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LOUISVILLE, Ky. Drag Queen Storytime is increasing security for an upcoming weekend event in Louisville over heightened safety concerns.

The LGBTQ+ nonprofit is hosting a "Reading with Pride" event, featuring Louisville Drag Queen Miss Diana Rae, at the No Kill Louisville Animal Rescue & Pet Food Bank on Sunday, March 26

In a social media post, event organizers said they were notified that White Lives Matter plans to travel to Kentucky to protest the event in hopes of scaring guests.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled the group a neo-Nazi organization created as "a racist response to the civil rights movement Black Lives Matter."

Screenshots from the Kentucky White Live Matter Official Telegram channel, provided by the nonprofit, show the group plans to "make our visibility known" at the event.

In response, Drag Queen Storytime says rather than canceling the event, they plan to increase security.

"This group is hoping to intimidate and scare us into canceling our event," officials said on Facebook. "Let's be perfectly Queer about this. We will not be canceling our event. We will make ourpresence known."

Drag Queen Storytime says there will be more security at the event to protect guests and say the event venue is gated and on private property.

Another Louisville nonprofit,the Parasol Patrol, also plans to attend the event on Sunday to shield guests from anticipated protestors.

"We are calling our community. Please show up!" Drag Queen Storytime said. "We will NOT HIDE from anyone."

On Wednesday, another LGBTQ+ event in eastern Kentucky canceled its drag fundraiser due to threats of violence from extremists.

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'We will not hide'; Drag Queen Storytime increases event security after threats from White Lives Matter - WHAS11.com

By LaKeshia N. Myers

A riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

These words were spoken by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1967.

Kings words were fresh on my mind last week during our assembly floor session where we debated a bill that would define riot in statute as well as provide penalties for individuals who incite and/or participate in a riot. I voted No on the billand for good reason. First, the bill defined a riot as, a public disturbance that involves an act of violence, as part of an assembly, of at least three persons, that constitutes a clear and present danger of property damage or personal injury or a threat of an act of violence (Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, 2023). My colleagues widely referenced the protests of 2020, when statues we dismantled and storefronts were vandalized in the wake of George Floyds murder. They readily exclaimed that law enforcement groups were all on board with the legislation that would be aimed at saving property.

While they thought about property, I thought about people. The people whose lives are almost always at the heart of the protests. People who inherently carry the burden of fighting for their very existence and fight to hold on to their piece of American pie each and every generation. They are most often the people who would be prosecuted should a protest include any act of violence, and the truth of the matter is, they might very well be the perpetrator of a violent act done in the name of a worthy cause. But to me, riot, as defined by the legislation is par for the course of living in a democracy. It is the American way.

America itself exists because of riots. The Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, and Shays Rebellionall can be classified as riots. The people who perpetrated the acts (in most cases) were prosecuted and tried (or killed) because of their participation. But the end result was that our country changed because they were courageous enough to stand up for what they believed in. It amazes me that now, because of Black Lives Matter protests and the subsequent violence that occurred we need harsher penalties. There are very few penalties for police and others who choose to wreak havoc on marginalized communities. Where was the outcry about saving property when Black churches were being burned? When the Greenwood District of Tulsa was being bombed and burned to the ground? When cities like Watts, Newark, and Miami were hurting?

I am not a proponent of violence, but I understand why it happens. I understand that there is a fine line that can be assuaged between riot and protest. The determination is most often based on whether or not we agree with the people making the noise. And that is the sad part. There is no right way to protest. Dr. King and his contemporaries dressed in their Sundays finest and were met with dogs and water hoses. In Ferguson, Missouri, some activists burned a police car and were met with tear gas. Same fight. Same result. Property damage is the cost of living in an ever evolving democracy.

Instead of creating new ways to stifle citizen outcry, we need to begin doing the real work to make our society more equitable and just. If we dont just wait for the next riot, after all, its the American blueprint for Democracy.

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Riots: The American Way - Milwaukee Courier Weekly Newspaper

Amid all the chants, Travonna Thompson-Wiley searched for a voice. Someone who could guide her next steps.

The Seattle native had never considered herself an activist before the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. But after the video, the one she and so many others couldnt get through, shed seen enough. Felt enough. On May 30, 2020, she streamed downtown with thousands of others to protest for Black lives.

