in Congress. It’s far less than the nearly 51 percent of the U.S. population. A total of 94 racial minorities will serve in Congress, about 18 percent.

There are 100 senators and 435 seats in the House.

The House will have 246 Republicans and 188 Democrats. One seat is vacant following the resignation on Monday of Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., who pleaded guilty to a felony tax evasion charge.

The Senate will have 54 Republicans and 44 Democrats, plus two independents — Maine’s Angus King and Vermont’s Bernie Sanders. Both caucus with Democrats.

___

HOUSE

A total of 84 women will serve in the House, compared with 80 in the last Congress. The new lawmakers include Elise Stefanik, a 30-year-old New York Republican who is the youngest woman ever elected to the House. Also making history is Mia Love, 38, whose election to a suburban Salt Lake City district made her the first black female Republican to win a seat in Congress.

Forty-four African-Americans will serve in the House, including Love and another black Republican freshman, Will Hurd of Texas. Hurd made news last month as he was named chairman of an Information Technology subcommittee on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, an unusual distinction for a freshman.

There are 34 Hispanic lawmakers, including 10 Republicans, as well as 10 Asian-Americans and two Native Americans, both Oklahoma Republicans.

___

SENATE

The number of women in the Senate remains at 20, following the election of Republicans Joni Ernst of Iowa and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, and the defeats of Democrats Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. (Re-elected were Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.)

Two African-Americans serve as senators — Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina and Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey. There are three Hispanic senators: Republicans Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas and Democrat Robert Menendez of New Jersey.

Democrat Mazie Hirono of Hawaii is the only Asian-American in the Senate.

____

FRESHMEN

Fifty-eight House freshmen will be sworn in on Tuesday — 43 Republicans and 15 Democrats. Three other members are new to Congress but are considered veterans of a few weeks. Reps. Dave Brat, R-Va., Donald Norcross, D-N.J., and Alma Adams, D-N.C., took the oath shortly after November’s elections to fill the seats of lawmakers who had left Congress.

The Senate will welcome 13 new members — 12 Republicans and one Democrat, Gary Peters of Michigan.

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New Congress Includes More Women, Minorities

We never thought we’d see the day when celebs like Kim Kardashian and Nicole Richie were considered style icons. But believe it or not, that day has arrived. While their fashion choices in the early aughts may have been cringe-worthy, today they are among some of the best-dressed women in the world. After seeing the celebrity style transformations below, we have a feeling you’re going to start believing in miracles — just kidding (kind of). If you’re thinking of changing up your fashion game in 2015, you’re going to want to take some inspiration from the stars who have done total style 180’s. It just goes to show, anything is possible.

We never thought we’d see the day when celebs like Kim Kardashian and Nicole Richie were considered style icons. But believe it or not, that day has arrived. While their fashion choices in the early aughts may have been cringe-worthy, today they are among some of the best-dressed women in the world.

After seeing the celebrity style transformations below, we have a feeling you’re going to start believing in miracles — just kidding (kind of). If you’re thinking of changing up your fashion game in 2015, you’re going to want to take some inspiration from the stars who have done total style 180’s. It just goes to show, anything is possible.

Originally posted here – 

The 6 Best Style Transformations We’ve Ever Seen

More than 20 years ago, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” conducted an experiment about racial prejudice that audiences will never forget. The year was 1992 — in the wake of the deadly Los Angeles riots that erupted after the acquittal of police officers on trial for the beating of Rodney King — and racial tensions in the country were running high. Yet, the “Oprah Show” audience members didn’t suspect a thing when they arrived at the studio and were immediately separated into two distinct groups. The division wasn’t based on skin color, but eye color. “What we did was treat each group differently, discriminating against the people who have blue eyes, catering to those people with brown…

More than 20 years ago, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” conducted an experiment about racial prejudice that audiences will never forget. The year was 1992 — in the wake of the deadly Los Angeles riots that erupted after the acquittal of police officers on trial for the beating of Rodney King — and racial tensions in the country were running high. Yet, the “Oprah Show” audience members didn’t suspect a thing when they arrived at the studio and were immediately separated into two distinct groups.

