Defund leftist institutions: Museum Curator Resigns After He Is Accused of Racism for Saying He Would Still Collect Art From White

Museum Curator Resigns After He Is Accused of Racism for Saying He Would Still Collect Art From White Men

Irate employees of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art said the removal of Gary Garrels was "non-negotiable."

ROBBY SOAVE | 7.14.2020 1:35 PM

(Drew Altizer/Sipa USA/Newscom) 

Until last week, Gary Garrels was senior curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). He resigned his position after museum employees circulated a petition that accused him of racism and demanded his immediate ouster.

"Gary's removal from SFMOMA is non-negotiable," read the petition. "Considering his lengthy tenure at this institution, we ask just how long have his toxic white supremacist beliefs regarding race and equity directed his position curating the content of the museum?"

This accusation—that Garrels' choices as an art curator are guided by white supremacist beliefs—is a very serious one. Unsurprisingly, it does not stand up to even minimal scrutiny.

The petitioners cite few examples of anything even approaching bad behavior from Garrels. Their sole complaint is that he allegedly concluded a presentation on how to diversify the museum's holdings by saying, "don't worry, we will definitely still continue to collect white artists."

Garrels has apparently articulated this sentiment on more than one occasion. According to artnet.com, he said that it would be impossible to completely shun white artists, because this would constitute "reverse discrimination." That's the sum total of his alleged crimes. He made a perfectly benign, wholly inoffensive, obviously true statement that at least some of the museum's featured artists would continue to be white. The petition lists no other specific grievances.

You might think that one of the most prominent art curators in the country—with 20 years of experience at SFMOMA—would be able to weather such a pathetically weak accusation of racism. But in the current cultural moment, it appears not. Garrels promptly resigned.

In a statement announcing his decision to step down, Garrels apologized for the harm his words caused, only slightly disputing the absurd charge against him. " I do not believe I have ever said that it is important to collect the art of white men," he said, according to artnet.com. "I have said that it is important that we do not exclude consideration of the art of white men."

Suffice it to say that this is not the language of a white supremacist. Those who say otherwise—that Garrels is guilty of racism—have stripped the word of its potency. They have shown once again that the signatories of the recent Harper's letter were entirely correct that the progressive drive to purge lofty institutions of racism and sexism has frequently gone astray, in a manner that threatens both free inquiry and common decency. The 1793 Project continues.

Divisive? Democrats? Gov. Cuomo hates us!

NY Gov. Cuomo blocks federal judges from officiating weddings because some were appointed by President Trump

'It's hard to imagine a more petty, small action from a sitting governor'

(Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

 BRECK DUMAS

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) took heat from both sides of the political aisle on Monday, after he vetoed a bill that would have allowed all federal judges to officiate weddings in the state.

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Cuomo blocked the measure saying he couldn't stomach allowing judges appointed by President Donald Trump to perform such ceremonies, citing "diversity, tolerance, and inclusion."

What are the details?

The legislation, referred to by NBC News as "noncontroversial" and "bipartisan," was passed 148 to 2 in the New York Assembly, and 61 to 1 in the Senate. It would have simply opened the door for all federal judges to officiate weddings. Currently, all state judges have the authority to proceed over marriage unions, but only certain federal judges may do so.
Cuomo said he couldn't bear to risk that a Trump-appointed judge might oversee a wedding, so he shut down the legislation with his veto power.
"I cannot in good conscience support legislation that would authorize such actions by federal judge who are appointed by this federal administration. President Trump does not embody who we are as New Yorkers," the governor declared. "The cornerstones that built our great state are diversity, tolerance, and inclusion. Based on these reasons, I must veto this bill."

Democratic state Sen. Liz Krueger, who helped sponsor the bill because she viewed it as a "no-brainer," reacted to Cuomo's move by telling the New York Post, "Four years ago, we gave the governor the ability to perform marriages. Two years ago, we gave legislators the ability. So when it was suggested to me that we expand it to federal judges, I thought, 'Why not? The more the merrier!'"
"I'm certainly no fan of the judges this president is choosing to appoint," Krueger said, "but since any New Yorker can become a minister online for $25 and legally perform weddings, I didn't consider this to be a major issue."
Nick Langworthy, chairman of the New York Republican Party told The Post of Cuomo's veto, "It's hard to imagine a more petty, small action from a sitting governor."

