The Resistance at Work ... and a Couple of Goose-steppers

Let’s talk again about the Resistance, and those standing against the regime, including a chef, a newsman and twenty-eight women … ending with two of the sickest people on the planet today and the very reason we need to resist … but first:

Chef Joe Gera has exposed  “Doctor” Rand Paul for lying about Dr. Fauci and COVID vaccines by revealing that the MAGA senator was himself vaccinated and Gera knows it. He took on Paul on X after Paul posted:

"Remember: Anthony Fauci was all about 'following the science,' until it came to vaccines. He was all about forcing you into compliance, even though we all knew infection was the best protection."

Gera responded to that post with this:

"You were vaccinated. Multiple times. How do I know? Because I cooked an event you attended in early 2022. The venue’s policy was: if you wanted to attend unmasked, you had to be vaccinated (this didn’t stop until April that year at this venue). You also had to RSVP well in advance and provide a negative COVID test before the event. So if you were there, you met those requirements. But by all means, keep bullshitting."

Gera added if we "all knew" that infection was a better hedge against the coronavirus than the vaccines—and it wasn’t—then why did Rand Paul take the vaccine?

Obviously he’s saying this now to pander to the MAGAt base for political gain; that’s why he now says he wants to prosecute Fauci for his imagined crimes and who exposed the doctor's personal diary to the entire world in a political theater stunt.

But that’s Rand Paul, and that’s the GOP and that’s MAGAts.

And that’s Gera, resisting.

At the recent do-over of the White House Correspondents' Dinner due to the staged assassination attempt, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer stood a few feet from Cankles and anchor gave the Wall Street Journal the Katharine Graham Award for Courage and Accountability for exposing Cankles birthday letter to Epstein. The letter is signed by Cankles, who insists the signature isn’t his, with a drawing, in an album made for Epstein's fiftieth birthday.

Cankles filed a lawsuit against the WSJ and exposed reporter Khadeeja Safdar's home address and after several threats her family had to be relocated.

The lawsuit was supposed to make the letter disappear but instead it spurred Congress into subpoenaing Epstein's estate to produce the birthday book, and the letter sitting right there, exactly as reported.

And so last week Cankles’ sat on the dais and then had to shake the hand of every reporter he tried to sue into silence, one after another, while the cameras rolled. He spent years and a fortune trying to make this story disappear and ended the night applauding the people who wrote it.

The Resistance.

And speaking of the Epstein Files … it’s twenty-eight women over three decades saying the president is a predator and rapist and pedophile.

And when the story comes back up those who defend this so-called president by acting like there is just one accusation, one lawsuit, or one disgruntled person; not true.

Here’s the list:

1. Ivana _____ [1989, New York] said in a divorce deposition that after she visited her plastic surgeon that Cankles assaulted her; she is quoted as using the word “rape,” though she later said she did not mean it in the criminal sense.

2. Jill Harth [1992-1993, Mar-a-Lago, Florida] alleges Cankles repeatedly groped, pulled her into a bedroom, and pushed here against a wall. Filed a harassment lawsuit in 1997.

3. “Katie Johnson” [1994, New York] Anonymous plaintiff alleged Cankles and Jeffrey Epstein raped her at age 13. The lawsuit was later withdrawn.

4. Jessica Leeds [early 1980s, flight to New York] says Cankles groped her breasts and attempted to put his hand up her skirt.

5. Kristin Anderson [early 1990s, Manhattan nightclub] says Cankles groped her under her skirt.

6. Stacey Williams [1993, New York] alleges that Cankles groped her while Jeffrey Epstein watched.

7. Beatrice Keul [1993, Plaza Hotel, New York City] says Cankles groped her in a hotel suite.

8. Lisa Boyne [1996, New York dinner] alleges Cankles had models walk across a table so he could look under their skirts.

9. Cathy Heller [1997, Mar-a-Lago, Florida] says Cankles grabbed and kissed her at a Mother’s Day brunch.

10. Temple Taggart McDowell [1997, Miss Utah USA] says Cankles gave her unwanted kisses and embraces.

11. Amy Dorris [1997, U.S. Open, New York City] alleges Cankles forcibly kissed and groped her.

12. Mariah Billado [1997, Miss Teen USA] says Cankles walked into a dressing room while contestants were changing.

13. Victoria Hughes [1997, Miss Teen USA] corroborated the dressing room account and said the youngest contestant present was 15.

