THE HELP (2011) | The Unaffiliated Critic

THE HELP (2011) | The Unaffiliated Critic.

……The scatological focus culminates in what is simultaneously the “comic” highlight of the film, its cathartic climax, and its deus ex machina: Minnie, in revenge for being fired, feeds Hilly a chocolate cream-pie made out of Minnie’s own shit. This turns out to be the most important story in the book that Skeeter publishes, and a source of blackmail that removes any potential threat of retaliation from the evil White Queen. Because there were no problems in Jim Crow America that couldn’t be solved with a good fecal prank…..

Chris Norwood: 24 Hours in the Clink

Chris Norwood: 24 Hours in the Clink.

Bloomberg administration’s relentlessly enforced mass criminalization of minority neighborhoods — the shocking, obsessive and official brutalization of black women in New York City.Many “charges” that could easily be handled with a summons or desk ticket now impose an arrest that demands arraignment and “processing” through New York’s criminal “justice” system. The number of misdemeanor arrests rose from 353,649 in 2005 to 391,892 in 2010; for its minority citizens, New York City’s having the lowest crime rates in decades just meant that more pretexts would be found to arrest more of them.

Whatever the claimed reasons for arrests, the salient lesson of passage through New York City’s utterly filthy lock-ups and holding cells is that the constant seizure, routinely unprovoked, of black women on New York City streets is now absolute policy. There is no way to have some 400,000 “good,” justified arrests a year in any event and when that amount of police action is focused on selected neighborhoods there is no way to stay out of its path. The mother dashing next door to retrieve a teen who hasn’t come home on time, the housewife out buying a cake for dinner, even the young working woman asleep at home in her bed — all are subject to seizure any time, and they will mostly be black almost all the time.

Sears employee wins $5.2 million jury award for racial harassment

Sears employee wins $5.2 million jury award for racial harassment.

This halloween season Ohio University’s Students Teaching About Racism in Society produced a series of posters about racially insensitive halloween costumes. It was the comments around these posters included a large dose of what I label racial sociopathy, the inability to experience empathy for a person of another race or ethnicity.  These responses are usually couched in white whining strategies of “free speech” or “you’re too sensitive” or “das racist” and the ever popular “(insert race/ethnicity) dress like whites too!” There is no understanding of the historical context of how this costuming was used to support white supremacy and the fact that these insulting characters emotionally insult and maim people of color.

Medro Johnson did not take this type of assault sitting down. The African American employee of Sears Home Improvement Products in Natomas was at an August 2008 company barbecue with his family, court records say. A co-worker walked up and blurted a racial slur, issued with a “slave dialect.”Medro calls me Masta,” co-worker Paul St. Hilaire said, according to court records.
In less than eight hours of deliberation, a Sacramento Superior Court jury gave Johnson the last laugh.The panel awarded him $5.2 million in damages, including $2.2 million to compensate for lost earnings, pain and suffering.The other $3 million was for punitive damages, an award granted after the jury found that Sears’ policymakers and managers conducted themselves “with malice, oppression or fraud” for failing to investigate or to act on Johnson’s complaints about the slur and other racist acts.

The motivation for ignoring the problem?Christopher Whelan, Johnson’s attorney in the race harassment-retaliation case, said the evidence showed the company did not want to take action against St. Hilaire, one of its top sales producers nationally.”The message for Sears is that it just can’t ignore the law, no matter how much money the harasser earns for them,” said Whelan. “They subjected Medro to very serious risks and fear of retaliation. Let this case serve as a warning, you have the right to your free speech but it is not without consequences. I hope that more anti-black racists can learn that “our oversensitivity” could cost you big time.

Plus ça change, the more they stay the same

In the advent of greater racial, ethnic and religious bigotry in the last few months, I wonder why their is so much denial and animosity in the blogosphere. I contend there are many who do not see themselves in racist but do not see this upturn in bigotry as a no big thing or don’t feel that confronting those they know with more bigoted views is worth the effort. People of color need to address the new racial racial rhetoric and realize that it is not very different than pre-civil rights rhetorical formations and hope that right thinking folks will eventually see these uptick in racial hatred is immoral and since 1968, unamerican.