Birmingham, England

MASS BRAWL 

Five teens arrested after ‘100-strong machete-wielding gang storm Vue cinema sparking huge brawl’

• Patrick Knox

FIVE teens were last night arrested after a gang of 100 youths armed with machetes stormed a cinema in front of horrified families.

Seven cops were hurt as they desperately tried to control brawling scenes outside the packed Star City entertainment complex in Birmingham as kids queued up to see Frozen 2 on Friday night.

continue

Education in Population of Birmingham 2018

QUALIFICATION	BIRMINGHAM POPULATION PERCENTAGE
Total Population:	100.0
No Qualifications	28.2
Level 1	13.3
Level 2	13.8
Apprenticeship	2.1
Level 3	13
Level 4	23
Other	6.6

The homeless challenge. Or, how government creates the attractive nuisance based on irrational compassion. Do you really think this man has a "housing" problem?

Portland Homeless Man Who Menaced A Woman And Child Gets Probation Despite 220 Previous Arrests

JOHN SEXTONPosted at 4:41 pm on October 10, 2019

A homeless man named Brian Ray Lankford who threatened a woman and her son with a large tree branch in 2017 was given a break this week. Instead of putting Lankford in jail, the prosecutors cut a deal which gave him probation and mandatory drug treatment. That might not seem so bad until you learn how many laps Lankford has already made around this particular block:

Lankford has been arrested more than 220 times in the past decade and — as of Monday — convicted 68 times for crimes including misdemeanor theft, trespassing, harassment, disorderly conduct and interfering with public transportation, according to his court file. He often has been sentenced to fines, short stints in jail or probation in which he was not actively supervised.

On Monday, Lankford pleaded guilty to unlawful use of a weapon and menacing after a woman arrived home in August 2017 to discover Lankford behind her Goose Hollow-area home, just a few blocks from Portland State University. She told him to leave, and he began swinging a 3-foot-long tree branch toward the woman and her son, who had retreated to their locked car and called 911, investigators said.

The boy told police he worried Lankford was going to break their car windows and hurt them.

The boy’s mother, Tiffany Hammer, told the Portland City Council in May that Lankford was a repeat criminal who was among a homeless population that commits a wide array of crimes around their neighborhood. On that particular day, Hammer said, she thinks he was trying to steal from her home.

If the name Tiffany Hammer sounds familiar, that’s because I’ve written about her a couple of times before. Hammer got involved with the issue of homelessness in her neighborhood after the attack by Lankford. He had been living on a strip of public land not far from her house. Hammer organized a cleanup effort in which local residents cleaned up the area and removing all of the garbage and used needles left behind. To prevent homeless campers from returning to the freshly cleaned site, the neighbors planted dozens of rose bushes. Each bush had a small ribbon tied around it.

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The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) took issue with neighbors planting things on their land and claimed the tiny, ground-level ribbons might be a dangerous distraction to drivers. Just to emphasize the point, ODOT hadn’t previously expressed any concern that a tent camp surrounded by garbage and needles was a distraction to drivers, but the tiny ribbons were suddenly a concern.

Then, about a month later after all of this made news, the city decided that it would roll out a new program for the homeless. It parked a “hygiene station,” basically a porta-potty plus lockers on wheels, in the same neighborhood. Tiffany Hammer complained at a City Council meeting that the station was actually making things worse:

“We’ve been attacked and threatened. I won’t mention the loss of possessions not bolted down or the daily car break-ins. We all know ‘em. More concerned about personal safety,” said Hammer to city commissioners…

While Hammer says she and her neighbors have endured fires, stolen possessions, even violence, the new hygiene facility has brought about more campers and threatening behavior.

“A swarm of extra campers have shown up in the last week and we’ve had a lot of personal attacks from that alone,” she said. “We hide our children in our homes to protect them. They are no longer able to walk to school.”

The hygiene station was moved and, after Hammer and a neighbor were attacked while watering the rose bushed they had planted, ODOT came around and replaced the rose bushes with huge boulders. No doubt this was a big win for the neighborhood but it’s disappointing that the attack that prompted all of this is once again being treated as another round in the endless cycle of arrests for Brian Ray Lankford. Of course, the idea is that this time Lankford will get treatment and stay out of trouble. Does anyone really believe that? Hasn’t he used up all of his benefit of the doubt?