14. Karena Virginia [1998, outside the U.S. Open, New York City] says Cankles grabbed her arm and touched her breast.

15. Bridget Sullivan [2000, Miss USA] says Cankles entered a dressing room while contestants were naked.

16. Tasha Dixon [2001, Miss USA] also says Cankles walked in on topless and naked contestants.

17. Unnamed Miss USA contestant [2001] says Cankles barged into a dressing room while she was undressed.

18. Mindy McGillivray [2003, Mar-a-Lago, Florida] says Cankles groped her buttocks.

19. Karen Johnson [early 2000s, Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve party] alleges Cankles grabbed her genitals and forcibly kissed her.

20. Rachel Crooks [2005, Trump Tower, New York City] says Cankles kissed her cheeks and mouth without consent.

21. Natasha Stoynoff [2005, Mar-a-Lago, Florida] says Cankles pushed her against a wall and forcibly kissed her.

22. Juliet Huddy [2005-2006, Trump Tower, New York City] says Cankles kissed her on the lips.

23. Jessica Drake [2006] alleges Cankles forcibly kissed and hugged her, followed by offers of money for a date.

24. Ninni Laaksonen [2006, New York City] says Cankles grabbed her buttocks backstage before an appearance.

25. Samantha Holvey [2006, Miss USA pageant] says Cankles’ behavior was “creepy” and that he entered dressing rooms unannounced.

26. Summer Zervos [2007, Beverly Hills Hotel, California] alleges unwanted kissing, breast touching, and genital thrusting. Later she sued him for defamation after he denied her claims.

27. Cassandra Searles [2013, Miss USA pageant] alleges groping and unwanted advances.

28. Alva Johnson [2016, Florida campaign event] alleges Cankles forcibly kissed her.

And then there is the one case that actually went before a jury.

E. Jean Carroll [1995 or 1996, Bergdorf Goodman, New York City] alleges Cankles sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room. In 2023, a jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded Carroll $5 million. In 2024, a second jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million for additional defamation.

While the jury did not find liability for rape under New York’s specific legal definition used in the case, Judge Lewis Kaplan later wrote that the jury’s findings were substantially equivalent to a finding that Cankles raped Carroll as the term is commonly understood.

After reading all these allegations remember that Cankles was caught on tape saying he just “grabs women and starts kissing them” and that he could do that because he’s rich; he also admitted to grabbing women by the pussy.

Now let’s talk about the Epstein files.

For years, people claimed Cankles’ name wasn’t in the files, then some files were released …

July 2025 during the Phase One Release, Cankles’ name appeared 9 times, including at least 8 appearances in Epstein’s flight logs from 1993 to 1996.

November 2025 from the House Oversight Committee Email Release, we found that Cankles was mentioned at least 1,500 times in released materials. Many references involved Epstein discussing Cankles with associates rather than direct communications.

December 19 and 23, 2025 we got the First DOJ Release, roughly 30,000 pages and we learned that Cankles name appeared relatively frequently in this batch, mostly in address books, flight logs, message logs, and previously released Ghislaine Maxwell interview materials.

January 30, 2026 we got the Final DOJ Release, more than 3 million pages, and Cankles’ name appeared more than 3,000 times according to tracking of the release. While Cankles argued the records cleared him, critics argued the volume alone contradicted years of claims that he barely appeared in the files.

February 2026 in a Review of 5,300-file batch, the New York Times’ search tools identified more than 38,000 references to Cankles, Melania, Mar-a-Lago, and related search terms. Not all were direct references to Cankles himself, but the total showed how extensively his name appeared throughout the database.

And then there was one additional document that drew attention … a separate email contained an uncorroborated sexual abuse allegation involving Cankles. NPR reported the accuser was interviewed by the FBI four times, but only one of those interviews, one which does not mention Cankles, is currently included in the public database.

To be fair, there is a difference between saying someone’s name appears in the files and saying there is evidence they committed a crime. But there is also a difference between saying someone’s name appears once and saying it appears thousands of times. And we know that to prove his innocence all he had to do was release it all, but he won't.......