The division wasn’t based on skin color, but eye color. “What we did was treat each group differently, discriminating against the people who have blue eyes, catering to those people with brown eyes,” Oprah explained back then.

As the audience lined up to enter the studio, the blue-eyed people were pulled out of line, told to put on a green collar and wait outside. The brown-eyed people were told to step to the front of the line. Once indoors, the brown-eyed group was then treated to coffee and doughnuts, while the blue-eyed group could only stand around and wait. When the blue-eyed group saw that the brown-eyed group was going to be seated first, some became upset.

“Look at those people! What are they doing in there?” one woman shrieked.

When the show began, Oprah welcomed diversity expert Jane Elliott to the stage. Elliott helped set up the experiment, and she knowingly added fuel to the fire when she spoke. “I’ve been a teacher for 25 years in the public, private and parochial schools in this country, and I have seen what brown-eyed people have done as compared to what blue-eyed people do. It’s perfectly obvious,” she said. “You should have been here this morning when we brought these people in here.”

Feeling discriminated against, the blue-eyed audience members stood to voice their frustrations.

“She was rude to us! All of us!” one woman said. “Yelled at us, called us names, pushed us aside. She was rude!”

“Why doesn’t Jane have a green collar on? She’s got blue eyes,” another pointed out.

Elliott didn’t hesitate in her answer. “Because I’ve learned to act brown-eyed,” she said. “And the message in this room is, act brown-eyed and you, too, can take off your collar.”

The blue-eyed people were flabbergasted, but it wasn’t long before the brown-eyed people bought into the idea that they were superior. “People, I had a girlfriend in school who was blue-eyed. She was so stupid, she was always copying off of my papers,” said one brown-eyed woman. “These [blue-eyed] people were so rude and so noisy today, we couldn’t hear ourselves even talk!”

Eventually, the audience figured out that the show was really about race. “God created one race: the human race,” Elliott told them. “Human beings created racism.”

Twenty-two years after that memorable episode, “Oprah: Where Are They Now?” caught up with Elliott, who still gets emotional when talking about the catalyst that led her to create the blue-eyed-brown-eyed experiment in 1968.

“Martin Luther King, Jr. had been one of our ‘heroes of the month’ in February in my third-grade classroom, and he was dead at the hands of an assassin,” Elliott says, getting choked up. “I hate to talk about this because every time I talk about it, I remember how it felt that day. I was going to have to go into my classroom and explain to my students why the adults in this country had allowed somebody to kill hope. Martin Luther King, for me, was hope for this country.”

In an effort to get her small-town, all-white class to experience what it was like to walk in someone else’s shoes, she created the eye-color experiment. “I decided the next day that I was going to do what Hitler did. I was going to pick out a group of people on the basis of a physical characteristic over which they had no control, separate them… treat one group badly and treat the other group very well, and see what would happen,” Elliott says.

Why eye color? “Eye color and skin color are caused by the same chemical: melanin,” Elliott explains. “There’s no logic in judging people by the amount of a chemical in their skin. Pigmentation should have nothing to do with how you treat another person, but unfortunately, it does.”

What she found with the experiment is how incredible its impact can be.

“Give me a child at the age of 8 and let me do that exercise, and that child is changed forever,” Elliott says.

Throughout January, OWN hosts a month-long celebration honoring civil rights legends, as we approach the 50th anniversary of the historic Selma to Montgomery marches led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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The Daring Racism Experiment That People Still Talk About 20 Years Later (VIDEO)

The investigation of a Cleveland police officer’s deadly shooting of a 12-year-old boy carrying a pellet gun is being handed over to a county sheriff’s office in an attempt to make sure it’s evenhanded, the city’s mayor said. The move, announced Friday, comes amid recent outside criticism of Cleveland police officers’ use of force in recent years. The Cuyahoga County’s sheriff’s office will take over for the city and continue the probe into the Nov. 22 Cleveland playground shooting of Tamir Rice, who was carrying an airsoft gun that shoots nonlethal plastic pellets when a rookie officer fired on him. “This decision to turn the investigation over was made to ensure that transparency and an extra …

The investigation of a Cleveland police officer’s deadly shooting of a 12-year-old boy carrying a pellet gun is being handed over to a county sheriff’s office in an attempt to make sure it’s evenhanded, the city’s mayor said.