These anti-black sentiments publicized recently by Tea Partier Mark Williams and Laura Schlessinger have been brewing since the early 1970′s. We really need to examine their rhetoric with post civil rights/Obama age eye. Williams basically touted that blacks are lazy. A trope whites have used since they first arrived in Africa. The new twist is that it is welfare, affirmative action and civil rights initiatives have created a culture of dependency among black folks. Even though their are more middle class black folks in America than ever before, these racially conservative pundits cannot let go of the idea that their is something inherently wrong with black people. It have nothing to do with centuries of oppression, racial terrorism and opposition to extending civil rights and American citizenry to black people. To these pundits Blacks are essentially less intelligent, lazy, immoral, violent and hypersexual and they are angry that they cannot speak about these “truths” in mainstream public discourse. The more things change the more things stay the same. Why spend the same amount of resources on education for blacks since they are not as capable as white children. Send more on incarcerating for the same crimes because they are naturally immoral and criminal. It is a little more sophisticated than pre-civil rights rhetoric but it basically the same old same old.

Schlessinger’s rant basically reflects the frustration that some whites have with the fact that they cannot express their bigoted, ignorant rhetoric as freely as they could before the civil rights movement. She is part of the white moral panic that will only grow as the demographics continue to change and people of color gain more political and economic power in this country. People like Schlessinger want to preserve a white dominated society and feel that people of color have already been “given” too much, need to stop whining and should start working hard like white Americans who are loosing their rights under the current era. She and other white as sick of hearing anything about blacks and feel that were should be grateful for what we have. Her rhetoric is similar to the ideology that slavers used to support the insanity that race based slavery was a civilizing influence on primitive Africans. As people of color we need to learn more about our history and see the parallels in the past. We need learn how to counteract this more brazen, post modern expressions of time old ideologies. 

ABWW Heroine of the Day: Bridget Biddy Mason

Bridget “Biddy” Mason, was a slave who moved to California with her owner in the 1850s. She eventually petitioned the court for her freedom — and that of her children— and was emancipated. She worked as a nurse and a midwife while simultaneously purchasing real estate and growing a fortune that she used for philanthropic endeavors, including founding an elementary school for black children and helping black women agitate for the vote.

In 1847, Brigham Young was starting a Mormon community in California. Robert Smith, a follower of Young and Biddy’s also moved his household and slaves (90 people in all), to Utah Territory. On this arduous 2,000-mile trek across the country, Biddy’s responsibility was to herd the cattle, prepare meals, act as a midwife, and take care of her own children. (She had three daughters, Ellen, Ann and Harriet, whose father was reputedly Smith.) In 1851, Smith moved everyone again to San Bernardino, California, where Brigham Young was starting another Mormon community.

Biddy learned through friends in the African-American Los Angeles community that California had been admitted to the Union in 1850 as a free state; slavery was prohibited. But such slave owners were rarely challenged, and if they were, they rarely lost the case. In the winter of 1855, Smith decided to move once again, to Texas, a slave state. Their departure was interrupted by the Los Angeles sheriff, who served Smith a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of Biddy.

Biddy’s daughter Ellen had been dating a free black man, Charles Owens, the son of an esteemed business owner in Los Angeles’ African-American community. Charles and his friend Manuel Pepper, who was dating the daughter of another of Smith’s slaves, helped Biddy file her petition with the court for her freedom. Since California law at the time prohibited blacks, mulattos and Native Americans from testifying in court, Biddy could not speak on her own behalf, but the judge did meet with her privately to hear her story. Robert Smith did not appear in court so, on January 19 (another source says January 21), 1856, the judge granted Biddy her freedom, as well as that of her three daughters (some sources say all the other slaves of Robert Smith were freed as well).

Biddy moved to Los Angeles, accepting the invitation to live with the Owens family. (Her daughter Ellen later married Charles.) She quickly became well regarded as a nurse and midwife, assisting in hundreds of births to mothers of all races and social classes. A couple sources say she was immediately offered a job after the trial by Dr. John S. Griffin, a Los Angeles doctor who had become interested in the case. What is certain is she soon became financially independent, saving her money and living frugally. Ten years later, in 1866, she bought a house and sizeable property on Spring Street for $250 — becoming one of the first black women to own land in Los Angeles. She instructed her children to never abandon it.

