Carole V. Bell
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cvbell.bsky.social
Carole V. Bell
@cvbell.bsky.social
14K followers 1.3K following 14K posts
🇯🇲Culture critic, media & politics prof and researcher. I 💙 Art & Democracy. Writing: NPR, Boston Globe, IndieWire, LATimes, NYTimes, Washington Post, Oprah Daily, The Emancipator, Kirkus and BookPage. UNC J-School PhD. Linktr.ee/Cvbell
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cvbell.bsky.social
If your patriotism relies on racial exclusion, it’s a problem. Labor Department social media campaign depicts an all White male workforce .
“The point of this is to recapture a sense of social and national solidarity that’s been lost over the past generation”
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
Labor Department social media campaign depicts a White male workforce
The campaign has drawn scrutiny, with critics saying the agency is not realistically portraying the diversity of the country and is sending messages that feel exclusionary. Pictures are six posters featuring stylized ai-generated images of white male worker in the style of the 1950s and resembling WWII propaganda posters.
November 10, 2025 at 12:54 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
Forward thinking policy pays off for those who can access it.
Solar panels remain beyond the reach of many Jamaicans, but prices are falling rapidly as Chinese gear floods into the market. In recent years the Jamaican government has also started providing a solar income-tax credit, and banks have begun to offer more financing. Jamaica’s electric utility also now compensates solar households for excess electricity they put back into the grid. That’s helping Jamaica make progress toward its goal of generating 50 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
November 8, 2025 at 4:44 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
Last night was the 90th anniversary ceremony of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. I can’t think of a more relevant time to reflect on books that help us understand race and human diversity. Grateful to the jury led by the brilliant Natasha Tretheway and to the Cleveland Foundation.
September 20, 2025 at 8:49 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
Are other mayors watching? Boston Mayor Michelle Wu stands strong and Bostonians have her back. Out of four candidates, Wu won 72 percent of the vote in the prelim election. Number 2 just dropped out. “After Kraft exits, who will appear on the November ballot?“ www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/12/m...
Regardless of which names appear on the ballot, Wu is in an exceedingly strong position to win reelection this fall. She took a staggering 72 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s election, and won 264 of 275 city precincts
September 12, 2025 at 5:59 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
Adding screen shots with alt text:
Epstein’s Inbox article headline and graphic showing Jefffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s faces in profile. For years, Ghislaine Maxwell has tried to distance herself from Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, an effort that continued through her own criminal conviction and in a recent interview with federal law enforcement officials. According to her telling, she was a onetime girlfriend turned property manager at Epstein’s luxury homes around the world, yet was not privy to the inner workings of his vast influence machine or sex-trafficking operation. But hundreds of emails from Epstein’s personal Yahoo account, which haven’t been previously reported, shed new light on Maxwell’s partnership with Epstein. They also contribute to longstanding questions about her credibility, including her truthfulness in a two-day interview she had with officials The emails, part of a cache of more than 18,000 obtained by Bloomberg News, show that Maxwell and Epstein were closer, in many respects, than either publicly admitted. Maxwell opened at least one foreign bank account using one of his addresses, was a named director on one of Epstein’s main revenue-generating companies and traded stock in a company they were both invested in, details that haven’t been previously reported. The pair discussed undergoing a shared fertility procedure, long after Maxwell claims she largely disassociated from him. They corresponded about discrediting women who raised allegations against them, including in one exchange where Maxwell said she planned to circulate compromising information on one of Epstein’s sexual-abuse victims.
September 11, 2025 at 12:42 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
Happy Emancipation Day Jamaica 🇯🇲🇯🇲🇯🇲 Thinking about heritage, inheritance and culture today. Recommend: Remembering Marcus Garvey Through Reggae
www.aaihs.org/remembering-...
We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign.
August 1, 2025 at 1:53 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
This used to be the supposed quiet part. Now the racism is blasting through a megaphone via new right. MAGA star Charlie Kirk says some people are simply unacceptable regardless of legal status:
“It's time to ban third world immigration, legal or illegal.“
Bernice King posted a screen shot of a post by Charlie Kirk that reads: It's time to ban third world immigration, legal or illegal. We've reached our limit and we have a huge cultural, educational, housing, financial, and essential services problem to fix now because of it. We need a net-zero immigration moratorium with a ban on all third worlders.
June 10, 2025 at 12:08 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
Loved the a rock star open! ⭐️
A loud cheer erupted in the hallway of the JW Marriott in Buckhead where hundreds of women lined up for entry into the Phoenix Ballroom. I couldn’t see through the throngs of people, but I would later learn that the high-pitched screams, the kind which are generally reserved for musicians or movie stars, were instead offered to a writer of women’s fiction. Kennedy Ryan had arrived at the inaugural Black Romance Book Fest, and as she made her way to the stage for a keynote address, her fans were intent on showering her with love and appreciation.
June 5, 2025 at 5:30 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
This year’s exhibition features the top 100 submissions from the International Reggae Poster Contest, centred around the theme “The Jamaican Roots of Hip Hop.”
June 1, 2025 at 10:53 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
Celebrating the first day of Caribbean Heritage Month with visuals two shows I saw and loved this week: Green X Gold, the Kingston Biennial and The Art of Reggae, both at the National Gallery of Jamaica.