Outside the Nordstrom corporate building where she once worked, Thompson-Wiley couldnt find a leader. She followed the crowd to I-5, then up to Capitol Hill. She listened closely to stories of suffering and resilience from Black and Indigenous community members who huddled in the early days of CHOP.

Those conversations inspired Thompson-Wiley and others to form the Black Action Coalition. Group members started weekly marches. Then, when they joined daily demonstrations backed by more experienced activists like Nikkita Oliver, Thompson-Wiley heard a cacophony of outrage finally coalesce into a chorus of three demands: Free the protesters. Invest in the Black community. Defund the police.

But how much, exactly, should they ask for?

In concert with groups from Los Angeles to Minneapolis, local activists landed on a 50 percent reduction of the Seattle Police Departments budget for the remainder of 2020 and 2021. The money could be reinvested in community-led solutions and a road map to life without policing, a proposal advocacy groups King County Equity Now and Decriminalize Seattle outlined to the city council on July 7, 2020. Seven of the nine politicians pledged their support.

But three years since protesters hatched a bold plan to reimagine public safety, Seattle hasnt sniffed divestment of this magnitude. With a new administration in place, the city has quietly reversed course, raising questions about just how genuine, or widespread, calls for change in 2020 really were. And what their legacy will be.

SPD is receiving nearly $19 million more this year than in 2022. With crime and response times on the rise, the money will, in part, pay for hiring bonuses to bolster a depleted force. Over a two-and-half-year span, the department lost more than 400 trained and deployable officers for a variety of reasons, ranging from departmental squabbles to complaints about Seattles political climate.

The reimbursement fulfills one of mayor Bruce Harrells promises on the campaign trail. Make no mistake about it: Im not defunding the police, Harrell said during a debate with M. Lorena Gonzlez, part of the city council contingent who supported the 50 percent cut.

SPD BUDGET2020, actual: $402.3 million2021, actual: $361.7 million2022, adopted: $355.5 million2023, adopted: $374.3 million2024, endorsed: $384.9 millionIcon: EdwinPM / noun project

Harrells predecessor, Jenny Durkan, dismissed the feasibility of the councils stance back then. You cant govern by Twitter or bumper sticker. And the citys legislative body quickly discoveredthat a 50 percent cut was not possible, remembers council member Lisa Herbold, chair of the Public Safety and Human Services committee. A Covid-induced budget rebalancing shaved a paltry $3 million in the summer of 2020, and tweaks for 2021 ultimately amounted to just a 10 percent net cutprogress, but not what was promised.

Or what was necessarily popular. While a telephone survey in July 2020 showed 53 percent of likely Seattle voters backed a 50 percent cut, by October of that year, a separate Crosscut/Elway poll found just 20 percent did. Its respondents skewed older and whiter than the actual demographics of the city, but it also found a greater percentage of people of color wanted more police in neighborhoods than white city residents.

Focusing on a defunding number at all may have been part of the problem, Thompson-Wiley says. Especially such a large one. Initially she was a little ticked off when the city didnt allocate more money for community members marginalized by gentrification and the war on drugs. But she kept listening to the activist voices more seasoned than hers. Defunding the police wasnt just about dollars, she learned, a sentiment she would soon pass on to skeptics; it was also a broader mandate to reduce the power and size of the force.

Through that lens, she could see the steps forward.

Anglica Chzaro couldnt march during those early protests. With immunocompromised family members at home, she didnt dare come within shouting distance of the masses as a pandemic raged. Instead, she made her presence felt from behind a computer screen.

The University of Washington law professor and Decriminalize Seattle organizer helps steer the Seattle Solidarity Budget, a coalition of progressive groups that moves appeals for change from streets to spreadsheets.

The collective came together after some of its advocates were pitted against one another. In the first budget following 2020s Black Lives Matter protests, Durkan pushed for a $100 million investment in communities of color. But she wanted to fund the project with revenue from a new payroll tax earmarked for other progressive purposes.

Chzaro and peers balked. Investment couldnt substitute for divestment. And activists shouldnt have to draw from the same pot. Instead of competing for resources, they joined forces and asked, What does make us safe?