Mason was one of the first black women to own land in Los Angeles. This site is now in the center of the commercial district in the heart of Los Angeles. In 1884, she sold a parcel of the land for $1500 and built a commercial building with spaces for rental on the remaining land. She continued making wise decisions in her business and real estate transactions and her financial fortunes continued to increase until she accumulated a fortune of almost $300,000. Her grandson, Robert Curry Owens, a real estate developer and politician, was the richest African-American in Los Angeles at one time. Was the wealthiest African-American in Los Angeles at one time.

Biddy became known as Grandma Mason — generously donating money to charities (she would occasionally pay the expenses of both Black and white churchs), visiting prison inmates with gifts and aid, and giving food and shelter to the poor of all races. Needy people often lined up in front of 331 South Spring Street. One source says she also ran an orphanage in her house.

In 1872, Biddy and her son-in-law, Charles Owens, founded and financed the Los Angeles branch of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first black church in Los Angeles. It is now known as 8th and Townes, and is presently housed in a modern building at 2270 South Harvard Street.

In 1851, Smith moved his household again, this time to San Bernardino, California, Smith probably did not know that California had been admitted to the Union in 1850 as a free state and that slavery was forbidden there. Mason petitioned the court and in 1856 won freedom for herself and for her daughters. She moved to Los Angeles and found employment as a nurse and midwife. Hard work and her nursing skills allowed her to become economically independent.

Biddy Mason also gave generously to various charities and provided food and shelter for the poor of all races. Lines of needy people were often forming at 331 South Spring Street. She also remembered the jail inmates whom she visited often. In 1872 she and her son-in-law, Charles Owens, founded and financed the Los Angeles branch of the First African Methodist Episcopal church, L.A.’s first black church.

Biddy Mason died January 15, 1891 and was buried in an unmarked grave at Evergreen cemetery in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles. Nearly a century later, on March 27, 1988 a tombstone was unveiled which marked her grave for the first time in a ceremony attended by Mayor Tom Bradley and about three thousand members of the First African Methodist Episcopal church.

Thursday, November 16, 1989 was declared a Biddy Mason Day and a memorial of her achievements was unveiled at the Broadway Spring Center located between Spring Street and Broadway at Third Street.

ABWW Heroine of the Day: Shirley Sherrod

When I first saw the edited tape I was suckered like the NAACP, the Agriculture Department and the White House. When the story began to trickle out I watched it again and you can clearly see that the audio does not match the movement of her lips. Andrew Breitbart is an anti black conservative who planned to besmirch this woman and in order to promote his agenda that blacks are more racist than whites have ever been. There are still people in America that believe that blacks are lazy, childishly dependent on the government and so intellectually deficient that the Democratic party leads us around by the welfare dollar. People like this have used the idea that black women are immoral and lazy for decades. Reagan’s emphasis of the “black welfare mother” is still used by conservative political activists, even though whites have always been a larger proportion of the welfare roles in America than African Americans.

The War on Drugs was hyped by reports of black female hypersexual crack addicts while havoc that users of powdered cocaine produced was disregarded. Images of lazy, immoral black women pumping out a generation of crack debilitated babies on the government tit, helped push through the racist drug laws that have incarcerated three generations of black and Hispanic non-violent drug offenders. It is time that these anti-black conservatives like Andrew Breitbart and Rush Limbaugh are called out and denounced. Bill O’Riley and FOXNEWS needs to start calling themselves FOXENTERTAINMENT or learn journalistic ethics. I applaud Ms. Sherrod for her courage and steadfast efforts to help poor people no matter what their race over a 45 year period. When racial conservatives state “we need to forget about slavery”, they erase the 100 years in between slavery and the passage of civil rights legislation. Ms. Sherrod is a survivor of the long campaign of domestic terrorism that that is so often dismissed by racial conservatives. Despite the fact that her father was murdered by a white man who was never prosecuted and the KKK threatened her family, Ms Sherrod remained in the South during an era when the danger of racial terrorism was an everyday concern. She soon learned that poor vs. rich can trump black vs. white, rose above her pain and loss and devoted her life to helping those without the resources to help themselves. Watch the entire speech an see how amazing this woman’s journey really was.

