A Better Life For Sharmaine.

Source For more facts follow Ultrafacts

Heads up. If you guys end up doing BlackOutTuesday do NOT use the tag for Blacklivesmatter with a black square. Its flooding the tag with absolutely NOTHINGNESS and its blocking vital information that people could be using.

A lot of us are getting our info on whats happening in real time through twitter or instagram (I guess tumblr?? Tumblr is so wildly slow tho?) and its VITAL that we keep those lines of communication up. 

Use the tag BlackOutTuesday OR instead of posting a blank image of nothing just use that tag to boost black voices. Take a break on posting your own art or promoting yourself but definitely DEFINITELY do not stop with the flow of info on whats going on. I wouldn’t know there even was a curfew if not for twitter because I’m not getting the alerts where I am.

Things are happening real REAL fast. Just be aware of jumping on a bandwagon before knowing who created it and what its actually going to do.

Found this on Facebook! BOOST!

Tell Etsy that #ThisIsNotNative

Very informative thread -source

Scotland has created an official tartan for Scottish Muslims: blue for the Scottish flag, green for Islam, w/ five white lines representing the five pillars of Islam, six gold lines representing the six articles of faith, and a black square representing the Holy Kabah. 

If you’re not Scottish, you might not know how big of a deal this is. Quoting Attire’s Mind: “This is a signal that they are not only just a full part of Scotland now, but family. Clans, as defined by tartans, are large scale families, and the totality of them encompass the family of the Scottish people. “ 

Attention artists, art theft!

Saw this post by rosebloom-arts and decided to check it out. Turns out she is not the only person suffering from art theft by this website, making profit from printing posters of peoples artwork without any premission whatsoever.

I saw i lot of artworks including my own and from a lot of other people!

This is the website. If you search you name you will find some of your artworks they are using. And here is the petition to end this website. 

This is affecting a lot of people, not just myself and if you are an artist either by photography or drawing they are most likely stealing from you too.

So check it out and sign the petition, please. 

Scammer Targeting Tumblr Artists

The title says it all really. So if nothing else, please share and reblog this post to raise awareness for those that might be caught out - both artists and followers. For a TL:DR, please look at the bottom of the post

What is happening?

Right now, there is at least one person actively impersonating multiple artists across tumblr in an effort to scam their followers into paying for fake ‘cheap commissions’. The scammer will clone a tumblr, usually using a slight change to the url/account name to look like the real deal. They will then message people directly through Tumblr with messages along the lines of “Hey, i’m doing cheap commissions right now. DM me to get one”. Naturally, this is ends up just being a way to take their money without giving anything back in return.

Who does this affect?

Everyone. Simple as that. As long as the scammer in question works unopposed, they are free to spread their influence and continue to scam more people. Even if you haven’t been targeted yet, it does not mean you are safe or immune. Several artists have already fallen victim to this scammer, and I encourage any artists that have to reblog this post with the details of their affected account(s) and the ones the scammer has set up.

How can we stop this?

Tumblr, like many other social media platforms, seems to care very little about ‘minor’ occurences like this one, and despite reaching out directly to them over a week ago through multiple avenues of contact - they have refused to comment on the situation, provide a recommended response for users, or take action on behalf of those already affected. Despite this, there are still tools at our disposal that we can use to make this scam more difficult, and to increase its visibility to those within Tumblr staff that are required by policy to take action. Tumblr has the following to say on the topic of impersonation: Confusion or Impersonation. Don’t do things that would cause confusion between you or your blog and a person or company, like registering a deliberately confusing URL. Don’t impersonate anyone. While you’re free to ridicule, parody, or marvel at the alien beauty of Benedict Cumberbatch, you can’t pretend to actually be Benedict Cumberbatch. They then provide a link to this online form that you can fill out if you suspect someone’s identity is being confused. Unfortunately, this can only be filled out if you are the victim of impersonation. In other words, only the artists can fill this out legitimately. So, what about the followers and users of tumblr whom aren’t being impersonated? Our most valuable tool in this online platform is the platform itself. It enables us to spread our word near-virally across all the many sub-communities on Tumblr with remarkable efficiency for a user-driven system. We can take advantage of that effect to increase awareness of the situation. Even if you - the one reading this right now - aren’t an artist or don’t know an artist, the act of reblogging this post or sharing it directly with friends improves it’s ‘ranking’ in popularity increasing its chances to be seen by more people. We don’t need everyone on Tumblr to see the post for it to be effective, just like we don’t need the entirety of the human population of the world to be immune to a disease for that disease to be rendered ineffective or eradicated. If enough people are aware, the likelihood of pulling off a successful scam increases dramatically reducing efficiency to a point that it no longer becomes profitable to continue.

