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British-Sri Lankan rapper MIA is now pretty much known for making controversial remarks. She has come under fire several times for stirring up drama with her conflicting and problematic opinions.

The 44-year-old musician recently claimed that British Vogue had pulled a feature on her because of the remarks she made about vaccines for COVID-19. Earlier last month, the 'Paper Planes' singer said on her social media that she would "choose death" over a coronavirus vaccine. On April 22, she posted a series of screenshots on her Instagram handle of a textual conversation with an unidentified person that informed her British Vogue editor, Edward Enninful had canceled his offer for a feature about her in Vogue's upcoming issue. The post has since been deleted.

The message highlighted the British Vogue editor saying: "Considering August is an issue where were chronicling the struggles of the NHS to cope while a vaccine is tried to be made we dont feel we can have her involved. It just wouldnt be right. All of our issues July-September will be supporting the frontline healthcare workers and we need to be respectful of them and all they are doing until a vaccine exists."

In a lengthy caption accompanying her post, MIA claimed that British Vogue had disregarded her championing for healthcare and mockingly thanked the fashion magazine: "Dear Vogue, Thank you for really being understanding. Thank you for not forgetting that I was helping Jeremy Corbyn fight for the NHS, when everyone voted Boris. Thank you for not forgetting that I stood with Tamils when the Sri Lankan government was bombing UN civilian hospitals, taking financial /career hit."

"Thank you for not forgetting that I live to speak for immigrants who hold up the healthcare systems of the west. Thank you for acknowledging that choice is a liberty I choose to exercise and fight for, thank you for giving me the time to research how many people's lives have been affected by enforced vaccines across many African countries. Especially causing infertility in African women," she added. "Thank you for considering me for the feature however I'm going to be busy researching ..... won't be able to make it."

The singer, whose real name is Mathangi 'Maya' Arulpragasam, went on to frame her opinion on the comments against immunization saying, "Anti vaxer [sic] is your term. It didnt exist before this binary addiction everyone has to separate everything into this and that. Anti this anti that. I prefer to not make everything so black and white."

"Im sure theres [sic] variety of doctors researchers and labs and counties [sic] who understand whats happening, Im sure there are good drugs and bad drugs out there. Just doing research isnt anti anything but pro respecting the process. Btw how many vaccines are you prepared to have? One a year? 10 a month? 2 a year? Lack of discussion is censorship," she added.

In March, she responded in the affirmative to a fan, who asked her via Twitter if she was an anti-vaxxer after she tweeted, "If I have to choose the vaccine or chip I'm gonna choose death." Her comments came after she revealed that her 11-year-old son Ikyhyd once they suffered side-effects from a vaccination before starting school. "In America they made me vaccinate my child before the school admission. It was the hardest thing. To not have a choice over this as a mother. I never wanna feel that again. He was so sick for 3 weeks then Docs had to pump him with antibiotics to reduce the fever from 3 (sic)," she said.

The singer also opined that the pandemic persisting at the moment was a man-made profit, and insisted that people are not "gonna die" from contracting the virus and don't need to "stress the medical systems," if they fall ill.

However, this isn't the first time that MIA has been scrutinized for unfavorable remarks. Here are some other instances where she drew attention courtesy of her controversial doings.

In March, MIA added fuel to a baseless claim about the supposed connection of 5G to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. She took her social media to spark the conspiracy theory and it spread like wildfire among Britons who ended up vandalizing several mobile phone masts around the country. She then tweeted a picture of a burning mast and captioned it saying, "They should just turn it off till after the pandemic."

She later said that she didn't believe the two were related, however, she said, "I think [5G] can confuse or slow the body down in healing process as body is learning to cope with new singles wavelength s [sic] frequency etc @ same time as Cov."

In 2017, MIA tweeted: "Can you imagine if the music industry Harvey Weinsteined people? Especially number on genre in pop-hip hop?"

Her tweet infuriated several netizens who slammed her for her insensitive remarks and apparently that wasn't the first time she had been accused of making comments against black sentiments. Hip-hop's demographic has been constantly undergoing change, however, according to Uproxx, but it still largely considered as a 'black' genre. Rapper Azealia Banks alleged that the 'Bad Girls' singer was trying to take credit for black culture when she was "clearly quite anti-Black"

In April 2016, MIA sat down to chat with the Evening Standard, where she candidly spoke about the Black Lives Matter movement in America. Its interesting that in America the problem youre allowed to talk about is Black Lives Matter, said MIA. Its not a new thing to me its what Lauryn Hill was saying in the 1990s, or Public Enemy in the 1980s. Is Beyonc or Kendrick Lamar going to say Muslim Lives Matter? Or Syrian Lives Matter? Or this kid in Pakistan matters? Thats a more interesting question.

