All posts tagged: movement

Remembering Marsha P. Johnson, Icon of Modern LGBTQ Rights Movement

Remembering Marsha P. Johnson, Icon of Modern LGBTQ Rights Movement

On Saturday, we celebrated the birthday of LGBTQ rights pioneer and icon, Marsha P. Johnson. She would have been 79. Johnson will perhaps be best known as one of the names behind the Stonewall Uprising of 1969, which was a pivotal moment in LGBTQ+ history. The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village, was a frequent target of police raids. On the night of June 28, 1969, a raid led to an intense confrontation between patrons and law enforcement. Johnson, along with other LGBTQ activists, fought back against police brutality, marking a significant turning point in the struggle for LGBTQ rights. The uprising was not merely a spontaneous riot but a catalyst for the modern LGBTQ rights movement. According to this obituary from the New York Times, “although New York State downgraded sodomy from a felony to a misdemeanor in 1950, persecution of gay people and criminalization of their activities were still common. Same-sex dancing in public was prohibited. The State Liquor Authority banned bars from serving gay people alcoholic beverages. …

Eye Movement Therapies, Purple Hats, and the Sagan Standard

Eye Movement Therapies, Purple Hats, and the Sagan Standard

Editor’s note: Gerald Rosen and Gerald Davison coined the term purple hat therapy as a metaphor for treatment packages such as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) that combine essential elements (cognitive and behavioral techniques) and nonessential elements (eye movements). Wikipedia now has a page dedicated to this concept. In the 1980s, several novel psychotherapeutic techniques were proposed for the rapid cure of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). At the forefront of these “power therapies” was Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), a method developed by Francine Shapiro (1948–2019) and still commonly used today. Shapiro reported a 100 percent success rate treating trauma memories with multi-saccadic eye movements, and she assured clinicians who read her report that they could use eye movements to “achieve complete desensitization of 75–80% of any individually treated trauma-related memory in a single 50-minute session” (Shapiro 1989, 221). Shapiro then offered workshops that introduced her treatment to thousands of clinicians. Over time, EMDR came to enjoy the sun of scientific endorsement. We offer a less than sanguine view of EMDR, believing that …

How the Gay-Rights Movement Lost Its Way

How the Gay-Rights Movement Lost Its Way

When Sarah Kate Ellis was named president of GLAAD more than a decade ago, the LGBTQ advocacy organization was in dire financial straits. “I was given a scary mandate,” she told The New York Times in 2019: “Fix it or shut it down.” She should have done the latter. Founded in 1985 as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the nonprofit originally had the mission of promoting more empathetic media coverage of people with AIDS. Over the years, its remit expanded to countering negative portrayals of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in advertising and entertainment. Today, the proliferation of LGBTQ characters on our screens, largely sympathetic coverage in mainstream media, and the ubiquity of same-sex couples in advertisements and commercials all suggest that GLAAD achieved its mission. The group should have long ago taken the win and dissolved—just as the organization Freedom to Marry announced it would do shortly after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in the summer of 2015. Read: How GLAAD won the culture war and lost its reason to …

10 things you didn’t know about the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement | We Are Here For Humanity

10 things you didn’t know about the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement | We Are Here For Humanity

The Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement started with the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1863, in response to the terrible human toll of the revolutionary conflicts raging in Europe in the second half of the 19th century. Seven years later the British Red Cross was established. Today, the Movement is active in 191 countries and has been a constant and reassuring presence at some of the world’s most harrowing events: from being among the first to provide humanitarian support after the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, to providing vital assistance to those affected by last year’s devastating earthquakes in Morocco, Turkey and Syria. You may know some of these facts, but did you know … 1 The Red Cross’s ‘red cross’ is not a logoEven though it is one of the most recognisable pieces of graphic design in the world, the red cross emblem is not just some clever bit of branding: it is a symbol of protection in armed conflict, the use of which …

Social-first publisher The News Movement grows commercial team

Social-first publisher The News Movement grows commercial team

Top Left: Sasha Byas. Top Right: Will Hamnett. Bottom Left: Alex Brandler. Bottom Right: Lotte Jones Internal promotions and senior hires have been announced at social-first publisher The News Movement will help strengthen commercial leadership. Launched in 2021 and aimed at younger consumers, The News Movement claims a community of 1.5 million across TNM, The Recount, and Capsule media brands, reaching 50 million people each month. Ex-editor-in-chief and co-founder, Kamal Ahmed previously summarised the platform as “a new way of thinking about how you provide news and useful information” for 18 to 25-year-olds or anyone who is “engaged by new forms of storytelling.” Ahmed left the business in last month and this followed the departure of joint founder William Lewis amid job cuts last year. There are four main parts of the business: The News Movement’s own journalism, partnerships helping other media organisations reach younger audiences under the “With TNM” umbrella, helping brands with their own storytelling so they can connect with the next generation of talent or consumers, and the data analytics business providing …

