Greetings, 19th friends!
We're thrilled to announce that Kate Sosin will be joining us as our LGBTQ+ reporter. Kate is an investigative reporter focused on transgender rights, incarceration, politics and public policy. They have extensively investigated anti-transgender prison abuse for NBC News, interviewed U.S. presidential candidates for LogoTV and shadowed queer homeless youth on the streets of Chicago for four months for Windy City Times. They have a B.A. from Hampshire College.
Their first day is tomorrow, and you can follow Kate on Twitter here.
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Protesters rally outside the Waller County Courthouse on July 17, 2015, to protest the death of Sandra Bland, who was found dead in the Waller County jail. (Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle via AP)
#SAYHERNAME
Monday marked five years since Sandra Bland was found hanging in a Texas jail cell.
- Bland, a 28-year-old Black woman, was pulled over for failing to signal a lane change. She had just arrived in Texas from Illinois to start a new job.
- After a confrontational exchange with a state trooper, Bland was arrested and taken to the Waller County jail, where she was found dead on July 13, 2015, three days after her arrest.
- Her death was officially ruled a suicide, though her family suspected foul play.
Footage from the trooper’s dashcam and a bystander’s phone was released shortly after, and Bland’s death became a flashpoint in the Black Lives Matter movement. But it also spurred nationwide calls to #SayHerName.
- In December 2014, the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) launched the #SayHerName campaign to bring awareness to Black women and girls victimized by police violence. The campaign served as a complement to the Black Lives Matter movement, which often centered around Black men.
- In May 2015, AAPF released a report on Black women’s experiences with police brutality. After Bland’s death, the AAPF updated its report to include Bland.
- Meanwhile, Sandra Bland became synonymous with #SayHerName, one of the first stories to have been amplified by the hashtag.
The relevance of #SayHerName has not waned in the five years since Bland’s death.
- Just this year, it has been used to raise awareness about the death of Breonna Taylor, who police killed in her home after entering with a no-knock warrant.
- In May, two months after Taylor was shot, The 19th published the first national story on her death. Ben Crump, a lawyer for her family, told The 19th’s Errin Haines that gender bias contributed to the delayed media coverage of her death.
Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor at Columbia and UCLA who helped create the #SayHerName campaign in 2014, told WBUR that Taylor’s name could have easily been forgotten: “Had what happened on March 13 not happened just before two very high-profile killings of Black men, we probably wouldn't be saying Breonna Taylor's name either." — Abby Johnston
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Lincoln Project video editor is out over crude tweets about female anatomy
By Amanda Becker
A video editor who shaped the buzzy Lincoln Project ads needling President Trump is no longer affiliated with the Republican organization over a series of past tweets in which he used offensive slang for female anatomy to insult political rivals.
Ben Howe, who came of age politically making anti-Obama ads during the rise of the tea party, did not publicly tout his work for the super PAC formed by a group of high-level Republican operatives who have broken ranks with the party over Trump’s presidency until a recent interview with Vanity Fair. He was described in the article as “the creative mind, video editor, and, he said, sometimes narrating voice on many of the group’s ads.”
The 19th, a nonprofit news outlet, had emailed the Lincoln Project about a series of Twitter posts made by Howe in the years after Trump’s election that deployed female anatomy as an insult, calling rivals a “vagina” or “twat,” or in some instances using a more profane term.
“Based on these unacceptable and offensive posts, and those that came to light last week, Ben Howe is no longer affiliated with the Lincoln Project, effective immediately,” Keith Edwards, the group’s spokesman, said in a statement.
Last week, the Daily Dot resurfaced tweets from Howe that defended Darren Wilson, the police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. They were published by Talking Points Memo shortly after they were made in 2014 and have since been deleted.
Howe said he had written “ill advised” and “inexcusable” tweets and was grateful for the work he’d been involved in.
“Some people just need a tap on the shoulder to change. Others need a slap in the face. Me? I’ve often needed a piano dropped on my head. The piano fell years ago, but I suppose I’m still crawling out from under the wreckage in some ways,” he said in a statement. “I’m better than I’ve been. And I intend to be better than I am.”
Howe previously worked on an anti-Trump documentary film with the Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson and joined the group when it was founded late last year.
“I want to be a feminist but every time I call someone a [c---] I get yelled at,” Howe wrote in a June 2018 tweet.
Howe also responded to a June 2017 New York Times story about women being talked over and interrupted in the workplace by tweeting that it is “only when they won’t stop yapping about their period or whatever.”
Before Trump’s election, Howe wrote that Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton’s voice “makes me want to cut my ears off with a hacksaw” but that he still found Trump so distasteful he would vote for her.
Read the full story at the Washington Post.
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FUTURE OF CHILD CARE
The lack of public funding through the pandemic has created a tenuous future for child care. In a new survey of child care providers by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), two out of five said that they are “certain” they will close permanently without further public assistance. Among BIPOC owners, that rose to 50 percent.
The survey had more than 5,000 respondents, representing all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
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 What we’re reading
Curated by May Olvera
Nannies wanted: COVID-19 antibodies preferred. Caregivers’ job descriptions have changed drastically during the pandemic: From parents seeking people who have previously tested positive for — and recovered from — coronavirus to being able to tutor multiple children to living with the family for months at a time, nannies are facing a new hiring landscape. (The New York Times, July 13)
GOP women embrace guns in House races. Republican women who hope to unseat Democrats in the House of Representatives are emphasizing their commitment to gun rights by wielding firearms in campaign ads and aligning themselves with the Second Amendment. On the campaign trail, they juggle identities as good homemakers and tough legislators. (The Wall Street Journal, July 12)
COVID-19’s impact on women’s mental health. Significantly more women are reporting an increase in anxiety and depression since the pandemic started, which is likely to have an effect on workplace productivity and, thus, their professional lives. Some employers are taking charge and improving their mental health benefit offerings. (Forbes, July 9)
Kayla Gore is building a future for Black trans women in the South — literally. Kayla Gore’s lived experience as a Black trans woman in Tennessee inspired her to literally build a safe future for trans people who, like her, face constant dangers like physical violence, work discrimination and homelessness. Part of her extensive advocacy has been founding “My Sistah’s House,” a housing development providing a safe living space for LGBTQ people. (The Daily Beast, July 13)
Desiree Tims wants to be the candidate for this moment. During her time as a White House intern, Desiree Tims often felt like she ended up there by accident. She worried that people questioned whether she, a working class Black woman from the Midwest, could get the job done. Now, she’s running for Congress because she believes her background is exactly what makes her the right candidate to represent her hometown of Dayton, Ohio. (Buzzfeed News, July 9)
Trump vs. the women who lead Michigan: a battle with 2020 implications. Michigan’s leading women — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson — have constantly found themselves at odds with President Donald Trump. But the president, who calls Whitmer “the woman from Michigan,” may be setting himself up for a presidential battle difficult to win without Michigan and its women. (The New York Times, July 12)
🎧 Listen: How Black women tried to save Twitter. Just last year, the Senate Intelligence Committee revealed that political actors sowed division among the American electorate by impersonating groups, particularly Black Americans, and spreading misinformation. Black women, however, had been warning officials about this behavior since 2014, when a swarm of Twitter trolls began impersonating Black feminists. (There Are No Girls on the Internet, July 14)
📺 Watch: The domestic violence case that turned outrage into action. In 1977, Francine Hughes murdered her husband after enduring 13 years of physical abuse. Her trial opened up a national dialogue that has lasted until this day about whether the criminal justice system fails victims of domestic violence. (Retro Report and The New Yorker, July 9)
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