2 officers out of jobs in wake of repeated Tasering of woman

Not only are black women unprotected by law enforcement and criminal justice, but they are assaulted rather than assisted by those sworn to “protect and serve.” This is how police treat a black female victim of domestic violence.

By Rhonda Cook – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Janice Wells called the Richland Police Department when she feared a prowler was outside her clapboard house in the rural west Georgia town. The third-grade teacher had phoned for help. But within minutes of an officer coming to her backdoor, she was screaming in pain and begging not to be shocked again with a Taser. With each scream and cry, the officer threatened her with more shocks.

“All of it’s just unreal to me. I was scared to death,” Wells said in an interview with the AJC. “He kept tasing me and tasing me. My fingernails are still burned. My leg, back and my butt had a long scar on it for days.” The officer in question is Ryan Smith of the Lumpkin Police Department. Smith was called to back up an officer from the Richland Police Department because the sheriff’s office in the county, Stewart, had no deputies to send. Smith resigned as a result of the incident. The other officer involved, Tim Murphy of Richland PD, was fired for using pepper spray while trying to arrest Wells.

Wells is considering filing a lawsuit, according to her attorney. The details of the altercation between Wells and the officers have been fodder discussions in the two towns, which are only 10 miles apart. Some have speculated there was a racial component to the altercation between Wells and the policemen; Wells is black and the officers are white.
Stewart County Sheriff Larry Jones, who came to the house seconds after the last electric shock was administered, suspects the outcome would have been different if the woman had been white and the officers black. “I don’t think they would have done a white female like that,” said Jones, who is black. “If they had, it wouldn’t have been any doubt about whether they need to be terminated.”

Much of what happened in front of Wells’ house was recorded by the camera on the dash of Smith’s patrol car. The AJC obtained a copy of the video. Wells, hidden from camera view by the open door of the Richland patrol car, can be heard pleading, “Don’t do that! Don’t do that!” “Get in the car. Get in the car. You’re going to get it again,” Smith answered. Almost immediately there is another clicking as the Taser is discharged again and Wells screams.
“Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” Wells pleads again.

Smith, who quit eight days after the incident, remains unrepentant. “I did what I had to do to take control of the situation,” Smith told the AJC about his decision to repeatedly discharge his Taser. Yet his former boss, Lumpkin Police Chief Steven Ogle, was shocked when he saw the video. “I couldn’t believe it,” Ogle said. “You don’t use it [a Taser] for punitive reasons, to prod someone. It was evident it was an improper use of force. He was an excellent officer other than that incident.” Smith resigned just as Ogle started the process to fire him, the chief said. Smith now works for the Chattahoochee County Sheriff’s office.

And on April 28, the Richland Police Department fired Murphy, the officer who first arrived at Wells’ home. Murphy declined to comment saying he had been told there was an open investigation. Some of the details contained in police department records conflict with those provided in interviews. And only the end of the encounter between Wells and the officers is captured on video. But all agree that the struggle between Wells, 57, and Murphy, 52, started because she would not tell him the name of a friend who was at her house in Richland, 35 miles southeast of Columbus, when Murphy arrived around 9:30 p.m. on April 26. Wells, who teaches in Columbus, said she had called to report a prowler. Murphy wrote in his police report that he was dispatched to check out a report of an “unwanted guest.”

John Robinson was at Wells’ house when Murphy pulled up. Robinson told the AJC his friend of 26 years had called him to be with her until the police arrived. Robinson lives 10 miles from Wells and her husband was in McRae, almost 90 miles away. According to Robinson, Wells and the police reports, the officer only asked Robinson how long he had known Wells, the status of their relationship and where he lived. Murphy asked nothing more, not even Robinson’s name.Moments later Robinson left. Murphy wrote he let the man leave because it is best to separate people in domestic violence situations.“I could always arrest him later if I needed to since he lived nearby,” Murphy wrote in a report obtained by the AJC.

But Wells and Robinson said there was no violence and nothing to suggest there had been any. As Robinson pulled out of the driveway, Murphy asked Wells for her friend’s name. She refused to give it. “’You don’t need to know that,’” Murphy wrote in his report was Wells’ response. “I told her that she would need to give me the information that I needed or she would be arrested for obstruction. I explained that state law mandates that we investigate to determine if there has been any family violence.” She retrieved her purse and began walking around the side of her house until Murphy said he was taking her to jail.