Exercises You Can Do For The Joy Of Movement If Fixed Fitness Programmes Are Not Your Vibe

Exercises You Can Do For The Joy Of Movement If Fixed Fitness Programmes Are Not Your Vibe

When we’re constantly flooded with phrases like “get beach body ready” and stories of people signing up for gruelling, impressive fitness goals such as running the London marathon, it can feel easy for us who don’t like exercise to feel like the world of fitness and exercise just isn’t made for us. I know that for myself, as a dyspraxic person, it can feel hard to fit in with all of this when on a good day, I can barely walk in a straight line and my joints are inherently quite weak. The thing is, though, exercise is for everybody, not just those that excel at it and it doesn’t need to have a purpose beyond the absolute joy of movement. Endorphins are not limited to those who can push their bodies to the limit, we’re all entitled to them and can get them from much more gentle exercise. If this sounds like a bit of you, read on. Exercises just for the joy of movement Sex Sorry. I couldn’t ignore the obvious one. Sex …

The pro-life movement in political retreat

The pro-life movement in political retreat

(RNS) — The 1864 Arizona law criminalizing abortion except to save the woman’s life is now history, Gov. Katie Hobbs having signed the bill overturning it on Thursday. But Arizona is not done deciding on the issue: A referendum has been added to November’s ballot that would do away with the state’s 2022 ban on abortions (except in a medical emergency) after 15 weeks. At least one of the handful of Republicans who joined the Democrats in voting down the 1864 law did so in order to increase the likelihood that the referendum fails. That was Sen. Shawnna Bolick, who happens to be married to one of the state supreme court justices who got the ball rolling a month ago by upholding the 1864 law.  Explaining her vote in a highly personal 20-minute speech on the state Senate floor, Bolick denounced Planned Parenthood even as she allowed that the 1864 law could have barred the D&C abortion procedure she underwent when her first pregnancy was declared non-viable. “Would Arizona’s pre-Roe law have allowed me to …

To save their movement, student protesters should break camp

To save their movement, student protesters should break camp

(RNS) — On Thursday (May 2), police detained more than 2,000 protesters as they cleared the encampment at UCLA. Snipers were reported to be hovering over the encampments at Indiana University and Ohio State University in the weeks before. And social media has been full of violent attacks on university encampments from Zionist counterprotesters. As the cost of their courageous resistance continues to rise, students should consider breaking camp soon, for the sake of their movement. The uncomfortable truth is that breaking camp is inevitable. The semester will end soon, and the students who live in dorms will have to move out (and likely return to their hometowns). Encampments are behemoths to maintain, needing to keep people fed, sheltered, healthy and from imploding due to internal conflicts. Full divestment from Israel could take years, and few people — if any — can afford to encamp on a campus lawn until the demand is met. Finally, no encampment will be able to withstand the full might of the militarized power of U.S. police. The violent backlash …

7 Iconic Works of the De Stijl Movement

7 Iconic Works of the De Stijl Movement

  If you ever visited a museum of modern art, you’ve probably noticed squares of primary colors, strict angles, and seemingly boring white backgrounds. The art of De Stijl is visually simple, yet it’s not so easy to understand from a conceptual point of view. The small group of Dutch artists, designers, and architects aimed to revive the world and bring humanity to spiritual evolution through the simplest forms and tones.   What is De Stijl? Composition with Large Red Plane, Yellow, Black, Gray, and Blue, by Piet Mondrian, 1921. Source: Wikipedia   The art movement of De Stijl—meaning The Style in Dutch—originated in 1917 in the Dutch city of Leiden. Leiden was primarily known as the birthplace of Rembrandt van Rijn. However, the invention of a small group of ambitious artists went far away from traditional Dutch painting. These modern artists abstained from using any colors but red, blue, and yellow, contrasting with black and white. Their lines were straight and bold, almost always crossing at a 90-degree angle.   De Stijl was never …

First Minister Humza Yousaf says toxic leadership contest would harm SNP and independence movement | UK News

First Minister Humza Yousaf says toxic leadership contest would harm SNP and independence movement | UK News

Outgoing First Minister Humza Yousaf has told Sky News the SNP and independence movement would be harmed by a toxic leadership contest. Mr Yousaf, who this week announced he was standing down as SNP leader and Scotland’s first minister, refused to be drawn on his party’s future direction, and said any suggestion of him being forced out of office to make way for John Swinney was “complete and utter rubbish”. The departing leader refuted that Scottish independence was further away than ever before but admitted there’s no “shortcut” to Indyref2. And having “reflected” on his role in last year’s bruising leadership campaign, Mr Yousaf is urging potential candidates to support each other rather than talk each other down. In an interview with Sky’s Scotland correspondent Connor Gillies, Mr Yousaf said he expects a “rollercoaster of emotion” over the coming weeks and months. He said: “I will certainly be regretting the way it ended.” Image: Humza Yousaf announced he was stepping down as SNP leader and first minister of Scotland on Monday. Pic: PA Mr Yousaf …