So the record stands: 28 public accusers, one jury finding Trump liable for sexual abuse, $88.3 million in damages, and thousands of references to Cankles-related names and entities throughout the Epstein document releases.

Draw your own conclusions, but burying your head in the sand like the GOP and the DOJ and pretending none of this exists stopped being an honest argument a long time ago.

Now, onto the blatant hypocrisy of Stephen “Pee Wee German” Miller and his wife Katie and their relationship with Dr. Fauci during COVID.

Katie Miller, a former Cankles administration staffer and her husband Stephen are calling for Dr. Anthony Fauci to be jailed, citing the recent release of his private diary entries as proof that he is nothing but an attention-seeker. 

But the diary entries also tell another story of Katie and Stephen and the type of goose-stepping lying hypocrites they both are now and were during COVID.

During Cankles’ first term, when Katie Miller was then-Vice President Mike Pence’s communications director and involved in the White House’s response to COVID, she appeared quite close with the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases. 

In fact, Dr. Anthony Fauci provided regular medical advice to the Millers, counseling the family after Katie tested positive for the virus in 2020 while she was pregnant, when her husband had Covid-19, and when her newborn child had a medical episode; Fauci wrote in his diary on May 9, 2020:

“I am calling Katie frequently to check on her couple time per day. She is very anxious about getting very ill since she is 10 weeks pregnant. Tonight she had an anxiety reaction. I calmed her over the phone.”

He also wrote in another entry how he called the doctors treating Miller’s child directly to discuss the baby’s medical care. 

Senator Rand Paul, not a doctor, released over 1,000 pages of Fauci’s diary last week and quite a few of those entries showed the extent of Fauci’s interactions with Miller before they were later redacted. News of the United States [NOTUS], a nonpartisan digital political news website compared pages before and after the redactions and found that many of the suddenly redacted passages concerned the Millers’ relationship with Fauci, with the original documents mentioning Katie 56 times, while the redacted version mentioned her just 37 times. 

Katie told NOTUS not to publish details of her child’s medical history, claiming that Paul published them without her permission. She also said that despite her regular contact with Fauci during the pandemic, she thought at the time that he was “incredibly self-centered and sought to promote himself above the good of the people” and also added:

“He was not my doctor. He was not my friend. He was a work colleague who called me for work purposes, and in the course of a phone call, you would discuss other things.”

Sure sounds like she sought out his advice for herself, for her child, and also for her husband; he was quite a work colleague who called only for work purposes.

Dr. Anthony Fauci describes Katie Miller in his diary as someone he saw as an ally to help deal with the administration while the Coronavirus Task Force was active. He also spoke to her multiple times while she was traveling to her parents’ home in Texas later in October that year, after her husband tested positive and wrote:

“Am on phone frequently with Katie and Stephen.”

Funny after all that, helping alleviate Katie Miller’s fears of COVID, talking to her about her infant child being diagnosed with the virus, and then with her husband’s own COCID diagnosis, Kate Miller, who lets’ face it, never met the truth she didn’t deny, now blasts Fauci frequently online, accusing him of caring “more about virtue signaling than science” and causing “decades of harm” to children with his leadership of the government’s response to Covid-19. She now speaks often about not vaccinating her youngest child on her podcast.

Even after all the advice she sought him out for, Katie Miller sinks to a new low.

It’s highly hypocritical how she and her husband are now trashing a dedicated public servant and medical professional who went out of his way to help them during the Covid-19 pandemic, when they dealt with the same fears of the virus as every other American. Now the Millers are happy to pile on and blame Fauci for the failures of the Cankles’ regime’s administration’s Covid-19 response.  

One of the vilest, hate-filled, lying hypocritical couples on the planet who both had COVID, as did their newborn child, and now trash the man who helped them because it takes the heat of their bosses’ pedophile scandal, his inept handling of a war for profit he started, and the rampant corruption in his administration.

Fuck them both.

