Having Black Mirror Flashbacks... 😐

at Nassau Bay, Texas https://www.instagram.com/p/BvzozKEAs4r/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=5vre6mjhgifm

A black woman will lead the third largest city in America, elected by voters who said they wanted change and the symbolism of a new era of politics in segregated Chicago.

Lori Lightfoot has never held office but won all 50 of the city’s wards in a crushing landslide on Tuesday.

Lightfoot’s win breaks race and gender barriers, and she’s openly gay with a wife and daughter. On the campaign trail, she leaned into her blue-collar roots growing up in a deeply segregated Ohio steel town. In her acceptance speech, Lightfoot invoked the legendary Harold Washington, the city’s first black mayor and others.

“I stand on the shoulders of so many. The shoulders of strong, black women, like Ida B. Wells, Gwendolyn Brooks and Annie Ruth Lowery. The shoulders of LGBTQ+ trailblazers, like Dr. Ron Sable, Vernita Gray and Art Johnston,” Lightfoot said.

She’s the former president of the Chicago police board, and also a former corporate attorney and federal prosecutor. Her message of “bring in the light” resonated with voters who raged against the local Democratic Party machine, notorious in Chicago for dynastic politics, patronage hiring and corruption.

“People felt like this is a moment where we can try something new. We can possibly go in a different direction, and we can represent to the world that we need something fresh,” said Cathy J. Cohen, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.

Lightfoot’s election is the latest in a record number of black women elected mayor in the nation’s 100 largest cities. Lightfoot will become the eighth such woman to lead one of those cities, Chicago being the largest, when she takes office in May.

The movement has been swift. Just five years ago, there was only one black woman leading any of the nation’s top 100 cities.

A Record Number Of Black Women Are Becoming Mayor Of Major Cities

Photo: Manuel Martinez/WBEZ Data source: Center for American Women and Politics  Chart: Thomas Wilburn/NPR

WATCH: A Black Hole Is Photographed For First Time By Massive Telescope Project

The world is seeing the first-ever image of a black hole Wednesday, as an international team of researchers from the Event Horizon Telescope project released their look at the massive black hole at the center of galaxy Messier 87 (M87).

The image shows a dark disc “outlined by emission from hot gas swirling around it under the influence of strong gravity near its event horizon,” the consortium said.

The enormous black hole is some 55 million light-years from Earth in the Virgo galaxy cluster, with a mass some 6.5 billion times that of our sun.

Video National Science Foundation via YouTube

[source @nasaames]

EVA glove (at Texas A&M University) https://www.instagram.com/p/BvnrXGeg_To/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=tki7cq62gnb6

Home is wherever I’m with you 🐾 (at Oak Ridge North, Texas) https://www.instagram.com/p/BwPq5CQgwJL/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1tf5oka7k3cnd