Listen Up: Rolling 12s

Rolling 12s theme is built around the world of tabletop gaming and looking at some of the more unique forms of storytelling that the format allows. In particular, Rolling 12s features audio drama content focused on black characters and black tabletop players. The main stories, "Monde Demasque" and "Hallows Eve" centers on a Vampiric court of black women fighting for survival in territory staked out (no pun intended) in Houston.

The podcast is currently on hiatus, so now's the time to get caught up on episodes! You can listen via Rolling 12s on stitcher, on Google Play or via iOS.

Listen Up is an ongoing series devoted to shining a spotlight on podcasts by diverse creators. You can check out all the podcasts previously featured here. If you have a podcast you'd like to recommend, post it in the comments or email me at shawnstruck at gmail dot com.

#SurvivedAndPunished: Free Toolkit For Marginalized & Criminalized Survivors

A collaboration between Love and Protect and Survived and Punished has resulted in a new, free downloadable toolkit aimed at survivors of violence, sexual assault and abuse. Titled "#SurvivedAndPunished: Survivor Defense As Abolitionist Praxis", the toolkit is the work of over two dozen creatives, activists and writers. It was created because for many women who are survivors of violence and assualt, once the ordeal is survived they find themselves at the mercy of a criminal justice system that ends of punishing them even further. The aim of the toolkit per the project's statement is to offer an accessible, practical, and visible:

...collection of tools, tips, lessons and resources developed through our own experiences. It is also an effort to document and reflect on our own movement work. It is important for us to document especially because our organizing work has been led by Black women, women of color, immigrants and queer/trans people, who are so often erased from history. We hope to preserve some of these histories, build solidarity, and share hope as we continue our collective struggle.

You can read the toolkit online, or download your own copy, for free at the Survived And Punished website here.

Listen Up: Open Ended

Opened Ended is a weekly podcast hosted by best friends Cher Vincent and James T. Green. Every week, they take a deep dive into the latest technology and computer news, best practices in programming code. But they don't just focus on gadgets and shiny tech in the tech sector, they discuss everything coding to code-switching to gender.

Even though they're best friends, Cher and James don't always agree, and there can be plenty of spirited but respectful debate, which makes for an interesting listen.

Follow them via the Open ended web archive or via iOS on iTunes.

Listen Up is an ongoing series devoted to shining a spotlight on podcasts by diverse creators. You can check out all the podcasts previously featured here. If you have a podcast you'd like to recommend, post it in the comments or email me at shawnstruck at gmail dot com.

Listen Up: Not Your Mama's Gamer

Not Your Mama's Gamer has always been a bold, insightful and fun take on video gaming from a diverse, inclusive and feminist perspective. The companion podcast is no exception. Samantha Blackmon and the rest of the NYMG staff hold court each week on the latest industry news, perspectives on favorite games, what they're playing or reading... and drinking.

You can listen along via the Not Your Mamas Gamer website, via  iOS on iTunes, or via stitcher .

Listen Up is an ongoing series devoted to shining a spotlight on podcasts by diverse creators. You can check out all the podcasts previously featured here. If you have a podcast you'd like to recommend, post it in the comments or email me at shawnstruck at gmail dot com.

Listen Up: Nerds of Prey

I first heard of the Nerds of Prey podcast during their guest-host stint on an episode of the Food Fight podcast. The Nerds of Prey podcast debuted earlier this year, and hosts Shannon, CG, Lauren, and Mel already have a great rapport with one another. Four Black nerd women hold court of everything in the geek galaxy- movies, comics, television and gaming. They've managed to score some impressive interviews too, like Executive Producer of Lost, Alias and Fringe Monica Owusu-Breen.

Follow along via the Nerds of Prey Podcast website, via iTunes on iOS or soundcloud.

Listen Up is an ongoing series devoted to shining a spotlight on podcasts by diverse creators. You can check out all the podcasts previously featured here. If you have a podcast you'd like to recommend, post it in the comments or email me at shawnstruck at gmail dot com.

Listen Up: Black Girl Nerds

Black Girl Nerds is a website devoted to discussing, promoting and celebrating nerdiness among Black women & people of color. They have a regularly produced companion podcast hosted by blogger and writing powerhouse Jamie Broadnax and a stellar rotation of contributors and engaging and flat-out funny special guests (the recent episode with W. Kamau Bell is my personal favorite). You can listen to the podcast via Soundcloud, on iTunes or via the main website here.

Listen Up is an ongoing series devoted to shining a spotlight on podcasts by diverse creators. You can check out all the podcasts previously featured here. If you have a podcast you'd like to recommend, post it in the comments or email me at shawnstruck at gmail dot com.

Why Do Teen Dramas Keep Sidelining Black Characters?

Bianca Lawson as Kendra Young
from the second season of Buffy
The Vampire Slayer

Writing for Vulture, Angelica Jade Bastién, talks about hear love of teen dramas, starting as a teen watching The Craft and shows like Buffy The Vampire Slayer when she was a teenager herself. She's remained a fan up to the present day, but she's found that a problem she had with shows in her teens persists in shows today: it's really hard to find characters of color that get as much development in ensemble dramas as their white counterparts. djdjdjdj, :

[B]lack characters are often solely given an arc in relation to the white characters around them... In many films and TV shows, this is also used as a way to discuss racial politics...This may seem radical for the predominantly white filmmakers who work in this genre, but it’s important to remember that black girls’ lives aren’t solely defined by racism. We deal with romantic foibles, desires, and fears just as richly complex as the white leads this genre focuses on to the detriment of the black girls coloring the margins.