The move, announced Friday, comes amid recent outside criticism of Cleveland police officers’ use of force in recent years. The Cuyahoga County’s sheriff’s office will take over for the city and continue the probe into the Nov. 22 Cleveland playground shooting of Tamir Rice, who was carrying an airsoft gun that shoots nonlethal plastic pellets when a rookie officer fired on him.

“This decision to turn the investigation over was made to ensure that transparency and an extra layer of separation and impartiality were established,” Mayor Frank Jackson said in a statement. “I believe that the best way to ensure accountability in a use of force investigation is to have it completed by an outside agency.”

Surveillance video released by police shows Tamir being shot less than two seconds after the officer’s patrol car stopped near him. Officer Timothy Loehmann told Tamir to put his hands up, but the boy didn’t, according to police.

The black youth’s death at the hands of a white officer raised questions about how police treat blacks and has spurred protests.

Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association President Jeff Follmer recently said officers had no way of knowing Tamir was carrying an airsoft gun that only looked like a real firearm.

Since the shooting, Cleveland police investigators have been collecting evidence and conducting interviews. Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty’s office eventually will present the case to a grand jury for possible criminal charges.

Tamir’s family has sued the city in federal court over the shooting, saying Loehmann and his partner acted recklessly when they confronted him.

Cleveland police have come under outside scrutiny within the last few months over other cases.

The U.S. Department of Justice in December released findings from a nearly two-year investigation of the police department. The review, which did not include Tamir’s shooting, concluded that officers use excessive and unnecessary force far too often.

City officials have been ordered to work with community leaders, the Department of Justice and others to create a police reform plan that a judge will approve and an independent monitor will oversee.

Original post – 

Cleveland Hands Off Probe Into Tamir Rice’s Shooting

We have not yet seen the film Selma. Pending this, we are surprised and perplexed as to why there should be any controversy about the respective leadership roles of Dr. Marin Luther King, Jr. and President Lyndon B. Johnson concerning the events in Selma, Alabama, January though March of 1965. Then again, we remember the charges and countercharges between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the South Carolina Democratic primary presidential campaigns of 2008. “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Senator Hillary Clinton said. “It took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality. The power of that dream became real in people’s…

We have not yet seen the film Selma. Pending this, we are surprised and perplexed as to why there should be any controversy about the respective leadership roles of Dr. Marin Luther King, Jr. and President Lyndon B. Johnson concerning the events in Selma, Alabama, January though March of 1965. Then again, we remember the charges and countercharges between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the South Carolina Democratic primary presidential campaigns of 2008.

“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Senator Hillary Clinton said. “It took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality. The power of that dream became real in people’s lives because we had a president who said, ‘We are going to do it,’ and actually got it accomplished.”

This statement by candidate Hillary Clinton was in interpreted by several leadership persons in the African-American community as demeaning and diminishing the leadership role of Dr. King in the successful passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan is credited with originating the saying “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

Aside from the actual audio tapes, photos, etc., from the Presidential Library of President Lyndon Johnson, the seminal book on Selma and the respective roles of Dr. King and President Johnson preceding and during the events presumably depicted in the movie is Judgement Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Laws That Changed America by Nick Kotz.

Joseph A. Califano was a former White House special assistant to President Johnson. In a Washington Post Op-Ed, he claims that the film “falsely portrays President Lyndon B. Johnson as being at odds with Martin Luther King Jr. and even using the FBI to discredit him, as only reluctantly behind the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and as opposed to the Selma march itself.”

According to Mashable:

Califano says LBJ in fact came up with the idea behind the Selma march, which was to find the worst area of voting suppression and make a stand there; that the President considered the Voting Rights Act to be his administration’s greatest achievement; and never used the FBI to disparage the civil rights leader.

We have had and continue to have great respect for the contributions of Mr. Califano to our country. Historical facts, however, require us to state categorically that LBJ did not in fact come up “with the idea behind the Selma march.” The initiation of the March arose from the leadership role of Dr. King and the African-American leaders in Selma, Alabama, in January 1965 for voter registration in Selma and other parts of Alabama. This initiative in the community of Selma was captioned “The Alabama Project.”