I guess in Portland the 68th time is the charm. Here’s Tiffany Hammer describing how all of this began when she was attacked by Lankford:

The Left is tearing at the very fabric of society...perfectionism? Or a dodge for failure and incompetence. Here in a nutshell is why Johnnie can't read.

“White supremacy is characterized by perfectionism, a belief in meritocracy, and the Protestant work ethic,” the exec said, adding that whites who object when accused of deep-rooted bias are called “fragile” and “defensive.”

Group of 21 on outreach trip from University of Florida robbed in South Africa

Five armed robbers stole their plane tickets, laptops, and money

MIKE CIANDELLA

A group of 21 people, including students, professors, and staff, from the University of Florida were robbed during a visit to a preschool in South Africa for an outreach trip.

Five armed robbers followed the group inside the gates of the preschool they were visiting near the city of Pretoria in the Gauteng province of South Africa. 

According to a news release from the South African Police Service, "An employee of the school was assaulted by the robbers, while a member of the public was struck by a stray bullet as suspects allegedly fired shots randomly when they were getting away in a white Toyota Quantum with no registration numbers."

The robbers stole " laptops; cellphones; cameras; passports and plane tickets; bags and US Dollars."

According to a Facebook post from Maya Barrett, one of the students on the trip, the gunmen "ambushed" the group "after we had entered through the children's school's gates." Barrett said that after the attack, they ran into one of the classrooms to hide.

Barrett stressed that she did not blame South Africa for the incident, and specifically praised the local community.
"In fact," she wrote, "tremendous kindness was shown by community members as they comforted and protected us after. We had people hugging us, feeding us, and apologizing even though they had no fault." She asked people hearing about the story not to use it "as justification for any prejudice you may hold."

University of Florida spokesman Steve Orlando told the Gainesville Sunthat the university had been sending groups on similar trips to South Africa for years, but that now it would be "evaluating this program and location moving forward."

What else?

South Africa does have a high rate of violent crime. The country has one of the 10 highest murder rates of any country in the world. In addition, according to recent estimates, only 10 percent of murderers in South Africa are caught and convicted of their crimes (compared to 60 percent in the United States).

The Democrat Party is ever more drifting towards Islamist anti Semitism.

Defiant Tlaib suggests she’ll talk like ‘4th grader’ so ‘racist idiots’ understand; Pelosi demands GOP apology

This is New York City’s most disgusting subway car...the visible cost of irrational compassion.

This is New York City’s most disgusting subway car

This is “litter-ally” the most vile subway car in New York City.

Repugnant video posted to Facebook on Tuesday shows a southbound 2 train at the Allerton Avenue stop in the Bronx that looks like it would be far more at home in the Fresh Kills landfill.

Mushrooming mounds of trash — newspapers, plastic bags, discarded bottles, wrappers, personal belongings — carpet nearly half the car, as the handful of passengers seem oblivious to the revolting conditions.

“This how the trains be looking in the morning. This s–t is crazy,” says cameraman Timothy Brown, 33, who recorded the squalid scene and posted it to his Instagram. “They want us to pay more money? Look at this.”

“This s–t make you not want to sit on trains and all that,” he continues, panning the camera across the disgusting car.

Later, he told The Post, “I was disgusted. That train had a little bit of everything. Everything you think shouldn’t be on a train was there.”

There were “no words” to describe the smell, Brown said. “There’s no explaining it. It was horrible.”

He told The Post he was on his way to work at a construction site when he encountered the dirty train.

“I’ve never seen trains like this. I’ve never seen homeless like this,” he said. “People are hopping the train, hopping the bus, and they wonder why? They wonder why we don’t wanna pay.”

“You go anywhere else, you can eat off the train!” he added.

Longtime rail rider Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels, was aghast.

“I’ve never seen it this bad in 40 years,” a stunned Sliwa admitted to The Post.

NYC Transit president Andy Byford said the agency has referred the video to the NYPD.

“This is a clear violation of subway rules and no one should have to ever experience this,” he said.

But Brown says he showed the video to MTA workers and they weren’t shocked. “I showed her the video. She said, ‘Oh, that’s normal. That’s regular,'” he said. “They can’t do anything about it.”

The video ends as Brown makes a plea to transit officials.

“MTA, y’all gotta do something, y’all gotta do better,” he says.

Wealthy 'NIMBY' libs in Pelosi's SF district raise $60G to fight center for city's homeless

By Lukas Mikelionis | Fox News

Rich San Francisco residents in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district have collected more than $60,000 after starting an online crowdsourcing campaign to wage a legal challenge against a proposed center for the city's homeless.