Why should I care?

It disheartens me to say this, but of the many artists I contacted directly over the past week to warn about this issue many of them refused to listen or dodged the responsibility with lines like;

“I’m not being impersonated, so it doesn’t affect me”

“I’m just one person. I can’t make an impact”

“I need to take care of my community. Other people can look after theirs”

This is honestly disappointing that so many artists or art-rebloggers care so little as to intentionally wave the responsibility of keeping their followers and fellow artists safe from this, that they cannot spare 10 seconds of their time to share an informative post. I’m not here to bash artists, but it is time that everyone takes responsibility for their own communities, and of those around them. Artists: You have a responsibility to ensure that your followers and fans aren’t being abused by someone who may impersonate you. If they succeed, your reputation will be damaged, and your followers will resent you. Your followers are also almost guaranteed to be following other artists meaning your efforts can spread beyond your own circle of influence, so don’t be naive when you think you have little effect. Followers: You have just as much responsibility to be aware of those that might try to scam you or your fellow followers. Don’t just sit in silence when you see something wrong: Ignoring the issue only makes it more resilient to our efforts to stop it. You are the vocal majority if you just use your voices to be heard!

TL:DR

A scammer is impersonating artists and scamming money from their followers under the guise of ‘cheap commissions’. If we ignore the issue, it will get worse. Every single person that reads this can afford to spend just 10 seconds to reblog and share this post. Those 10 seconds can save others from being scammed for hundreds of dollars. Reblog & Share

Distances. #pascalcampion

when I drew this comic 3 years ago I had NO idea how far it would reach. I'm happy to finally share a corrected version with proper abbreviations, and even MORE state names of indigenous origin ♥️

however, the goal of this comic was to inspire people to do your OWN research on indigenous history. To question everything we have been taught, and everything that has been pointedly left out. This erasure, this “forgetting”, of history is not just of the past… it is happening now. - Across so-called Canada, the US, and US-occupied islands, native women are victims of murder at 10-12x the rate of non-native people, and are the most likely to go missing without being searched for by the law. - Native reservations have the highest rates of poverty in the US, with over HALF of tribal homes with no access to clean water (with more joining this list by the year) - Native people are 6-10x more likely to be unhoused than the rest of the population, and native teens suffer suicide rates higher than any other demographic. This list of modern day genocide goes on (thank you for compiling @theindigenousanarchist <3) and yet take a look at those environmental stats!

Native people manage to do SO much for the planet as a whole - thanklessly - and with all this stacked against them. Don't even get me started on kin fighting in south america. Could you imagine if there was help? #landback is resistance to genocide, and it is the key to saving our warming earth.

So look into it and the other hashtags, cuz a cartoon goose ain't a substitute for a proper education. Love to my grandparents who always kept a map of tribal territories of turtle island on their wall, to speaking on our Tsalagi & Saponi heritage. Love & solidarity forever, happy research, and happy #indigenouspeoplesday

LANDBACK.ORG

(Also, if you care to support the artist, I'm publishing a book ! and writing another - a fantastical afroindigenous graphic novel - that I post exclusively about with tons of other art on my patreon.)

I Really Need Your Help...

I have an announcement that is….honestly difficult to talk about. You never really want to bring up things like this, especially when you are the kind of person to never ask your friends to pay for you for lunch or buy you something because you’re poor. I do commissions yeah, and wanted to raise money for my family to fix the roof, so I’m sure you’re all already tired of hearing from me, but this time, this is bigger than before. If you aren’t interested in hearing what I have to say, go on and scroll down and ignore me, but if you are interested, please continue reading. 

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