The comments also resulted in the Afropunk Festival dropping MIA as the headlining act that year. The festival was slated to be held in London, and the organizers revealed later in an official statement: "After discussing the situation with the artist and the community, a decision was agreed upon by all involved that MIA will no longer headline Afropunk London." The Festival unveiling MIA as the headliner for the festival that was held on September 24, was met with severe backlash from festival-goers in light of her ES interview. Soon after the decision was made, MIA took to her Twitter to say, "Sorry Im not doin Afropunk. Ive been told to stay in my lane."

In 2012, the hip-hop singer appeared in Madonna's Super Bowl half-time show, albeit for a very small part. However, she still managed to draw extra attention to herself. Despite the knowledge that the NFL had imposed stringent rules with regard to performances after the Janet Jackson 'nipple gate' incident in 2004, MIA made headlines by flipping her middle fingers at the cameras. NBC was a tad too late to censor her finger and by that time, she'd been seen on national television across the country, flipping the bird at the Super Bowl. The NFL later sued her for $1.5 million for breach of contract and it was settled in 2014, the terms remaining private.

Prior to her disastrous Super Bowl appearance, the 'Sexodus' singer had trouble stepping foot on US soil. MIA had previously made some controversial statements about conflict in her parent's native country of Sri Lanka and also alleged her father was linked to the terrorist group, Tamil Tigers, which caused her major immigration issues every time she applied for a US visa.

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The Mystery of MIA: From THAT NFL lawsuit to anti-vaccine stance, the rapper is the girl who kicks the hornets - MEAWW

Pascale Diverlus is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto and together with her colleagues, they launched the COVID-19 Black Emergency Support Fundraiser through GoFundMe to help Black Canadians in the city as well as the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

The initiative began in mid-March, shortly after the city declared a state of emergency. The activist group realized many Black Canadians would become vulnerable to financial difficulties, as a result of the pandemic.

Initially, Diverlus says the groups intention was to help about 120 people once the application launched on Facebook. Within a few hours, the application was closed due to the unexpected high volume.

So many people filled it out and were requesting support, said Diverlus. So we increased the fundraising goal in order to meet [the needs] of all of those people who signed the form.

Black Lives Matter Toronto hasnt turned down a single applicants request for help. Theyve been answering all emails and direct messages.

So far, the group has managed to raise close to $60,000 due to generous donations theyve received in the past month, including a sum of $5,000 from The Centre of Women and Trans people at the University of Toronto.

Besides fundraising money, co-member of the activist group Syrus Ware says they are working on also providing items of need for Black Canadians in the community.

Were working on trying to figure out ways to support people getting access to good food, continuing to stay in touch with our community to figure out what they need and how we can respond, said Ware.

He says Black Lives Matter Toronto has also been greatly involved in supporting all calls for decarceration and prison abolition works in the city.

Were staying vigilant and trying to make sure that everybody emerges from this safe and with everything that they have, said Ware.

Originally posted here:
This is how Black Lives Matter is making a difference in Toronto during the pandemic - blogTO

All Lives Matter.

It makes sense on the surface: the idea that every single human life is worth saving. Its honestly an unimpeachable sentiment. Which is why it was so easy to be manipulated by racists to dispel a movement that actually stood for the protection of the most lives possible.

Heres how.

The Black Lives Matter movement and subsequent hashtag became a household idea during the protests in Ferguson. The #BlackLivesMatter movement was a rallying cry on social media and on the streets of Missouri. As with any movement that seeks to lift up Black folks, there will inevitably be white folks who want to shut it down. Thats how the idea of All Lives Matter was born.

The idea behind #AllLivesMatter was used to counteract #BlackLivesMatter by saying that fighting for Black lives somehow excluded white lives; that the sentiment implied some sort of Black superiority. This is the natural reaction a bastardization of Black demands for equality by conflating that demand into a quest for superiority. So white people screamed #AllLivesMatter from the rooftops as loudly as they could for the sole purpose of silencing a Black movement.

