New Links and more on Oscar Grant protests

Added a few new links to the blogroll:

Seeking Avalon, where a recent, spirited debate on the representation of people of color characters by white writers of fantasy and sci-fi caught my eye.

K. Tempest Bradord's blog (can I have a middle name like 'Tempest', please?), whom I found via Claire Light's See Light blog--both these are women of color Speculative Fiction writers whom I hope to get to know better in the coming year.

And, no I haven't forgotten about the Oscar Grant tragedy and aftermath in Oakland. How could I with media and police helicopters swarming my office and home neighborhoods for nearly three days straight. But instead of writing more about it here, I'll point you to another new link in my blogroll: Richard Wright aka DJ Fflood's blog, as well as a couple interesting posts on Racialicious here and here.

Justice for Oscar Grant

There's a protest scheduled for today at Fruitvale BART in Oakland to address the police shooting there of Oscar Grant, a 22-year old man, on New Year's Eve. You can also find it on Facebook.

A Cop Who's Doing the Right Thing

I was searching online today for examples of resistance to housing foreclosures, and am inspired and hopeful after finding this story about an Illinois sheriff who is halting tenant evictions in his county which are the result of the foreclosure crisis. I was talking to a co-worker yesterday about how people will start doing what they need to do to survive, and if that means resisting injustice and potentially breaking unfair laws--the way Martin Luther King, Jr and Gandhi and every other peace activist who fought for justice has done--in order to do so, that's what people will do. The fact that this story is about a sheriff is even more awesome, because we lefties don't think of cops as being our allies most of the time (with reason). But this goes to show that cops are just people, like the rest of us, who have hearts and consciences and who can do what's right when they are so moved.

I applaud Sheriff Dart and hope there are other Sheriffs out there like him who refuse to comply with the unjust evictions of innocent tenants who are victims of Wall Street's greed.