The campaign, called “Safe Embarcadero for All,” was launched March 20 after San Francisco Mayor London Breed proposed a 200-bed homeless Navigation Center in the city’s most desirable location, the Embarcadero along the coast of San Francisco Bay, earlier this month.

“The planned location for Mayor Breed's #megashelter is home to thousands of families, visited by millions of tourists and at the center of some of San Francisco's most iconic events - including the San Francisco Marathon, San Francisco Giants stadium and on one of the busiest bicyclist paths in the city,” reads the site posted by the group opposing the construction.

Video

The campaign shamelessly raised over $60,000 and is on track to reach the desired $100,000 goal, with the money used to pay attorney Andrew Zacks, who often represents property owners, to help the dissatisfied "Not In My Backyard" residents in the neighborhood.

More than 130 people have chipped in, although many did so anonymously. The biggest donation came from an unknown resident who gave $10,000 to the cause.

A Fox News review of records found that multiple individuals – bank executives, professors and authors – who donated to the GoFundMe page have also contributed to Democratic political groups, including thousands of dollars to the Democratic National Committee, MoveOn, Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and other left-leaning organizations.

One of the donors, Jerome Dodson, who has since scrubbed his $1,000 contribution to the campaign, is reportedly a chairman of a “responsible investment fund” that seeks to make “a positive impact on society,” according to the Washington Free Beacon. The investment fund executive donated to Democratic candidates and groups over the years, including Pelosi and Hillary Clinton.

Fox News reached out to Pelosi’s office, asking whether she offered her support for the project designed to combat homeless in her own district.

Video

A competing GoFundMe campaign was started in support of the project for the homeless in the city, attracting a $5,000 donation from GoFundMe itself. The effort so far has garnered nearly $33,000 in donations – surpassing a set goal of $30,000.

San Francisco's mayor, meanwhile, slammed the group opposing the construction in a statement to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“People want us to address the challenges on our streets and help our unsheltered residents into housing, and I am committed to doing the hard work to make that happen,” Breed said.

“But it’s incredibly frustrating and disappointing," she added, "that as soon as we put forward a solution to build a new shelter, people begin to threaten legal action."

Lukas Mikelionis is a reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @LukasMikelionis.

JANUARY 21, 2019

White couple who 'identify as black' say their children will be born black

Woman claims she has become an African woman after having surgeries and skin darkening treatments

Image source: Daily Mail video screenshot

 JANA J. PRUET

A recently married white couple, who identify as black, claimed on ITV's "This Morning" show that their future biological children would be born with black skin.

Martina Big said on the show Monday that her doctors have assured her that she would give birth to a black child after undergoing her transformation from a white woman to an African woman, Daily Mailreported.
"Yep, they said they will be black," Big responded when asked whether or not it was true that doctors had told her that her future children would be born black.
Big, who is an erotic model in Germany, made headlines after having melatonin injections to darken her skin so that she could transform herself from a white woman to a black woman. Big's husband Michael Eurwen, 31, has also received synthetic hormone injections to darken his skin.
Show host Holly Willoughby told the couple she couldn't understand how this could be genetically possible and asked if they would still feel close to their baby if it's born white.
"No, if it's it a mix of Michael and me," Big responded. 'I'm pretty sure it will be black or if it is milk chocolate or a little bit lighter it doesn't matter."

How did she transform herself?

The formerly white-skinned woman's skin color change has been well-documented, according to the Mail. In addition to her skin change, Big's straight platinum blonde hair is now long, black and curly.

The 30-year-old has undergone multiple plastic surgeries including a nose job, liposuction, and lip fillers to help her reach her goal of becoming an "African woman."

Last spring, Big traveled to Kenya where she was baptized as a "real" African woman.
"One of my Kenyan friends told her pastor about my transformation to a black woman and told him how much I wanted to become a true African woman," she wrote on Facebook at the time, according to the Mail.
"In his sermon the pastor said: 'You have to be born again and now you are a new creature.' I'm so happy and proud to be a real African woman :)"

What else?

Big also claims to have the largest breasts in Europe after having breast implants before her October wedding in Hawaii which made her a size 32S, according to reports.

Update: The original version of this story incorrectly identified 'This Morning' as a Daily Mail TV show. We regret the error.