Stand with Joe Gera, Wolf Blitzer, The Women, and stand against the ilk of goose-stepping Nationalist Christians, AKA Nat-C’s, the Millers …

Ain't That America XX

I’m going to try something different this week. Rather than focusing on the many bad things happening in this country, I have opted to focus on three things that piss me off … the phony peace deal between Israel and Gaza where the bombs are still dropping … the idea that this country is bailing out another country while our government is closed and our economy is in the tank … and the rise of Nazis, rapists and murderers in the GOP and the GOP doesn’t seem to care. And then we’ll have the good news, and there is some … from judges topping Cankles … to nekkid bike riders making a mockery of the DogKiller … and ending with No Kings Day and how the march is still going on and getting larger … so let’s dish …

In case you don’t know, it was President Joe Biden who secured the release of 140 hostages in Gaze while Cankles got 28 out. If anyone deserves credit it’s the Peace President and not the guy bombing boasts in the Caribbean.

But wait, there’s more … while Israelis and Palestinians danced in the streets when news broke overnight that a deal had been reached between Hamas and Israel over the first phase of a peace deal for Gaza, the terms of the deal were in place more than a year ago.

Gershon Baskin, the architect of the negotiations that freed the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011, revealed that Hamas had agreed to the exact same terms of the Cankles deal in September 2024, in the last months of the Biden administration, but that Biden officials had disregarded it while Benjamin Netanyahu had refused point blank.

Bibi and Cankles met at Mar-a-Lago and decided to hold off on the treaty until Cankles took office to avoid giving credit to President Biden, so every single bomb, every rifle shot, on both sides,. And every death of men, women and children, is the fault of Cankles and Bibi who allowed war to continue and people to die so they could get the “win.”

Murderers and war criminals, both.

While hundreds of thousands of American service members brace for missed paychecks during the Cankles-GOP shutdown. The president decided to hand over $40 billion to Argentina … and to makes matters worse, his billionaire friends will make money on the deal while Americans go without pay.

Pay will be frozen soon for the troops and is now frozen for most federal workers and then the Cankles Regime began laying off government workers while the Treasury gives billions away to Argentina.

Hey MAGAts? How does this Make America Great Again? And how do you feel knowing that every single American is paying $100 each to save a foreign president from an economy he created? Do you have a wife and a couple of kids?

You paid $400 to help Argentina.

Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway and now they got caught referring to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and giggled about putting their political opponents in gas chambers … raping their enemies and driving them to suicide:

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n–ga” and “n–guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

Vice President JD CouchF*cker Vance waded into the uproar, drawing criticism by saying a Democratic politician’s text messages suggesting the former Virginia House speaker should be shot were worse:

“This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia. I refuse to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence.”

Remember JD was the wimpy little lapdog called Cankles ‘America’s Hitler’ and now he’s the guy who rationalized Young Republicans praising Hitler.”

When they show you who they are … racist, Nazis, rapists, believe them.

Out in Oklahoma, where new state schools Superintendent Lindel Fields—who took over for MAGAt faux Christian and porn addict Ryan Walters, announced that he is dropping a Bible-teaching mandate for Oklahoma public schools issued by his predecessor.

It’s quite simple: the Separation of Church and State keeps religion out of schools, but if you want to learn the Bible you can go to a religious school or a church. You don’t need to inflict your faith on others.

At the Pentagon this week a  flyer with the words “journalism is not a crime” appeared on the wall outside the “Correspondents’ Corridor” where journalists operate; it was a silent protest of Defense Secretary, and DUI hire,  Pete Hegseth’s new policy that severely restricts press access.

The policy criminalizes routine reporting, according to media lawyers and advocates, so nearly all news outlets … even Fox News … are refusing to abide by it and are giving up their access while vowing to cover Hegseth and the military from outside the Pentagon’s five walls.

Nice to see the press take a stand. Now, take on the White House.

US District Judge Susan Illston issued an emergency order that the Cankles’ Regime must stop firing workers during the government shutdown. Illston said the administration was acting without thinking through its decisions … go figure … and said:

“It’s very much ready, fire, aim on most of these programs, and it has a human cost and it’s a human cost that cannot be tolerated.”

Stand up!

MAGAt supporters who paid for the new Cankles watches are seriously ticked off with many calling the sale a scam ... the watches are actually made in Wyoming, not in Switzerland ... after their orders were never filled.

Wait. Cankles scammed you on your Cankles watch, for which you paid anywhere from $499 to $2,999 per watch, or $5,389 for the “Ultra Mega Collector Set?”