The truth of this all has never changed: All Lives Matter is anti-Black. It only exists to erase something built out of a desire to save Black lives. If you check Twitter, youll only see the hashtag being used to counter Black Lives Matter, never on its own merit. Black Lives Matter is all about uplifting all people by reminding them that nobody is safe until all marginalized people are safe. Black Lives Matter has done more for white people than All Lives Matter has done for everyone.

The All Lives Matter faux-movement sentiment has been pervasive in right-wing, alt-right and Trumpian circles despite or maybe because of the danger it presents to Black folks. Trump yelled out Youre going to hear it once, all lives matter, as protesters interrupted one of his rallies in Virginia in February 2016. Fox News, Candace Owens, Breitbart, Tomi Lahren and every Trump-adjacent ally in between has screamed out All Lives Matter at one point or another and only in response to shouting down Black Lives Matter. And all under the plausible deniability that this is all about concern for every human life. The dishonest defense is that nobody should be left behind. No life should ever be lost.

As weve learned in the past 60 days or so, every one of those attempted justifications for #AllLivesMatter rhetoric is grounded in pure bullsh*t.

In the face of a pandemic that is largely the result of Donald Trumps neglect, vindictiveness and incompetence, weve seen the truth. Neither Donald Trump nor his followers care about All Lives.

After all, it was Trump himself who, just a couple of weeks ago, stood in front of a chart and pointed to the idea of only 100,000 dead Americans being a massive victory for him and his administration. As weve seen a death toll across the country that is beyond the range of 9/11, he has touted things like his TV ratings and his chances of winning reelection. That would be vile enough, but Trump and his cronies have gone on record encouraging people to get back to work to boost the economy even if they die as a result. Which, they surely will. We know that jump-starting the economy will result in more Americans dead than if we kept Shelter In Place orders alive.

That doesnt matter to Trump. All Lives dont matter nearly as much as those of billionaires who would benefit from a rejuvenated economy (which, by the way, there isnt any indication that more dead Americans would boost any economy, anyway).

And as Donald Trump goes, so does his army of conviction-less minions. Rudy Giuliani quoted Candace Owens in a tweet comparing the coronavirus to the flu, as has been one of the staple arguments against saving lives. Approximately 7500 people die every day in the United States, he shared on March 26th. Thats approximately 645,000 people so far this year. Coronavirus has killed about 1,000 Americans this year. Just a little perspective. Of course, there are now more than 31,000 dead in the United States. But, beyond that, Giuliana himself had this to say about #AllLivesMatter: Its inherently racist, he said about Black Lives Matter in 2016. Number one, it divides us. All lives matter: White lives, black lives, all lives.

So how does one go from thinking that every life matters to suddenly thinking that 1,000 dead humans is a negligible amount? Easy. You simply dont care about all lives to begin with.

Texas Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick went on Fox News at the end of March and suggested that old people should be willing to sacrifice themselves for the economy. No one reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren? Patrick said. And if thats the exchange, Im all in.

Bill OReilly, who has proclaimed that the Black Lives Matter movement was killing Americans, just went on record to say that many of the people dying from the coronavirus were on their last legs anyway.

All Lives Dont matter to these people. We knew this was true when they gaslit Black folks in Ferguson and every day since. We knew that All Lives Matter was just poorly-masked anti-Blackness. And now we are watching a Trump-led death cult justify avoidable deaths all for the pursuit of their own selfishness. These liars were able to hide behind cognitive dissonance and plausible deniability, but not anymore; especially as they are outwardly calling for lives to end. There is only one undeniable fact remaining: The only lives that ever mattered to Trump and his cronies are their own.

David Dennis, Jr. is a writer and adjunct professor of Journalism at Morehouse College. Davids writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Smoking Section, Uproxx, Playboy, The Atlantic, Complex.com and wherever people argue about things on the internet. Read more of his work on NewsOnehere.

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Link:
Team Trumps COVID-19 Response Is Proof That #AllLivesMatter Was Always A Lie - News One

Because America's coronavirus response must address racial inequities in order to be effective.

Check out a special edition of OZYs Black Women OWN the Conversation, bringing together real women and a curated panel of experts, professionals and thought seekers from across the nation with host Carlos Watson for a timely discussion on how we are living in this unprecedented time.The first special airs Saturday, April 18, at 10 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT and 10 p.m. PT on OWN.

