Willem Arondeus was a gay Dutch artist who participated in the bombing of the Amsterdam public records office to hinder the Nazis from identifying Dutch Jews and others wanted by the Gestapo.
His final words before execution were, "Tell people that homosexuals are not cowards."
It would take far more than a month to honor the contributions of queer and transgender New Yorkers.
From the Cercle Hermaphroditos in 1895, the first trans advocacy group in the United States, to the drag balls of the Harlem Renaissance, to the Stonewall uprising, to the Lesbian Herstory Archives, to ACT UP!, founded in 1987 as queer people fought for their lives while the Reagan administration looked away, New York City's history has long been shaped by queer and trans New Yorkers.
To all our queer and trans neighbors: you deserve a City where you can afford to live safely, openly, and joyfully.
Happy Pride, New York City.
Forever grateful to everyone at The Late Show — from David Letterman to Stephen Colbert.
That stage changed our lives.
The night after our first appearance in 2014, we played the Orange Peel in Asheville. Tonight, we’re back there again.
🇺🇸🇵🇰 A man from the US flew to Pakistan and paid $4,000 to free a family that had been enslaved for 140 years.
The family's bondage started in the 1880s when an ancestor took out a small loan. Under Pakistan's "peshgi" system, kiln owners issue advances to workers. Then manipulate accounts, add interest and arbitrary fines, and declare the debt a family obligation passed to children and grandchildren.
Kids as young as 4 or 5 work to help "repay" it. The math is designed to never reach zero.
Pakistan banned bonded labour in 1992. Estimates suggest hundreds of thousands remain trapped across the country's 20,000+ brick kilns.
Enforcement is nearly nonexistent. Kiln owners have political connections, police frequently collude, and families who try to leave face armed guards, false arrests, or violence against relatives left behind.
Aaron Hutchings paid $4,000. One family. 140 years. Done.
Source: @visegrad24
James Talarico: “It’s really easy to love your neighbor who looks like you, prays like you, votes like you. The challenge is to love people who look differently, who pray differently, who vote differently”
The artist behind this painting, Criselda Vasquez, painted this portrait of her parents in 2017. The man in this painting, her father, was recently taken by ICE. He has lived in the United States for forty years. This loss has made it hard for the family to support themselves. If you want to support them, you can go to their GoFundMe here:
https://t.co/Mgp7W8m5xJ