“Janice then backed up from me in a fight or flight stance and I grabbed her arm and placed a handcuff on it,” Murphy wrote. “She pulled away and she took off. I sprayed her with pepper spray. I chased her around the house and tripped and fell, injuring my knee just as I caught up with her. As I was once again walking her to the car, she broke loose again and ran. She tripped and fell and I grabbed her again. As we got to the car, I attempted to get the other handcuff on her and get her in the car.”

Wells told the AJC, she finally stopped. “I fell to the ground. I was balled up and I was begging him to leave me alone,” Wells said. “Then he called for help.” Smith answered Murphy’s call for backup. In his report, Smith wrote he was concerned for Murphy’s welfare because his voice was weak. “[He] sound[ed] as if he could barely talk,” Smith wrote.The camera recorded images of Smith’s short drive down a two-lane road, but once he got within sight of the Wells’ clapboard house, the dash cam also began recording sound. As Smith pulled up, the video showed, Murphy was leaning on the roof of his car and a side door was open. He appeared to be talking to Wells, who was “in a ball position facing the ground,” according to Smith’s report.

Smith, 22, said nothing as he strode to the side of the car, his Taser in hand.Then came the sound of the electric buzz of the Taser and Wells screaming “Oh God! Oh God!”“Get in the car! Get in the car! Get in the car! You gonna get it again,” Smith screamed. Wells cried. In seconds the sound of the Taser can be heard again.“Don’t do it. Don’t do it. I ain’t gonna do nothing,” Wells pleaded. Smith is heard threatening a more aggressive setting on his Taser.
And then he used it again.

“It felt like electricity going through your body,” Wells said. “He was tasing me so fast and I was asking them to stop. To me, it was like it was a dream.” Murphy’s report says Smith used his Taser three times.Smith said he probably discharged the Taser three or four times for a total of six seconds. One of those times, he shocked himself.
The sound from the video suggests he discharged the device at least four times. Wells’ attorney, Gary Parker, said it may have been as many as 12 times. Parker said no decision has been made on filing a lawsuit but he is talking with local officials about a resolution.

After hearing about the calls to Wells’ house, a woman he had known for years, the sheriff got to the house just as she was shocked for the last time. He said he could hear her screams as he pulled up.“Larry, help me,” Wells said as the sheriff walked up. “Larry, I didn’t do nothing.” Jones said, “It took my best to hold my composure.”
On the video, Jones can be heard softly reassuring Wells. Later that night, Jones bonded Wells out of jail and drove her to an area hospital to be examined.He watched the video from the dash camera later.“It was worse than what I thought it was. I was shocked,” the sheriff told the AJC.”The public needs to know.”

ABWW History Lesson of the Day: Ruby McCollum and Paramour Rights

Contrary to what many non-blacks think black people do not spend a lot of time talking about our history in this country. My opinion is that it is simply too painful and many do not know enough about our history to know that along with the terrorism, the are stories of resilience and triumph. This sadly is not one of them. Paramour rights is a term coined by the great writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Huston. During her studies of turpentine camps in the 1930′s she found that white men would pick black women out for sexually coercive relationships whether they were married or not. This practice which many like to think ended with slavery was alive and well in the 1950′s when of Ruby McCollum, a middle class, married black woman who murdered her white lover and father of two children, Dr. C. Leroy Adams, in Live Oak, Florida, in 1952. When McCollum testified during her 1954 trial she stated that her doctor had forced her to bear his child, and then threatened to kill her if she refused to bear him a second child. The all-white jury convicted her of murder and McCollum was sentenced to die in the electric chair while still pregnant with Adams’ child. She appealed, and three months ago the State Supreme Court ordered a new trial on the ground that the jury had inspected the murder scene without the judge and Ruby McCollum being present. But Ruby was pronounced insane and, instead of being retried, was sent to Florida State Mental Hospital at Chattahoochee and was not released until 1980. McCollum was unable to recall most of the events the led up to her institutionalization since her “illness” was treated with Electroconvulsive therapy and anti-psychotic medication.