According to Judgement Days by Nick Kotz:

Dr. King had launched the Alabama Project with a powerful sermon at the Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Selma on January 2, two weeks before his conversation with the President (on Jan 15, 1965, the date cited by Mr. Califano as the date ‘LBJ in fact came of with the Idea behind the Selma march’). Speaking to an enthusiastic audience of 700 black citizens who jammed the church, King called Selma ‘a symbol of bitter-end resistance to the civil rights movement of the Deep South.’

As we said, we have not yet seen the film. But, we do not have to see the film to know what the historical facts were. We knew them from our role as a former political advisor and lawyer for Dr. King, before, during and after the 1965 events in Selma and the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The march from Selma to Montgomery and the plan to initiate a voting registration drive in Selma did not because “LBJ in fact came up with the idea behind the Selma march, which was to find the worst area of voting suppression and make a stand there.”

The Selma march was a result of the political evolution and development of a movement by the African-Americans of Selma, and civil rights allies to insist once and for all, that the African-American citizens living in Selma have the unimpeded opportunity to register and vote.

From “30,000 feet” it appears that both the producers of the film and Joseph A. Califano misunderstand or simply do not know that the success of the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 was a result of the joint leadership and cooperation between Dr. King and President Johnson.

The director of Selma, Ava DuVernay, has been reported as citing, as “evidence,” that President Johnson “opposed” or “did not support” Dr. King’s efforts in Selma because President Johnson did not prevent J. Egar Hoover from conducting a concurrent campaign to disparage and destroy Dr. King’s character by the FBI’s dissemination of wiretaps of Dr. King with women other than his wife.

The events in Selma Alabama in 1965 and the passage of the Voting Rights Act transformed and expanded opportunities for hundreds of thousands of previously unregistered African-American voters in our country. They are unique and enduring testaments to the special historical roles played by both President Johnson and Dr. King.

Joseph Califano and others (like us) should be grateful that a film has been made depicting those persons and events that played such important real life roles in the movie’s tribute to Selma, Alabama’s, legacy of the struggle for political empowerment during the 20th century.

Original source: 

For the Record

ST. LOUIS (AP) — From street-artist paintings on boards protecting store windows to signs bearing the now iconic statement, “Hands Up. Don’t Shoot,” cultural images from the Ferguson protests have become firmly established in recent Missouri history. So much so that the Missouri History Museum is gathering images and items cataloguing the unrest that followed the August shooting death of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer. The museum in St. Louis’ Forest Park is in the process of gathering not only physical artifacts from Ferguson, but Twitter feeds, oral histories from protesters, residents and police, and even cellphone videos. It’s …

ST. LOUIS (AP) — From street-artist paintings on boards protecting store windows to signs bearing the now iconic statement, “Hands Up. Don’t Shoot,” cultural images from the Ferguson protests have become firmly established in recent Missouri history. So much so that the Missouri History Museum is gathering images and items cataloguing the unrest that followed the August shooting death of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer.

The museum in St. Louis’ Forest Park is in the process of gathering not only physical artifacts from Ferguson, but Twitter feeds, oral histories from protesters, residents and police, and even cellphone videos. It’s all meant to give future generations a real-time perspective from those affected by the shooting and the aftermath that included protests, riots, and the strained relations between police and minority communities. The items aren’t being collected for a specific exhibition and will mostly be used for research. The goal is to seize on history as it happens.

“This is a rare example of being at a point where history is made all around you,” said Chris Gordon, Library and Collections director for the museum. “We’re standing in the midst of it, and we haven’t had that chance very often. Documenting everything we can — getting all sides, all perspectives — is very important.”

Aside from its regular exhibits, the expansive museum offers a public library housing an array of documents, relics and written words from events dating back more than two hundred years, including the Lewis and Clark expedition and the Louisiana Purchase.

