#MeToo

Henrietta Lacks Estate Sues Company Using her ‘Stolen’ Cells

The estate of Henrietta Lacks sued a biotechnology company on Monday, accusing it of selling cells that doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took from the Black woman in 1951 without her knowledge or consent as part of “a racially unjust medical system.“

Review: Anita Hill urges us all to battle gender violence

“Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence” by Anita Hill (Viking)

Anita Hill didn’t care if President Joe Biden apologized or not, but she found his aversion to doing so rather dramatic.

This is one anecdote from her new book, “Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence.” It was released Tuesday.

First, she was a survivor: #MeToo’s Burke tells her story

People will think this is a book about, you know, going to the Golden Globes and meeting a bunch of celebrities, and a bunch of powerful men whose lives were impacted by #MeToo. I want to tell a different story. My story is ordinary and also extraordinary: It’s so many other little black girls’ stories, so many young women’s stories. We don’t pay attention to the nuances of what survival looks like or what sexual violence feels like and how it impacts our lives. So it just felt important. This is a story that’s been growing inside me for more than 40 years. It was time to give it a home outside of my body.

Years in the making, R. Kelly sex abuse trial gets underway

 R&B star R. Kelly is a predator who lured girls, boys and young women with his fame and dominated them physically, sexually and psychologically, a prosecutor said Wednesday, while a defense lawyer warned jurors they’ll have to sift through lies from accusers with agendas to find the truth. The differing perspectives came as the long-anticipated trial began unfolding in a Brooklyn courtroom where several accusers were scheduled to testify in the next month about the Grammy-winning, multiplatinum-selling singer whose career has been derailed by charges that have left him jailed as he goes broke. Jerhonda Pace, the first government witness, told jurors Wednesday that

Left Out of MeToo: New Initiative Focuses on Black Survivors

It’s been more than three years since the (hash)MeToo movement launched a culture-shifting conversation about sexual violence. But Tarana Burke, the activist who gave the movement its name, says concrete change has been incremental at best _ and especially for Black survivors.

Supervisor Holly Mitchell Takes Historical Seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors

For years, the members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors were known as “The Five Kings,” a title used to describe the powerful all-male Board of Supervisors, which remained that way until 1982 when Yvonne Brathwaite-Burke shattered the glass ceiling and became the first woman and the first African American to be elected to the Board of Supervisors.

Cannes Does ‘Right Thing’ in Appointing Spike Lee to Lead

Festival organizers hope Lee will “shake things up” among the world’s cinema elite at the festival which runs May 12-23. And anti-racism campaigners hope Lee’s appointment wakes up the French cultural world to persistent discrimination and the damaging stereotypes it perpetuates.

Many Say #MeToo is Bigger than Harvey Weinstein, Trial Outcome Doesn’t Matter

The Weinstein case has been categorized by some as one of the most significant #MeToo cases in history. This is because of the severity of the allegations against him and the fact that those allegations came early on in the movement and attracted much attention. It’s also true that many of the allegations are fairly recent and involved some of Hollywood’s best-known female stars. Conversely, many of the allegations in several similar cases are often decades old and/or occurred far outside of the statutes of limitations.