The era between the Civil War and the modern civil rights is marked with the untold abuse of black women, that I contend contributes to the intensification of black woman hateration over he last 40 years. In this period black women fought to live up to the standards of mainstream white femininity, but how could they do that when white men could debase them at anytime without any fear of legal consequences? Most black women did not have the luxury to be full time homemakers like the standards of femininity required, they were in the homes of white men that still saw his access to a black woman’s body was a God given right? Black men were not economically capable of giving their women the protection of a stay at home wife and risked his life and his family if her attempted to defend his woman’s honor. This phenomenon was on the wane but still in practice during the civil rights movement yet we never discuss it and the impact that decades this abuse may had on black families? Did the pain, anger, frustration of black men who were unable to protect their wives contribute to the contempt many black men have for us today

There are several books and a play about this case available at Amazon Check it out if you want to know more about this vital yet forgotten piece of American history.

ABWW Heroine of the Day: Shirley Chisholm

One of first memories of seeing a black person on TV outside of a situation comedy was a dignified, straightforward African American woman campaigning for President. I remember thinking if she could so that, I could do anything. In 1968, she became the first black woman elected to Congress. On January 25, 1972, she became the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Shirley Anita St. Hill was born in Brooklyn, New York, of immigrant parents. Her father, Charles Christopher St. Hill, was born in British Guiana and her mother, Ruby Seale, was born in Christ Church, Barbados. Born in Brooklyn, New York and at the age three, Chisholm was sent to Barbados to live with her maternal grandmother and did not return to New York City until roughly seven years later. In her 1970 autobiography Unbought and Unbossed, she wrote: “Years later I would know what an important gift my parents had given me by seeing to it that I had my early education in the strict, traditional, British-style schools of Barbados. If I speak and write easily now, that early education is the main reason.”

In 1964, Chisholm ran for and was elected to the New York State Legislature. In 1968, she ran as the Democratic candidate for New York’s 12th District congressional seat and was elected to the House of Representatives. Defeating Republican candidate James Farmer, Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress. Chisholm joined the Congressional Black Caucus in 1969 as one of its founding members. From 1977 to 1981, during the 95th Congress and 96th Congress, Chisholm was elected to a position in the House Democratic leadership, as Secretary of the House Democratic Caucus. By the time she retired from Congress she was the third highest-ranking member of the prestigious Education and Labor Committee. Throughout her tenure in Congress, Chisholm worked to improve opportunities for inner-city residents. She was a vocal opponent of the draft and supported spending increases for education, health care and other social services, and reductions in military spending.

All those Chisholm hired for her office were women, half of them black. Chisholm said that during her New York legislative career, she had faced much more discrimination because she was a woman than because she was black. In the 1972 U.S. presidential election, she made a bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. George McGovern won the nomination in a hotly contested set of primary elections, with Chisholm campaigning in 12 states and winning 28 delegates during the primary process.At the 1972 Democratic National Convention, as a symbolic gesture, McGovern opponent Hubert H. Humphrey released his black delegates to Chisholm] giving her a total of 152 first-ballot votes for the nomination. Chisholm’s base of support was ethnically diverse and included the National Organization for Women. Chisholm said she ran for the office “in spite of hopeless odds… to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.” Among the volunteers who were inspired by her campaign was Barbara Lee, who continued to be politically active and was elected as a congresswoman 25 years later.

She announced her retirement from Congress in 1982. Her seat was won by a fellow Democrat, Major Owens, in 1983. After leaving Congress, Chisholm was named to the Purington Chair at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. She taught there for four years. She also lectured frequently as a public speaker. Chisholm was married to Conrad Chisholm, a Jamaican private investigator from 1949 to 1977. Upon their divorce, she married Arthur Hardwick Jr., a Buffalo businessman who died in 1986. Check out the wonderful documentary of her extraordinary life at veoh.com

ABBW Around the World: Fighting Prejudice – Lesbian Soccer in South Africa

After reading this article about these courageous women, I wondered what issues lesbian sisters have in regard to dating and romance in the West. I would love to hear some opinions.please feel post away!

July 6, 2010 10:49 AM
Posted by David Gutnick @ The Fifa Worlc Cup Official Web SiteWhen South Africans tossed their racist laws into the garbage can at the beginning of the 1990′s, they showed the rest of the world that they were in the mood to make history. Anti-apartheid activists who had spent years in jail were finally free and hungry to remake their society.
Every citizen – no matter who they were – was to be treated with respect. The South African constitution – adopted in 1996 – was the first in the world to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.