Kailee Scales is managing director of Black Lives Matter Global Network.

For decades, we have been fighting to improve the material conditions of our lives. We have fought against and worked to overcome systemic racism, economic inequality and mass incarceration. Now, during a global pandemic, the impact of this bias is clearer than ever.

This virus is devastating to us. We are the essential workers who keep the country going; we are the mail carriers, delivery personnel, transportation providers and hospital workers. We cannot just #stayhome. Yet, we represent the vast majority of COVID-related deaths in Chicago, Louisiana and Michigan Black people are dying at rates that are two and three times our population share and that is only what we know right now. These numbers will increase as the virus continues to engulf our vulnerable communities.

We have never had access to adequate health care in our communities and many of us dont even know we have the preexisting conditions the coronavirus feeds on. Our children historically suffer in our education system and are now at risk of falling further behind due to a lack of access to virtual education programs. The prison population, which is disproportionately Black, has deplorable and unsanitary conditions in which people must serve their time. There is no protection plan for incarcerated people, and many of them lack basic sanitary supplies. On top of that, incarcerated people are fundamentally unable to practice social distancing. Adequate testing is nonexistent for us, so we dont know who has and can spread the virus.

We demand racial data on COVID-19 be collected, released and aggregated in order to provide essential information and resources targeted to our needs.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that people with heart and lung conditions, asthma and other preexisting conditions are at high risk for contracting the coronavirus and the stats are staggering:

This is why we will keep fighting for the protection and provisions we need to live. We need every state and municipality to collect and release the demographic data on who is contracting and dying from this disease. The more we understand about the virus, the better equipped we will be to determine the resources and funding needed in communities hit hardest by the pandemic. We will continue to amplify and demand what we need in our communities. Specifically:

Thats why we have started a petition. We demand that racial data on COVID-19 be collected, released and aggregated in order to provide essential information and resources targeted to our needs. Please sign the petition.

We will continue to shine a spotlight on the inequalities that continue to upend our communities. We will continue to demand our communities receive the resources and support we need. We will continue to fight for our lives.

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The Pandemic Is Devastating to Black People. Here's What We Can Do About It - OZY

A coalition of activists is demanding that Washington, D.C. and federal officials immediately release all people confined in the citys correctional facilities.

A caravan of protestors drove through the city on Thursday, honking horns and carrying signs in support of releases that they say have taken on new significance because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The protest was staged to align with the anniversary of D.C. abolishing slavery in 1862.

Its important that our city officials understand were in a crisis and they need to release those folks and provide security to those residents as well, Jacob Smith, an organizer with the No New Jails coalition told The Appeal. Being that D.C. has a high incarceration rate, it seems like Black people are still being criminalized and are not free. (Statistics show D.C. has the highest incarceration rate in the world.)

The D.C. jail, in which the majority of its roughly 1,400 prisoners are held pre-trial, has become a hotspot for coronavirus infections. To date, 65 prisoners have tested positive for the disease.

On Wednesday, two independent inspectors, appointed as part of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of D.C. and the D.C. Public Defender Service demanding the release of prisoners, gave a harrowing report of conditions within the jail. Incarcerated people are not being given the necessary supplies to protect themselves against the disease, they said, and those believed to be infected are not allowed to shower and must live in their soiled clothes, the Washington Post reported.

One in three inmates is held in either quarantine or isolation, D.C. officials said.

Last week, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser granted release to 36 prisoners in the jail but Smith said that action did not go far enough. At the end of the day we have not released enough people, he said.

Along with the jails, people are being held at the Hope Village halfway house and St. Elizabeths, a psychiatric hospital where some people are confined to restore competency for court proceedings. Four people have died at that facility because of coronavirus.

Two people have died at Hope Village, where the majority of people are sent to live for an average of six months as they transition from federal prison to the free world. Officials have said they did not die of coronavirus.

Last month, a Hope Village resident described a scary situation inside the home to The Appeal. He said that there was no way for residents to properly social distance, cleaning supplies were sparse, and that tensions had escalated after the facility was put on lockdown.

The coalition, which includes Black Lives Matter D.C., Black Youth Project 100 DC, and Life After Release, held a protest starting at the home last week that drew more than 100 vehicles.

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Drive-By Protestors Demand Release Of All Prisoners In D.C. Amid Coronavirus - The Appeal