They helped secure nearly $30 million for participatory budgeting to address a broader slate of public needs: future housing, road safety, and climate change. The advocates clinched the removal of the civilian-run 911 call center from SPDs purview in 2021, potentially laying the groundwork for fewer armed responses to emergencies. And they requested the transfer of civilian parking officers to the Department of Transportation, the other major cut to the police budget.

SPD OFFICERS IN SERVICE2019: 1,2812020: 1,0942021: 9582022: 954Icon: EdwinPM / noun project

That one served as a learning experience. The move to SDOT contributed to a debacle (or a godsend, depending on your perspective), as the city had to cancel or refund more than 200,000 parking tickets from a seven-month period when its officers lacked the authority to write them. Now those officers have returned to SPD.

The parking enforcement fiasco reaffirmed that an administrations implementation of changes is almost as important as the policies themselves. With Harrell pushing for the recruitment and retention of hundreds of more officers over the next several years, Chzaro knows the Solidarity Budget is at odds with his visionthough the coalition did manage to defund 80 unfilled, or ghost cop, positions recently.

Several allies from the council who helped push for trims in the months after protests are also gone or soon leaving office. But their support didnt come out of nowhere. We knew the only reason we had this opening was because there was still so much pressure on the streets, says Chzaro.

Thompson-Wiley kept marching into the spring of 2021. Then, as she expected, things died down. Keeping the energy up was labor-intensive. She admired the work of Chzaro and Oliver, who later left for Detroit after losing a city council race to Sara Nelson, a moderate whos pushed more police hiring bonuses.

Oliver, the interim executive director of Creative Justice, where Thompson-Wiley is now a community organizer, told her that theyd shifted the conversation. Though a 50 percent defund had fallen through, police abolition was now ingrained in local political conversations. A study with UW ties showed antiracist language from Black Lives Matter protests persisted on social media and in news stories long after marches dispersed. And Herbold says that community-based alternatives to police responses are now part of the dialogue tosupport other officers, not just the safety of those in crisis. When a majority of the council, including Herbold, initially backed halving the police budget, it was not so much about whether or not the goal was realistic; it was about recognizing that you have to reach in order to even make a small change.

Still, Thompson-Wiley wonders if some of the city councils promises to defund the police were really just pleas to get them off the streets.

If so, at least she knows now where to negotiate.

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What Happened to Defunding the Seattle Police Department? - Seattle Met

One of Britain's largest charities will stop considering applications for grants so that its board members can learn about colonialism and become truly anti-racist.

The Tudor Trust, which has assets of nearly 300 million and awards about 20 million a year to good causes, announced this week that it was temporarily halting awarding grants to new applicants so its staff could better understand racism.

In a statement, first reported by The Times, the charity said: Staff and trustees are still learning about racial justice, white supremacy culture and how racism exists within Tudor and the wider society in which we operate.

It comes after the charitys trustees attended anti-racism workshops following the global Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, with the trust saying at the time that it had started a journey towards a better understanding of the history of racism, the inequity it perpetuates today and how it can be dismantled.

The trust was set up in 1955 following a bequest by Sir Godfrey Mitchell, an engineer who made his fortune after the First World War with his building company George Wimpey. Many of the current trustees are descendants of Sir Godfrey.

The board of trustees is led by Sir Godfrey's grandson, Matthew Dunwell, and also includes his brother Benjamin, author James Long, and Francis Runacres, who is an executive director of Arts Council England.

It is understood that Christopher Graves, the 120,000-a-year executive director who has worked for the trust for 38 years, is departing next month.

The trust, which is based in Notting Hill, made news in 2020 after it said that the Black Lives Matter protests had further exposed the systemic racism . . . upheld by our institutions, media and culture, causing harm and denying opportunity to so many.

The charity attacked the report by the Government's Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities which in March 2021 claimed that structural racism is not endemic in the UK.

Shortly after, the trust announced that it would undertake its journey into anti-racism, starting by looking inwards at our own understanding of racism and white supremacy.

According to the trust, these learnings included some initial thinking about whiteness at Tudor and areas that require change for the organisation to become truly anti-racist.

The white trustees undertook about 12 hours of workshops, which the trust said gave them a better grasp of the different characteristics of racism born of Britains colonial history, as well as the white supremacy culture that prevails.

