On Point
Openly gay candidate runs for president in Tunisia It's a first for the entire Arab world. Mounir Baatour is a lawyer at Tunisia's highest court, and considers himself a champion for LGTBQ rights. But his candidacy is being met with mixed support; some 18 LGBTQ advocacy groups signed a petition stating that his participation in the election would pose a danger to them and their work. Baatour is a founder of a group that lobbies against Tunisia's criminalization of gay sex, and has been jailed in the past on a sodomy charge, which he denies. "The fact that I'm gay doesn't change anything. It's a candidacy like all the others," Baatour told AFP. "I have an economic, social, cultural, and educational program for everything that affects Tunisians in their daily lives." France24
Versace forced to apologize to China over t-shirt The t-shirt in question listed the names of cities and countries where the Versace brand lives, like Milan, Italy, or Beverly Hills, U.S. But Hong Kong was matched with Hong Kong, and Macau with Macao, when both are technically part of China. The outrage was immediate, forcing Versace to apologize, pull the shirts off the market, and destroy whatever was left in inventory. They also lost their brand ambassador, the actress Yang Mi. Click through to read their incredibly thorough note of apology. Quartz
Please put some respect on Tarell Alvin McCraney's name My colleague Stacey Wilson Hunt correctly points out that in all the well-deserved praise for the Oscar-winning Moonlight, Tarell Alvin McCraney, the man who wrote the play that the film was based on, has gotten little limelight of his own. Until now. His new series, his first foray as a series creator, debuts on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) on Aug 14. David Makes Man follows a 14-year-old prodigy from the South Florida projects named David, who attends a magnet school. In this wonderful interview, McCraney, who runs the Yale School of Drama's playwriting program (oh yes he does), talks about the similarities between the show and Moonlight, and meeting Oprah when she buzzed by his pitch meeting at OWN. "I said, 'Hello Miss Oprah' and tried to shake her hand. She pushed my hand away and gave me a great big hug," he tells Fortune. Fortune
Simone Biles to USA Gymnastics: 'You had one job' Biles is an athletic marvel, and videos of her tumbling through the air and breaking records never disappoint. But the four-time Olympic gold medalist showed her leadership chops recently, as she delivered a strong rebuke, through tears, to the USA Gymnastics organization at the 2019 U.S National Gymnastics Championships in Kansas City. The 22-year-old revealed in January that she had been abused by the team's doctor, Larry Nasser, and now still feels uncomfortable getting the treatment she needs. "You had one job. You literally had one job and you couldn't protect us," she said. "It's hard coming here for an organization, having had them fail us so many times, we had one goal, we have done everything that they asked us for, even when we didn't want to and they couldn't do one damn job." Olympic Channel
On Background
Today's must read: 'The Great Land Robbery' This extraordinary piece begins with the writer, Vann R. Newkirk, chopping cotton on a black-owned family farm outside Ruleville, in Mississippi's Leflore County. But the story quickly digs deeply into a shocking reality: The crimes of Jim Crow still live on in the real estate portfolios of Wall Street titans like TIAA. "A war waged by deed of title has dispossessed 98% of black agricultural landowners in America," he writes, some 12 million acres owned by a million black families in the last century. "Unlike their counterparts even two or three generations ago, black people living and working in the Delta today have been almost completely uprooted from the soil—as property owners, if not as laborers." The Atlantic
Stacey Abrams is fighting for the vote Abrams is a marvel: The nearly successful Georgia gubernatorial candidate is also a tax attorney, a romance novelist, a former state representative, and a personal finance advocate. But she also knows firsthand about the voter suppression tactics that continue to prevent growing numbers of citizens of color from getting their votes counted. In this extraordinary profile, you'll learn exactly what you need to know to understand the unique entanglements of Georgia politics, but also what makes Abrams so extraordinary. She's created not one but two voter expansion organizations and based her campaign on an unprecedented voter registration strategy. "I think where the Democratic Party has gotten into trouble is that we've created a binary, where it's either the normative voter we remember fondly from 1960 or it's the hodgepodge. The reality is that we are capable as a society of having multiple thoughts at the same time." The New Yorker
A gym where everyone feels welcome Imagine a gym for everybody: gender-neutral locker rooms, unintimidating work out spaces, sliding-scale membership fees, Spanish language instruction, subtle accommodations for people with physical limitations. This is the vision of Everybody, a gym in Los Angeles that aims to take the aggression out of fitness. "In most gyms, there is this nauseating sense of upper class, white, heterosexual energy that is not welcoming for a lot of people," says co-founder Sam Rypinski. "We are hoping to be an antidote to that." Allure
Tamara El-Waylly helps write and produce raceAhead.
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Quote
"I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother."
—Maya Angelou, from Mom & Me & Mom
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