The historical significance of what happened in Ferguson quickly became evident. Brown, 18 and black, was fatally shot on Aug. 9 after a confrontation with a white police officer, Darren Wilson. Brown was unarmed, and some witnesses said he was trying to surrender. Wilson said Brown was threatening his life.

A day after the shooting, protesters flooded the streets near the site. Several businesses were damaged and looted.

Anger percolated in the community for months, and escalated on Nov. 24 after St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch announced that a grand jury would not indict Wilson. Furious protesters swarmed streets across the St. Louis area, spurring a nationwide movement protesting police brutality. Some protests became violent. A dozen Ferguson-area businesses were destroyed in fires and other businesses were damaged.

The shootings and unrest made the St. Louis region a focal point of media attention, with images of police in riot gear facing off with angry protesters dominating headlines and news broadcasts around the world.

Gordon said the museum has already collected T-shirts, protest signs, buttons. Photos have been taken of a makeshift memorial for Brown in the street where he was killed. And efforts are in place to secure graffiti art, still highly visible in Ferguson. Plywood boards over store windows still contain messages such as, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to Justice everywhere,” and “Stop the Violence.”

On a recent chilly morning, Carol Snyder of Lehighton, Pennsylvania, walked along South Florissant Road snapping photos of the plywood art with her phone as her husband, James, followed along in the car.

Standing in front of a plywood sheet painted with the words, “Hands Up Let’s Pray,” the 60-year-old retired physical therapist felt a mixture of sadness and hope.

“I do hope for a brighter future,” she said. “I do hope for peace for the people here in Ferguson and throughout the United States.”

Some items have been hard for Gordon to procure. He has failed to find a spent tear gas canister or rubber bullet — items used by police when the protests turned violent. He is also pursuing buttons, T-shirts and signs showing support for Wilson, but they are hard to come by because there were not so many demonstrations in the officer’s favor.

The museum is not just collecting physical items. Museum officials are working with Washington University, where researchers are collecting cellphone video along with Tweets, emails, Facebook posting and other social media related to unrest in Ferguson and St. Louis for a project called “Documenting Ferguson.”

It is unclear if any of the items will ever be put on display.

“The biggest portion of this will be for research purposes,” Gordon said. “Our hope is to preserve this for future generations so they can get a clearer picture of what actually happened.”

___

AP National Writer Allen Breed contributed to this report.

Link – 

Museum Capturing Ferguson History As It Happens

Madonna sparked outrage on Friday after her Twitter account posted images of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela photoshopped onto her “Rebel Heart” album cover. Here’s what the album cover looks like: X-mas is coming early! Pre order my album and download 6 tracks! Happy Holidays! ❤️#rebelheart pic.twitter.com/YBiJccfQQ4 December 20, 2014 Here’s Nelson Mandela: This❤️#rebelheart fought for freedom! pic.twitter.com/7OxGT28TuY January 2, 2015 And Martin Luther King: This ❤️#rebelheart had a dream! pic.twitter.com/PIwcwosS2G January 2, 2015 Following the tweets, fans and journalists posted things like “STOP,” “WTF” and “highly disrespectful.” Here are some other reactions: #1 pop culture problem of 2015 so far is Madonna force-wrapping peoples’ faces in Rebel Heart promo how do…

Madonna sparked outrage on Friday after her Twitter account posted images of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela photoshopped onto her “Rebel Heart” album cover.

Here’s what the album cover looks like:

Here’s Nelson Mandela:

And Martin Luther King:

Following the tweets, fans and journalists posted things like “STOP,” “WTF” and “highly disrespectful.” Here are some other reactions:

A representative for Madonna was not immediately available for comment.

Throughout December, Madonna’s account tweeted various fan photos in the style of the cover, as well as ones of Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Marilyn Monroe and Skrillex and Diplo all wrapped in black cords. It also included photos of a statue of Jesus Christ …

… and Homer Simpson:

“Rebel Heart” leaked online last month. Six of the album’s tracks are available in an official capacity at the moment, before the record’s release date in March.