Workshops were held with black, Asian and other minority ethnic staff while white employees attended separate meetings.

In its latest accounts, the trust donated about a quarter of its grants to causes it said focused on Black, Asian and ethnic minority communities.

The trust has awarded grants to 700 groups and said it will continue to support these beneficiaries while the applications process is frozen.

A spokesman told The Times: The process to become a truly anti-racist organisation takes time and involves a complex dialogue with our staff and trustees. This process is not yet complete and as a responsible organisation we cannot commit to a date when we will accept new applications.

He added: Tudor is moving away from its long history as a family trust and will be seeking new trustees to reflect that as the reimagining process progresses.

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Tudor Trust suspends grant applications while staff learn about ... - The Telegraph

As part of our Black History Month activities, the Venable Success Network (VSN) hosted a panel discussion on Black resistance in America, which is the theme of this years celebration. Moderated by William Lawrence, an associate in our DC office, the panel included Lynn French, executive director of Hope and a Home, Inc. and former member of the Black Panther Party, and Frank Smith, executive director, African American Civil War Memorial and Museum.

Frank began the discussion by sharing the defining moment that led to his involvement in the civil rights movement. It occurred in 1955 when a girl in his high school class brought in an edition of Jet magazine featuring a picture of Emmett Tills mutilated body. (The 14-year-old Till had been brutally murdered during a visit to Mississippi for allegedly flirting with a white woman.) As a young Black man growing up in the Jim Crow South, Frank realized that what had happened to Till could all too easily happen to him and other young men like him.

During his freshman year at Morehouse College, Frank joined the civil rights movement that was already under way and soon became an active member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He noted that many fellow members of SNCC were also motivated to join the movement after seeing Tills photo in that magazine. Facing such a real threat to their lives meant that the fight for civil rights inevitably became all-consuming, and in 1962 Frank left Morehouse to begin working full-time for SNCC. What followed were many years of fighting to end segregation at lunch counters, on buses, in schools, and indeed across society, meaning that Frank and his fellow activists spent much of their younger lives either on picket lines or in jail.

The panelists also discussed how more modern movements like Black Lives Matter compare with the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Frank noted that many of the Black people who were activists in his day were middle class and college educated. But despite the wealth they had accumulated and the professional success they had achieved, there was no place in society for them. He used the example of Rosa Parks being asked to give up her seat on a bus as a case in point: the public space she had to move in was wholly controlled by white people, creating an urgency in the demands of the movement that has since lessened somewhat. But while there has been progress regarding segregation, young Black people today remain at risk of wrongful arrests and police violence. So, the core goal of the movementto ensure all people are treated equallyhas not changed.

Lynn, a sixth-generation Washington native, also spoke about getting involved in the fight for civil rights while she was still in high school. She said she frequently attended SNCC demonstrations and hugely admired their work to change the unacceptable status quo. Ultimately, she joined the Black Panther Party after being drawn to its 10-point programthe first principle of which was We Want Freedom or the power to determine ones own destiny. As a young Black woman about to go to college, Lynn realized that her options were extremely limited and that she had little power over her own future. You either became a schoolteacher, married someone who you hoped would take good care of you, or you cleaned someones house, she explained, and that just wasnt how I envisioned my life.

Lynn also discussed the work the Black Panther Party did in monitoring police stops and challenging police brutality, while noting that the problems in how Black communities are policed persist to this day. Every decade or so, we see riots flare up because theres never been real change, she said, citing the example of George Floyd, who died after being held face down by several police officers in Minnesota, who knelt on his neck and back for more than nine minutes. Floyds murder did result in the prosecution and conviction of the officers who were involved in his arrest, largely because a bystander recorded the entire incident on their smart phone. But even though video evidence often exists these days, incidents of police brutality toward people of color appear to be proliferating, and convictions in such cases remain rare.

This country is still wrestling with what citizenship means for a Black person, Frank said, and sadly that means that the struggle for equal rights is far from over.

This program is part of Venables 2023 DEI Speaker Series. To learn more about Venables diversity initiatives, please click here.

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It Affects All of Us: A Panel Discussion on Black Resistance in America - JD Supra