Huh. Who saw that coming?

This week Australia’s highest court rejected US conservative commentator, and certifiable nutjob, Candace Owens’ bid to overturn an Australian government decision barring her from visiting the country. Three High Court judges unanimously rejected Owens’ challenge to Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke’s decision in 2024 to refuse her a visa on character grounds.

Sorry, Candy, they don’t want you.

The city of Lansing, Michigan will become an LGBTQ+ Welcoming City after City Council members voted unanimously  to pass a resolution expressing support for the LGBTQ+ community. The resolution “recognizes that, in the face of inadequate state and federal protections, we must take proactive steps to safeguard our most vulnerable residents.”

It’s a step and one step leads to another.

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and left in place the $1.4 billion judgment against him over his description of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting as a hoax staged by crisis actors.

Good. SCOTUS did something right for a change.

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport will not broadcast a video of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem saying Democrats caused the federal government shutdown  due to its “political nature” saying:

“The Port of Seattle will not play the video on its screens at SEA Airport, due to the political nature of the content. We continue to urge bipartisan efforts to end the government shutdown and are working to find ways to support federal employees working without pay at SEA during the shutdown.”

And then Phoenix  joined Seattle, followed quickly by Portland … Buffalo, Charlotte, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Dallas Love Field, Denver, JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, and San Francisco …

This is The Resistance at work.

Protesters rallying against the Cankles’ Regime in Portland put the city’s quirky and irreverent reputation on display last week by pedaling through the streets wearing nothing — or close to it — in an “emergency” edition of the annual World Naked Bike Ride. The ride usually happens in the summer, but organizers hastily said another nude ride was necessary to speak out against Cankles’ attempts to mobilize the National Guard to quell protests.

Crowds have gathered daily and nightly outside the immigration facility in Portland donning inflatable frog, unicorn, axolotl and banana costumes as they face off with federal law enforcement who often deploy tear gas and pepper balls.

Nekkid Resistance.

This week Cankles lied … what else is new … blaming the January 6 Capitol riot on former President Joe Biden, claiming that:

“THE BIDEN FBI PLACED 274 AGENTS INTO THE CROWD ON JANUARY 6. If this is so, which it is, a lot of very good people will be owed big apologies. What a SCAM – DO SOMETHING!!! President DJT”

Trouble is, Biden was not president on that day and in control of the federal government, which includes the FBI.

Cankles was in charge on 1/6 and is trying to rewrite history.

The Cankles Regime raced to rescind layoffs of hundreds of scientists at the Centers for Disease Control [CDC] who were mistakenly fired on in what appeared to be a substantial procedural lapse.

Among those wrongly dismissed were the top two leaders of the federal measles response team, those working to contain Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, and the team that assembles the C.D.C.’s vaunted scientific journal, The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The stupidity of this fascist clown car is stunning.

Cankles is quite upset about the photo of him on the latest issue of Time magazine, whining on Truth Social”

“Time Magazine wrote a relatively good story about me, but the picture may be the Worst of All Time. They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Really weird! I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a super bad picture, and deserves to be called out. What are they doing, and why?”

Pictures don’t lie … and I notice you said nothing about your vagina neck.

Sean Duffy, reality show star and Transportation Secretary, says the No Kings protests are part of antifa, paid protesters.

It begs two questions, the first being: if antifa is anti-fascism and you, Sean Duffy, are anti-anti-fascism that makes you pro-fascism?

And who has so much money they can pay millions and millions of people all around the world to attend a No Kings protest. Like all in the regime, when Duffy speaks, it’s a lie.

As the House remains out of session into a third week, Speaker Mike Johnson defended his decision to not swear in Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva until the full chamber returns to Washington.

But maybe it’s the fact that Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who won a special election last month, would be the 218th signature needed to force a bipartisan vote to compel the release of more Jeffrey Epstein case files.

Little Mike is scrambling to save his master.

It appears that members of Congress are growing irritated by Border Barbie’s power. They claim that necessary government contracts are being slow-walked and that her office has become difficult to communicate with … go figure, there’s probably no photo op happening.