Taken from:  

Madonna Sparks Outrage After Using Images Of Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela To Promote ‘Rebel Heart’

New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan has listed 17 “hopes and dreams” for the newspaper heading into 2015 in an end of the year article published Wednesday. Though much of the list deals with editorial goals and ways to round The Times’ coverage moving forward, Sullivan also touched on issues of diversity in the paper’s newsroom following this year’s wave of layoffs and buyouts. In September, television critic Alessandra Stanley wrote a review of Shonda Rhimes’ “How To Get Away with Murder” which some readers felt propped up harmful racial stereotypes, and in December news broke that the cuts had left The Times’ culture section devoid of black reporters. Sullivan hopes the newspaper will remedy a few of its diversity issues with “the addition of some black critics…

New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan has listed 17 “hopes and dreams” for the newspaper heading into 2015 in an end of the year article published Wednesday.

Though much of the list deals with editorial goals and ways to round The Times’ coverage moving forward, Sullivan also touched on issues of diversity in the paper’s newsroom following this year’s wave of layoffs and buyouts.

In September, television critic Alessandra Stanley wrote a review of Shonda Rhimes’ “How To Get Away with Murder” which some readers felt propped up harmful racial stereotypes, and in December news broke that the cuts had left The Times’ culture section devoid of black reporters. Sullivan hopes the newspaper will remedy a few of its diversity issues with “the addition of some black critics to the culture staff; and a more diverse staff in general.” Sullivan added that she wishes to see more bylines from female writers on the front page, and more women’s voices on the paper’s op-ed pages as well.

The article also touched on the departure of labor reporter Steven Greenhouse, who, after accepting a buyout in December, left The Wall Street Journal as the only daily newspaper in the country with a full-time labor writer.

“Writers assigned to cover labor, television and advertising (and many other subjects) who are as good as their recently departed predecessors, who were among more than 100 Times newsroom employees who took buyouts or were laid off this month,” Sullivan wrote as her 13th point.

Other issues included more coverage of press-rights stories like Freedom of Information Act legislation, but issues stemming from the staff cuts seemed to loom especially large for Sullivan.

“Please, no 2015 newsroom buyouts or layoffs,” she wrote. “Enough cake was cut, enough toasts made, enough tears shed for at least a year.”

See more here: 

NYT Public Editor Tackles Diversity Issues In ‘Hopes And Dreams’ For 2015

A woman died in Cleveland police custody nearly two months ago because she was physically restrained in a prone position, and her heart condition and bipolar disorder were also factors, a coroner said Friday. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s office ruled that Tanisha Anderson’s death was a homicide. Anderson died Nov. 12 at hospital after being handcuffed, taken into police custody and then losing consciousness while having a mental-health episode. Relatives said the 37-year-old was schizophrenic, and they claimed an officer used excessive force. In a statement, Cleveland police said its own use of force investigation team is looking into the death. The two officers involved are on restricted duty, the department said. Anderson’s…

A woman died in Cleveland police custody nearly two months ago because she was physically restrained in a prone position, and her heart condition and bipolar disorder were also factors, a coroner said Friday.

The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s office ruled that Tanisha Anderson’s death was a homicide. Anderson died Nov. 12 at hospital after being handcuffed, taken into police custody and then losing consciousness while having a mental-health episode. Relatives said the 37-year-old was schizophrenic, and they claimed an officer used excessive force.

In a statement, Cleveland police said its own use of force investigation team is looking into the death. The two officers involved are on restricted duty, the department said.

Anderson’s cause of death was ruled “sudden death associated with physical restraint in a prone position,” the medical examiner’s office said, while also citing coronary artery disease and her bipolar disorder.

Her family said at a news conference nearly two weeks ago that they wanted more answers about what happened and that Cleveland officers need better training on dealing with mentally ill people.

In December, the police force was heavily criticized in a U.S. Justice Department report that found excessive use of force and civil rights violations.

Federal investigators spent 18 months looking into use of force policies in Cleveland after a series of well-publicized incidents, including the killing of two unarmed civilians in a hail of police gunfire after a high-speed chase.

The Justice Department’s finding will force the city to devise a plan to reform the police department. That plan must be approved by a federal judge and will be overseen by an independent monitor.

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Tanisha Anderson Death Ruled Homicide; Cleveland Woman Died In Police Custody