Women of Color of Time’s Up asks the music industry to cut ties with R. Kelly

For the first time since advocating for the prosecution of Harvey Weinstein, the Time’s Up collective has singled out an alleged abuser: R&B star Robert Kelly. Women of Color of Time’s Up, a subcommittee of the larger group specifically organizing around issues that affect women and girls of color, released a statement this morning announcing their support of #MuteRKelly, an online campaign asking Live Nation and Sony Music to cancel R. Kelly’s tour dates and drop his recording contract. Women of Color of Time’s Up, which includes Ava DuVernay, Shonda Rimes, and Jurnee Smollett-Bell, are also asking other “corporations and venues,” including Kelly’s record label RCA Records, to cut ties with the singer.

Over the course of nearly two decades, Kelly has been accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct, statutory rape, aggravated assault, and harassment. Journalist Jim DeRogatis at the Chicago Sun-Times first broke the story in 2000 that Kelly had been accused of statutory rape with girls as young as 15. Allegations against Kelly continued to surface, including a bombshell interview with DeRogatis in the Village Voice in 2013, but despite multiple lawsuits against him, the singer’s career remained relatively stable. Last summer, DeRogatis published yet another report in BuzzFeed that Kelly was holding very young women against their will in a “cult,” deciding things like what they wore and when they went to the bathroom.

Although sexual assault convictions are difficult to come by in general — Bill Cosby was found guilty of sexual assault last week after decades of inaction and accusations from 60 people — R. Kelly’s alleged victims are overwhelmingly young black women and girls, who have seen little, if any, support from the institutions meant to protect them. In that 2013 Village Voice interview, DeRogatis said, “The saddest fact I’ve learned is nobody matters less to our society than young black women. Nobody.”

The statement from the Women of Color of Time’s Up asks readers to “insist on a world in which women of all kinds can pursue their dreams free from sexual assault, abuse and predatory behavior.

“As Women of Color within Time’s Up, we recognize that we have a responsibility to help right this wrong. We intend to shine a bright light on our WOC sisters in need. It is our hope that we will never feel ignored or silenced ever again.”

You can read the full letter at The Root.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Retailers are scrambling to find trucks amid the pandemic, generating record-smashing pay for drivers

Image
Truck drivers have fled the industry, but those who have stuck around are seeing red-hot rates. Glenn Koenig/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images A shortage of truck drivers combined with a surge in online and in-store shopping has made trucking unusually expensive.  Retailers are spending around 30% more than they did last year to move goods via truck.  The last time trucking rates soared this high, it forced companies like Amazon and XYZ to pass down the unusual transportation costs to consumers by raising prices.  Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories .   There's a reason the shelves at your local big-box retailer still looks barren, months after the coronavirus crisis forced manufacturers and retailers to pump out more toilet paper and cleaning supplies than ever.  Tens of thousands — potentially hundreds of thousands — of truck drivers have left the industry since early 2019, experts say, leaving retailers scrambling to fill shelves and online orders
Read more

What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout

Image
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge I. The CEO On Friday afternoon, Facebook made one of its most controversial content moderation decisions in company history. After President Trump posted to Facebook some tweets that Twitter had placed behind a warning for “glorifying violence,” Mark Zuckerberg said that the company would allow them to stand . “I know many people are upset that we’ve left the President’s posts up,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post , “but our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies.” “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump had tweeted — quoting a former Miami police chief who, in 1967, called for a violent crackdown on the city’s black community. And just as the president suggested, a long weekend of violence followed in the United States, with police assaulting protesters and bystanders across the country in the days that fo
Read more

Woodward claims he sat on Trump coronavirus remarks for 6 months in order to do more fact checking

Image
NEW YORK, NY - SEPTEMBER 11: Bob Woodward speaks with Dana Perino at "The Daily Briefing" at Fox News Channel Studios on September 11, 2018 in New York City. Dominik Bindl/Getty Images Bob Woodward is defending his decision to withhold President Trump's remarks about COVID-19 until the release of his new book. In public, Trump was downplaying the threat of the coronavirus, even suggesting it was a new "hoax" from Democrats to harm his presidency. In a conversation with Woodward, however, Trump contradicted his public remarks, noting that the virus is far more dangerous than the seasonal flu. In an interview with the Associated Press, Woodward claimed that he sat on the comment for more than six months in order to do more fact-checking. “He tells me this, and I’m thinking, ‘Wow, that’s interesting, but is it true?’ Trump says things that don’t check out, right?” Woodward said. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories . President Trump kn
Read more