At the Federal Emergency Management Agency, housed in DHS, the DogKiller’s antics have significantly slowed the agency’s normally routine process of distributing much-needed funds to states trying to rebuild in the aftermath of natural disasters.

Huh, maybe the GOP should have seen that before they approved her nomination.

The US Chamber of Commerce sued the Cankles Regime over its decision to raise the fee for H-1B work visa applications to $100,000, arguing that Cankles exceeded his authority in altering the visa program.; you don’t say?

And are they going to ask where these extra funds will be going?

Admiral Alvin Holsey, the military commander overseeing the Pentagon’s escalating attacks against boats in the Caribbean Sea that the Regime says are smuggling drugs is stepping down.

It was unclear why Admiral Holsey is leaving less than a year into his tenure, and in the midst of the biggest operation in his 37-year career but one of the US officials—all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity—say Admiral Holsey had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats.

Holsey is Resisting.

Cankles #3 son, Eric, bizarrely stated he's Daddy’s "good boy"—and now a wave of mockery is lighting up social media. It started when CNN's Kaitlan Collins asked Eric:

"Obviously there are investment projects happening in Indonesia. First off, have you heard from the president?"

Collins was referring to a hot mic moment in which Cankles was overheard speaking to Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, saying "I'll have Eric call you" and referring to him as a "good boy." The audio immediately supercharged rumors of a corrupt backroom business deal, which has become commonplace with this regime but it didn’t help Eric’s Dumb reputation when he said:

"No, not about that but I'm glad he acknowledges that I'm a good boy. I am a good boy."

In addition to being an incredibly strange thing for a grown man to say, Eric’s Good Little Boy moment spurred on the internet:

"What grown man says he's glad his Dad thinks he's a good boy????"

"If a Democrat offered him a hug he'd rat his daddy out tomorrow..."

"'I’m a good boy' says 41-year-old Eric. And he knows it’s true, because he made all gone with his bowl of paint chips this morning. And unlike daddy, he hasn’t made boom-boom in his pants today. But it’s early."

"Eric … has somehow out-parodied The Onion's depiction of him.”

That family is the poster family for dysfunction/

Lastly, organizers for Saturday’s No Kings protests against Cankles said nearly seven million Americans took part—two million more than the first “No Kings” protest in June:

“In one of the largest single-day nationwide demonstrations in U.S. history, nearly seven million Americans gathered today, 2 million more than June, in over 2,700 cities and towns for the No Kings Day of Peaceful Action, standing together in nonviolent defiance of authoritarianism and affirming that this nation belongs to its people, not to kings. With more than 2,700 lawful and peaceful protests across all 50 states, today’s mobilization was 14 times larger than both of President Trump’s presidential inaugurations combined, marking a historic moment of unity and resistance,” the statement added. “From rural communities to major metropolitan centers, the message was clear: America will not be ruled by fear, force, or one man’s power grab.”

Cultists are, of course, denying those numbers but at the Columbia protest we met many Republicans who came out in protest of Cankles. Keep the momentum up and take that to the polls, this fall and in 2026.

The Funny Papers

Max Espinoza, Drew Sheneman, Tim Campbell, Lalo Alcaraz, Chappatte Cartoons, Trevor Irvin, Matt Wuerker, Chris Britt, Dave Whamond, Gary Huck, Michael de Adder, Clay Bennett, Bill Bramhall

Repost: Black History Month: Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry was just twenty-eight years old when her first play, A Raisin In The Sun, opened on Broadway to rave reviews and instant success. Capturing the spirit of the civil rights movement, Raisin won the 1959 New York Drama Critics Circle Award and made Hansberry the first Black person to win that prize, the youngest person to win that prize, and fifth woman to win that prize. A Raisin In The Sun was also the first play by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway; it has gone on to become a classic of the American theater and enjoy numerous revivals.

The roots of Lorraine Hansberry's artistic vision and activism were born, as she was, in Chicago, into a family of substantial means. Hansberry was the youngest of four children, and her father, Carl, was known as the “kitchenette king” in Chicago. Carl Hansberry would subdivide large homes vacated by whites moving to the suburbs and then sell these small apartments or kitchenettes to African American migrants from the South. Her mother, Nannie Perry, was a schoolteacher and, later, ward committeewoman. When Lorraine was born, Nannie Perry Hansberry was already an influential society matron, hosting cultural and literary figures such as Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, and Joe Louis.