June 1, 2025 at 3:11 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
Really happy to report that the romance section of the Boston Globe Summer Reading List is 15 books strong and fun and diverse as hell with release dates ranging from end of May to Labor Day. #romancelandia #summerreading #readromance #booksky 📚💙 www.bostonglobe.com/2025/05/30/a...
May 30, 2025 at 1:21 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
I think Janelle Monae brought it. She is the inheritance and the assignment. #metgala
Artist Janelle Mona’s wears a two tone red and black divided suit with a top hat and carries an alligator print bag on the starry blue carpet at the Met Gala.
May 6, 2025 at 10:51 AM
cvbell.bsky.social
Some great shots here including Andrew Scott who is nailing the theme and model Liu Wen in maroon crushed velvet suit with a properly tailored, angular silhouette. litefm.iheart.com/content/2025...
Liu Wen wears a crushed maroon velvet suit with a snatched waist in the met gala blue carpet.
May 6, 2025 at 12:40 AM
cvbell.bsky.social
Started Earth Day with a walk in the woods.
April 22, 2025 at 3:14 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
Lulu Garcia Navarro shared an indelible image of Pope Francis in his first visit to Latin America as pope, He “walked, utterly accessible, in a favela among the most needy. It was a promise, which he kept, that his papacy would be about the most vulnerable.”
www.vatican.va/content/fran...
Pope Francis greets the faithful on the streets of a favela in Rio De Janeiro. 2013. Photo by Lulu Garcia Navarro.
April 21, 2025 at 12:18 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
NPR reports: 400k Venezuelans now live in Florida. And “Noem noted in the draft rule that it's not in American national interests to permit the Venezuelans to remain in the U.S”
Nearly 400,000 people who left Venezuela now live in Florida. Adelys Ferro, the director of the Venezuelan American Caucus, says, "We are human beings who work here, who are small business owners." Ferro says Venezuelans exiled here "actually believe that the TPS was the right way to get legal in the United States, to have our work permits, to have a social security number, to be able to buy a house."
February 4, 2025 at 6:45 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
Tampa folks who are romance fans or romance curious— Steamy Lit Tampa, the Bay’s first romance centric bookstore is hosting a signing and conversation Thursday for the launch of It’s Getting Hot in Here, a romcom about love in midlife.
#bosky 💙📚
steamylitbookstore.com/products/jan...
Text reads Annabel Monaghan in conversation with Jane Costello above a photo of the two women and the book cover for It’s Getting Hot In Here, Jane’s new book. Thursday Feb 6 2025 at 7 pm Tampa. Steamy Lit book store logo.
February 3, 2025 at 12:42 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
Chilly day. Caught the neighbors basking in the sun.
Alligator on the bank of a neighborhood pond. Wide shot of a pond in central Florida with small alligators laying out on the grass. Big alligator laying on grass next to a pond. Snout touching the water Alligator swimming in water with just their head and snout about the water.
January 26, 2025 at 5:05 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
Flatwoods Preserve Hillsborough County FL
Mossy greenery and palms in a fields in a Central Florida nature park. Flatwoods park Hillsborough County Fl.
January 25, 2025 at 11:35 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
You’ve been kidnapped. The characters from the last TV show you watched are trying to rescue you. Who is coming to save you?

(I’d be all set but he’d enjoy it way too much 😏)
Jason Segal as over zealous therapist Jimmy in the TV show Shrinking says “I’m a psychological vigilante.”
January 5, 2025 at 3:08 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
Okay but these are my neighbors.
December 22, 2024 at 3:18 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
Interesting restrained Good Authority exploration. Do the Billionaires in the Trump cabinet signal a rising threat of Oligarchs in America? goodauthority.org/news/billion...
In autocratic countries with “extractive” institutions – countries that lack fair elections, independent media, and impartial application of the rule of law – directly entering politics offers the superrich more reliable ways to protect their wealth…
December 14, 2024 at 12:38 PM
cvbell.bsky.social
If you think your Thanksgiving is awkward, you should try the fictional yet very real intercultural drama of @nikkimaywriter.bsky.social’s This Motherless Land. The perfectly entertaining, addictive book club read takes place in the environs of Lagos and London.
apps.npr.org/best-books/#...
The colorful and artistic Book cover of This Motherless Land features the overlapping profiles of two women. Against a purple background one face is rendered in yellow and the other in deep orange. A palm tree sprouts in the hair of the darker skinned. A double strand of white pearls creates a ring around their both necks.
November 28, 2024 at 12:28 AM
cvbell.bsky.social
Happy Tuesday 💙📚. My book of the day is Mateo Askaripour’s This Great Hemisphere. It’s wonderful inventive speculative fiction about race and invisibility, but also a surprising political thriller and a heartrending book about family and love. NPR : Books We Love.
apps.npr.org/best-books/#...
The book cover art for the novel This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour features a rainbow colored sunset over a mountain.
November 26, 2024 at 11:56 AM
cvbell.bsky.social
Another book I adore: Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez. In Xochitl Gonzalez’s engrossing art world drama, Anita de Monte Laughs Last, relationships are complicated and lives imperiled by power imbalances. Read more about it about Books We Love:
apps.npr.org/best-books/#...
Book cover Anita de Monte Laughs Last, a Reese's book club pick is rendered in pink and orange with a young woman's face framed by an ivy covered arch.
November 25, 2024 at 12:58 PM