Bastién mentions the latest teen drama to start with a promising introduction, only to fall to some of the same problems: CW's Riverdale and the show's introduction of Josie and her bandmates The Pussycats:

K. J. Apa, who plays the remarkably befuddled (and ripped) Archie, is half Samoan. Veronica is Latina. Reggie is played by an Asian-American actor. And most notably, not one, but all of the members of Josie and the Pussycats are black, a change that eschews the tokenization previous iterations of the group have displayed. But as Riverdale approaches the end of its first season, it has reaffirmed some of the age-old problems within the genre... At the least, Riverdale’s Josie, Valerie, and Melody aren’t stereotypes, but they rest in the same troubling space that the black girls in films like Save the Last Dance occupy. They’re not characters so much as they are a vehicle for a Message. Josie and her fellow pussycats are positioned to communicate the message that Riverdale is more modern and inclusive than teen dramas of the past, even though it has yet to prove it beyond its casting.

Heck, in the comics and cartoons, Josie and The Pussycats were mystery solvers. Riverdale ended its season with a murder plotline that's been weaving in and out of the story all season, but Josie and company have been seemingly shunted aside. Bastién name drops The Craft, Buffy and Bring It On-- what ensemble shows do you think dropped the ball with characters of color? Did the writers fix it? What would you like to see, dear readers?

Writers of Color & Craft: An Invisible Archive

Neil Atkin-- a great translator and poet in his own right-- writes about an amazing and sorely needed collection project that I wanted to signal boost:

A couple weeks ago I was thinking about how Junot Diaz often comments on the fact he’s almost never asked to speak about craft, and instead always is asked to talk about race, identity, and the immigrant experience. And it’s true — when I think about all the books on writing craft I’ve read or heard about over the years I’m struck by how few POC-authored books on writing I’ve seen. 

Are they really that rare? Or are the books and essays out there, but we don’t know where to find them? 

This list is an ongoing project to catalog what writing resources are out there.

You can check out the compilation he's assembled so far right here.

No More Excuses: 1,000 Women & Non Binary Folks Who Can Speak At Your Next Tech Conference

Last year, I wrote how despite the tech sector paying lip service to the idea of addressing diversity in its leadership or workforce, large companies and influential tech conferences are still big on talk and short on action.

For example, this exchange between tech writer Matt Andrews and EdgeConf's Andrew Betts on every single speaker being male:

@mattpointblank inexcusable is pretty strong. I don't feel need to defend this, but am happy with our process.

— Andrew Betts (@triblondon) January 3, 2013

When men in charge of tech conferences aren't being defensive, they're being straight up lazy, because finding women doing interesting work in tech is sssooooo hhhaaaarrrd, you guys!

No, seriously, someone said that.

Mike Kuniavsky the lead behind the "Sketching in Hardware" conference actually said in an interview that it's "…often much harder to identify the women who are doing interesting work than the men".

Melanie Ehrenkranz, a tech reporter with Mic.com, put out a call for anyone who was

• willing to speak at a tech conference
• doing interesting work in the tech sector, and 
• was not a cis man

In just under a day, she had a list of 1,000 recommended names, which you can see for yourself here.

Okay, so now there's a list of speakers in tech. That's all we need now, right? Wrong. A list of women and nonbinary people that can speak on stage is just the first step. As Ehrenkranz said, the point is not for men in tech to have a list of people to tokenize;

"We also have to disrupt the idea that the only thing minorities are qualified to speak on is being a minority. The tech experts listed here are more than tokens — they're authorities in their fields. Individuals from underrepresented groups shouldn't have to tediously compile lists and shout into the Twittersphere that they are here, they are experts and they want to speak. Panel organizers need to make a more concerted effort to diversify their experts. Male panelists need to look at their fellow panelists and, if they notice it's exclusively white men, make space for more voices.  

We're not always going to do the work for you."

Note: Originally the title of this post inadvertently didn't mention non-binary people. I have since corrected it.

Newly Discovered Pics: Victorian Women of Color

Description: Black and white photo of an unidenti-
fied black woman in Victorian era fancy dress sitting
for a photo portrait.

The website Dangerous Minds reports on some recently discovered and unearthed pictures of photographic portraits of some very elegant women of color from the Victorian era. Sadly, information on just who these women were are thin on the ground. Hopefully some historians or genealogists might be able to shed some light on the identity of these unknown and dashing people.

As Dangerous Minds reports:

Here are some photographs of Victorian women of color that date from 1860 to 1901. Unfortunately, a lot of these photographs have no names attached to the women posed in the photographs.
I’d love to know the stories behind each photo. What each woman’s life was like. Sadly, we’ll probably never know... Photos of Women of Color from this era are hard to come by, especially “family” photographs.A [few] of these photos were taken when there was still slavery in the United States.

These photos being shared online are very striking. These photographs could also give plenty of inspiration for steampunk and steamfunk fans, creators and writers. You can check out the full set of pictures here.