Although Lorraine and her siblings enjoyed privileges unknown to their working-class friends and schoolmates, Nannie and Carl Hansberry instilled in their children a sense of racial pride, a sense of Black history, and civic responsibility. They created the Hansberry Foundation—designed to inform African Americans of their civil rights—encouraged their children to challenge the exclusionary policies of local restaurants and stores.

Carl and Nannie Hansberry themselves challenged restrictive real estate covenants of the day by moving into an all-white neighborhood. But shortly after settling in, a mob of whites gathered in front of the house and threw a brick through the front window, narrowly missing eight-year-old Lorraine and forcing the family to move out. Carl Hansberry won a narrow victory over restrictive covenants from the Supreme Court, but the decision failed to set precedent on this issue.

Lorraine Hansberry attended public schools, where she encountered the children of the working class whose independence and courage she came to admire; that struggle would become the subject of her first major play.

Departing from the family tradition of attending Black colleges, Hansberry enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, a predominantly white university, to study journalism, but was equally attracted to the visual arts. She integrated an all-white women's dormitory and became active in the campus chapter of the Young Progressive Association, a national left-wing student organization, serving as its president during her sophomore year.

After seeing a moving performance of Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock, Hansberry decided to become a writer and to capture the authentic voice of the African American working class. She left Wisconsin after two years and moved to New York City in 1950, taking a job with Freedom, a newspaper founded by Paul Robeson. She was soon promoted to associate editor, and, in 1952, she replaced Robeson at a controversial, international peace conference in Montevideo, Uruguay. Lorraine Hansberry subsequently spoke at public rallies and meetings, often critiquing U.S. policy.

Her association with Freedom placed Hansberry in the midst of Harlem's rich cultural, artistic, and political life. She was an avid reader of African American history and culture, politics, philosophy, and the arts, heavily influenced by the works of W. E. B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, William Shakespeare, and Langston Hughes.

While participating in a demonstration at New York University, she met Robert Nemiroff, son of progressive Russian Jewish immigrants, and after a short courtship, married him on 20 June 1953. The young couple moved to Greenwich Village and Hansberry began to write extensively about the people and lifestyles that she observed around her.

When her husband co-wrote “Cindy Oh Cindy” in 1956, a ballad that became an instant hit, the revenue freed Hansberry to devote her full energies to a play about a struggling, working-class Black family, like the families who rented her father's properties on Chicago's South Side; A Raisin in the Sun depicts the frustrations of a Black family whose dreams of economic progress have been thwarted.

After a pre-Broadway tour, it opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York in March 1959 to instant critical and popular success. In 1961, it was produced as a film with most of the original cast and won a special award at the Cannes Film Festival. During this period, Hansberry was much in demand as a public speaker.

She articulated her belief that art is social and that Black writers must address all issues of humankind. As the civil rights movement intensified, she helped to organize fund-raising activities in support of organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, called for the abolition of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and declared that President Kennedy had endangered world peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

During the last four years of her life, Hansberry worked hard on several plays. The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window was produced on Broadway in 1964, but critics were less receptive to this play that challenged the ennui of Greenwich Village intellectuals. During its short run, Hansberry battled pancreatic cancer, diagnosed in 1963.

Lorraine Hansberry died on 12 January 1965, the same night that her play closed.

She left a number of finished and unfinished writings that indicate the breadth of her social and artistic vision. Robert Nemiroff, whom she had divorced in 1964 but designated as her literary executor, adapted some of her writings for the stage under the title To Be Young, Gifted and Black, a show that became the longest-running drama of the 1968–1969 Off-Broadway season.

Nemiroff also edited and published an anthology of her work that included Les Blancs, a play about liberation movements; The Drinking Gourd, a television play commissioned by NBC but shelved as too controversial to produce; and What Use Are Flowers?, a fantasy on the consequences of nuclear holocaust.

In recent years, a feminist revisioning of her plays and some of her unpublished writings affirm her politically progressive views, her sophistication about gender issues, and her sensitivity to homosexuality and opposition to homophobia. As more of her work is made accessible, the full extent of Hansberry's vision and contribution to American letters will be revealed.