“The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.” In the eyes of the law, gay and lesbian people have guaranteed rights. That is what is on paper. What happens in townships like Soweto, Alexandra and Diepsloot, and communities across South Africa is something else. Women who love women are still pushed aside, beaten and murdered.
That is why the Chosen Few soccer club is so extraordinary.It is the country’s only lesbian soccer team and it has made one of apartheid’s terrible symbols home base.

The Women’s Prison
“I was arrested on the 18th of November. They interrogated me in the night and then they assaulted me. What made them so cruel?” That is the voice of one of the thousands of black women who were thrown into Johannesburg Women’s jail by the South African government.
The heroic tales of women who spent years locked up because they fought for racial equality now boom out of loudspeakers hanging in the dark, damp cells. The tales of suffering are unbearable: Black prisoners were not allowed to wear undergarments; guards regularly fondled and raped women if they complained. Among the prisoners were articulate political prisoners who continued their work even under the most horrific conditions. “Because we were a big group of powerful women we made our jailers know what our cause was and what we were all about.”As you walk the somber corridors hearing those beautifully intense voices you cannot but wonder if their ghosts live behind the thick metal cell doors. They may well be living there.

However, these days they have to share their space with a new generation of revolutionaries.
The soccer-loving members of Chosen Few have turned a cell that used to hold political prisoners into their dressing room.Tin toilet buckets and blankets chewed up by rats have been replaced with balls and uniforms.”We come from different communities whereby we have been discriminated against because of our sexuality of being lesbians. And when you come to Chosen Few you meet other lesbians who have struggles just like you.”Twenty-two-year old Sidi Mofoneng’s dyed blond hair is shaved in zigzags. She chomps on gum as she kicks a ball around in the prison courtyard before practice. “In South Africa, when you’re black – we have our culture, we got our beliefs, we have religions. I am a Sesotho speaker and I come from a culture where they believe that being a lesbian is a sin. People do not believe that you can be born like that. They cannot believe it.”

Even worse, they attack women they suspect of being lesbian with their fists, sticks and guns.
On April 28th, 2008, Eudy Simelane, a member of South Africa’s national women’s soccer team and a lesbian rights activist, was gang raped and stabbed 25 times in KwaThema township.
Chosen Few member Sidi has experienced her own horror.A couple of weeks ago she was beaten up when she went out shopping.”It happened with my mom. We were in a mall. This other guy knew I was a lesbian because we go to the same school. I wanted to pass and buy something. So he did not want to let me pass and buy that thing. And he started calling me a faggot and swearing at me. I wanted to pass, and one thing I remember is being down and bleeding on my mouth. There is a long way for us to go to be accepted for who we are”.

Tuesday and Thursday soccer practice
The Chosen Few practice on a parking lot down the hill from the jail. Local schools will not allow them to use their grassy pitches.So Lerto-Chicken-Marumolwa and the rest of the team practice on gravel. “They don’t say because you are lesbian we are not going to allow you. It’s just no no no no. The field is empty. But look where we are training right now.”For an hour and a half, the women run round the parking lot. Their passes are smooth, their headers are powerful.Sidi’s a great dribbler and easily darts around her teammates.The goalposts are red plastic cones. Whoever scores has to chase the ball as it rolls down the hill towards the highway.Sweat dribbles down smiling faces.

A young man named Jambulo wanders by the practice. “They look very good. We always see boys playing, but these are girls. They are working very hard. “When Jambulo learns that Chosen Few are lesbians, his face falls.”That is a lesbian soccer team? I do not like lesbians – women who act like a boy. I do not like lesbians. Seriously.”Every Chosen Few soccer practice ends with stretching exercises and songs – the same songs that were sung by the women who were imprisoned just up the hill.As the sun goes down the winter evening is getting chilly. It is time for Lerato and her teammates to head back to their dressing room. “No, I am not tired. I am feeling somehow refreshed. I am just happy. Everyday when I come here some of the stress that I have from home, it feels like I am releasing some of the load that I was carrying with me”.In a few weeks, Chosen Few will fly off to Cologne, Germany to compete in the VIII Gay Games. They joke that before the first ball is kicked they might just take a few minutes and roll around on the soft grass.